Things mentioned/relevant to the discussion:

• brattyxbre: zinester/freelance artist/small business owner

• Shouting Into The Void: On Creating Without An Audience

• My two favourite tracks from RM/Namjoon’s last album: Nuts & ㅠㅠ (Credit Roll)

What are you making these days? What do you want to make these days?

Rate and review if you’re listening on a podcast app!

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Questions/comments/want to chat about creativity and creative projects: wellintendedpod@gmail.com 💖

Listen to the whole episode for a ~special reading of my piece Epi(cure)an, which you can also read here.

Videos from this week I enjoyed, that may or may not have made me cry:

• How I Overcame The Fear Of Being An Artist

• Thanks, Shmed

• making this zine saved my writing

• Why is LinkedIn so weird? (if you don’t already love Dan Toomey, go watch this and start your very inconvenient crush on Dan Toomey)

Please rate and review if you’re listening on a podcast app! It really helps 💖

If you like what I do and want to help keep me going, a monthly tip would support me in continuing to write, podcast, and work on community initiatives both local and online.

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The book I mention is Dinner on Monster Island: Essays by Tania De Rozario.

Please rate and review if you’re listening on a podcast app! It really helps 💖

If you like what I do and want to help keep me going, a monthly tip would support me in continuing to write, podcast, and work on community initiatives both local and online.

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Relevant and/or mentioned items:

• Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam (video)

• American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders

• Lords of Death (podcast)

If you like what I do and want to help keep me going, a monthly tip would support me in continuing to write, podcast, and work on community initiatives both local and online.

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I really did mean it when I said it’s all craft; Not Doing The Thing still feeds into the process, ultimately, because you’re a whole person, and everything about you and what you do is a self-informing loop (I picture a classic murder board, which I love - get me a bulletin board and some red string and I’m extremely there). What really helps me to look back on my time and contextualize things is keeping a weekly rolling to-do list. Last week, most of the writing-related things weren’t checked off, but I completed an application I was really excited about (it was SO long, and I only had two days before the deadline!), and stayed ahead of schedule for podcasting. Those are things to be proud of! I’m proud of that!

Dedicated writing time where you sit down to make it happen is super valid, but so is leaving yourself open for inspiration to strike1. Always carry a notebook with you! Or use a note app on your phone. Whatever allows you to jot down things in the moment (I use both).

I don’t feel totally unstuck, but I do feel better. Considering complexity and nuance is one of my favourite things, so I understand that it’s a puzzle piece of the bigger picture that includes a major career change, seasonal effects on my mood, truly exhausting and routine hormonal fluctuations, and more. But we ebb! We flow! And we keep going.

Speaking of keeping going, I just want to say thanks to everyone who’s read and listened so far as I’ve been working on getting Well Intended! up and running. I mentioned it in the episode, but it’s been exceptionally lovely and motivating hearing from y’all, and I appreciate it so much.

If you like what I do and want to help, please consider making a monthly tip! It would support me in continuing to write, podcast, and work on community initiatives both local and online.

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Hope everyone has a safe and happy new year! See you next week with a new podcast episode 🫡 💖

Things mentioned and relevant items of interest:

• Sprinto: writing sprint bot for Discord

• Business Books are (mostly) Religious Propaganda (video)

• falling in love with making art again (video)

• Blog post on giving and receiving feedback

If you like what I do and want to help keep me going, a monthly tip would support me in continuing to write, podcast, and work on community initiatives both local and online.

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Feedback, when done well, is a delicate balance: putting enough distance between yourself and the piece on the objective side, while remembering that the person who made the piece is a person on the subjective side. A person has feelings, and - from one person-with-feelings to another - they rarely have a choice in the matter of which ones they’ll experience.

Ideally, you and whoever you’re doing feedback with have already come to an agreement on what it’ll look like in practice, which is even more important if you’re not super familiar with the other person. If not (and it’s happened to me where we just jump straight in and hope for the best!), here’s some things I’ve found helpful when receiving feedback:

• Read it, then leave it. It doesn’t matter what reactionary emotions come up when you first receive your feedback, but understanding that they will. Stepping away to process and come back with fresher eyes can give you better clarity and reasoning when you read the feedback again.

• Assume positive intent, and approach with curiosity. Even if you know them, someone’s tone can still be difficult to parse when written, like something sounding much harsher on the page than if they’d said it out loud. Stepping away, as just mentioned, can also help give you time to remember this. And - ask questions! If it’s still hitting in a way that confuses and you want to figure it out, asking for clarification could lead to interesting conversations on mechanics or vibes (my favourite!!!).

• Take what you need. Ultimately, you’re the creator of the work, and in most cases have the last word on what you’ll change based on feedback (if you decide to change anything at all). It can be hard to take this advice if you’re a people-pleasing kind of person, but if you try something and it’s just not jiving, then it’s not for you. Give yourself permission to keep only what resonates.

• Thank them for their time. No matter what you get back from someone, they made space in their day to read and consider your work, which is a big deal! That’s awesome! There are a million other things they could be doing! Even if their feedback is similar to other notes you receive, that gives more importance to the observations, and the greater possibility it’ll also be noticed by a larger audience (whether you intend them to or not).

When giving feedback, I try and keep the following in mind:

• Examples of questions I ask myself:

  • Are they looking for specific feedback?

  • Do I know of any works that are successful in what they’re trying to accomplish?

  • Is there another form (poem, novelette, screenplay, essay, etc) they could try?

  • What biases am I bringing to my reading and feedback, and can/should they be addressed?

• Assume positive intent, and approach with curiosity. Yes, this is the same point from the last section. Yes, it is absolutely still important. In the same vein as “read it, then leave it”, take a step back to notice what your reactions are to the piece, and what that can say about your experience and knowledge that could be applied to other readers. So much of feedback (and everything, really) is about the grey shades of human perspective, and how it informs us as readers and writers.

• Say the hard thing. This one’s for my anxiety babes out there. Even if you can’t really explain or have the language for what you want to convey, or think what you’re going to tell them might hurt their feelings: try. Your insight and suggestions are valuable, because of human perspective as mentioned in the last point, and also because it helps you become a better communicator overall. As a (former? Meds help lol) anxiety babe myself, it’s helpful for me to think about what might be lost if I don’t say the thing. I know little bits of feedback from others stick around in my head, and make my writing much stronger in the long run.

• How do I turn this into a question? That’s what we did in workshops for the creative writing program I was in, but it’s also a key lesson I learned from coaching training: state the observation if needed for context, then follow with a question that leaves more space for open, thoughtful answers. It might look something like, “The setting was really interesting and I love the detail, but I felt disconnected to the narrator/main character. How could they interact with the setting more, and what would it feel like in their body?”

Also, a side note, because it amazes me how this still keeps happening even though it doesn’t need to be said: Don’t give feedback if someone hasn’t asked for it. Free speech and free will is not an invitation to disrupt another person’s peace.

There’s an incredible amount of tangents I can go on to further expand all the points listed above (nuance and complexity, always! This post is assuming SO much positive intent, and conflict resolution is like a whole field - lean on peers and mentors for how to address within community), but I can already feel myself struggling to keep up the momentum for this post, and I need to honour actually being able to publish it, lol.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope some of what I’ve shared is helpful :) Happy feedbacking!

This first episode is a classic winding ramble for any of you who’ve ever received a voice note from me. There are some tangents, but I’m planning for this space to dig into the Doing of creating, and what that looks and feels like for myself and others.

I’m also now fully on the journey to make being a working writer/creator a sustainable career, so I made a Ko-fi page! If you like what I do and want to help keep me going, a monthly tip would support me in continuing to write, podcast, and work on community initiatives (both local and online - something I’ll talk about in a future episode).

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But any and all support goes a long way and is incredibly appreciated! Heart-ing and sharing means the whole entire world, and I send you my eternal thanks in exchange.

Hope you’re having a lovely weekend!

💚 Kristi

UPDATE: Follow-up post has been published:

(This is problematic in theory, because I have a Job, and I also help other people with their Jobs, which, as you might imagine: involves setting Goals. But that is my Job, where I work with and in support of a team who help me with Goals, and not my Life; it’s easier to do these things in community (which is a good lesson anyway, not only for your Job).)

Particularly for more “creative” goals. Even if I try and keep the pressure off, it’s just… there. Lurking. It sucks the joy out of basically anything I’m working towards, because my brain automatically leaps several steps ahead, thinking solely on the outcome or finished product, whatever that is. The outcomes are the only thing I can think of, which is the fatal flaw that makes it so they rarely happen to any satisfying degree. Then the (pretty much) inevitable happens, what with the ADHD and all: projects get abandoned, I’m distracted by something shiny and new and fun, and the spiral of guilt and shame sucks me down into the tar-black pit of seemingly validated despair.

… Gross. But changeable! (Hopefully.)

If you, like me, have this problem, what I’m trying with reframing and putting my energy into is this:

Process over output. Focus on, and spend more time with, the action or steps to doing something, instead of what’s produced at the end.

(You know, I hate when something sounds so simple, because I’m like: Yeah. Of course. Of course that’d be helpful if I’m stuck on what I produce, and can’t make the practice of producing stick. It’s common sense, I’ve probably heard this so many times!)

(But. But.)

(I am frequently reminding myself that I’m a constant jumble of new-old-blooming thoughts and values and experiences, that all inform and destroy each other, like some chaotic Big Bang playing out in miniature inside my skull and my chest and my gut. Reflection and introspection brings me (and you!) back to new insight from old knowledge. I think that’s pretty sick.)

In being mindful of making things sustainable, this approach has to feel good in order to work. That’s important. Finding the joy is paramount, as well as lowering the barrier for energy, so that I’m able to gain momentum in picking it up at any moment.

Take photography/videography, for example. Back in 2014 I bought a Canon T3i DSLR, enamoured with fashion and lifestyle vloggers and the people I followed on Lookbook. My first big purchase just for myself, and I had so many plans! I bought it because I liked how it looked shooting 24fps; I got a 50mm lens to take all the cute bokeh shots; my favourite YouTuber recommended it. And listen, I didn’t not use it, but it was heavy and bulky and made me self-conscious - mostly of living up to the value and intended outcome I’d attached to it. It’s stayed on the shelf far more often than not.

Flash-forward to the end of this past September: my friend Sam told me she bought a film camera. I was having A Time, and I’m a big fan of retail therapy. It was relatively cheap, super light, and it took half-frame shots. That means you regularly get double the amount of photos out of your 35mm rolls! It also forces you to think differently with how you frame your shots - portrait photos are taken holding the camera horizontally, and landscape holding it vertically. That, coupled with the fact that you can’t immediately get a sense of what the result is after you click the shutter button, made me think this was the right choice to start seeing if I could actively apply this mindset.

Dear reader, I’m happy to report: I think it’s working. Which is to say, now I only don’t bring the film camera out when I actually forget it, as opposed to wallowing in feeling like I can only use it if I take Good Photos, while it sits like a boulder in my bag and never sees the light of day. I even got a little mirrorless camera that has a lot of the same attributes - fairly unobtrusive, easy to carry around, prime lens. Less choices to distract with decision paralysis, leaning harder into joyful impulse in the long run.

The greater challenge in the coming weeks and years will be applying this to my writing. I have to overcome a lifetime of only being able to see a finished product I’ve never been able to reach, and believing that was the only path to success, the only thing of value. Examining the idea of process over output is an act of redefining what value means to me with this practice.

I’ll end by saying this continues to be a work in progress (as I’ll probably end everything by saying). There are days where I can’t help but get stuck on the outcome, hinging abstract or faraway hopes on them. That’s the nature of the daydreamer. But this is work that feels essential, and good, and right, and I’m not going to ignore that.

Anyways, that’s discovery, baby!

(is this?? a new catchphrase????????)

(lol)

(here’s a few pictures i took that i liked from the past few months - this is the first time i’ve even taken the memory card out of the new camera)

They’re so much! Start doing something. Stop doing something. Achieve a Goal (capitalization fully intended), and so on into oblivion. In my very personal experience, there’s a lot of pressure for very little reward, and no incentive to carry on. Other people who don’t take the resolution route change their framework to use a theme instead, or center around a word for the year.

For me, to probably no one’s surprise, I decided to think about how I want to feel this year. (Props to Em for being the person I tried this on first, in classic 11-minute-long voice note fashion).

When I thought about this year, I wanted to feel more creative. I got accepted into a creative writing program, and I’m just about to go on a three month sabbatical - it felt gloriously aligned to this pursuit and particular time in my life. But being creative can mean a lot of different things, and part of learning more about myself was knowing that I needed a little more structure. That translated into a couple of subcategories, to pull this idea for a feeling outside of myself, which are: discovery, and community.

Because “feel more creative” is pretty broad, discovery for me in this sense is being open to learning, and finding different things that work for me. That also means embracing things not working, even though the idea of failure in and of itself is horrifying. I want to try other crafts and hobbies and explore thinking of new ways in which to create.

Part of the reason I chose this particular creative writing program was its emphasis on building and learning in community. It’s not something I’ve actively sought out before, besides online in different fandoms (fanfiction is one of the first loves of my life), but I’ve found that I value supporting and facilitating space for others so much.

Through it all, I’m going to be keeping sustainability in mind, as a way to honour myself and my future, and encourage others as well. We’re finite resources! I want to do this shit for as long as I feasibly can! Take care of yourself!

Anyways, that’s what kicked off this newsletter - sharing moments of creativity, the difficulties and joys that come with it, and maybe some other stuff that I don’t even know yet. That’s discovery, baby.

Now, I’ll leave you with the same question: how do you want to feel this year?