Caring for Your Creative "Seeds"

Microseason No. 39, August 17-22

The modern Information Age is both a miracle and a conundrum.

We all have too much information coming at us at every moment.¹

This information holds “seeds” of creativity that we might want to plant someday.

A microseason of 5 days can be a very useful block of time to help you save and organize those things that matter most.

I’ve written before about the microseasonal photo albums on my computer. These tiny albums contain pictures I make, and ideas (notes, screenshots, quotes, etc) that I collect while hiking in the forest for any 5-day period ².

Recently, I ran across a photo collage I made last year using some images and words that held creative energy for me at that time.

It was a combination of:

digital hiking photo prints

magnetic word tiles

a classical painting³

a self-portrait

and an actual leaf I had written on with Sharpie marker.

At the time, I arranged the physical items and made a photo of the collage. Then I filed it in the tiny album that corresponded to that date. Today, it gave me a creative boost to see it again. And I’m reminded that I may want to write a post about collecting and writing on fallen leaves— a practice that is so much fun to do!

We are seasonal creatures with seasonal cravings.

Try setting up some small, microseasonal folders to hold your digital treasures. Annually, you can come back around and add to them, making new connections and becoming freshly inspired by them all over again.

In this practice, I’ve found a container that can hold my creative “seeds” in such a way that putting ideas and images into the system is just as easy as getting them back out. Input is a joy— and retrieving those ideas and images later is also a joy!

I find it to be a natural process that’s like breathing in and breathing out. Collecting, synthesizing, organizing and sharing my work becomes what some folks call a “flywheel” of creativity.

The creative power is held in the underlying structure.

—Rick Ruben

For those who develop a simple filing system, it becomes a healthy cycle that is self-perpetuating. You’ll keep coming back, because you know every new encounter brings the hope of beholding the beauty of each microseason once more. And you will have an easy way to capture whatever inspires you.

A few harbingers of fall color are starting to appear on the trails now.

Immediacy vs. Urgency

In The Creative Act, Rick Rubin says if an artist is creating a work and keeps crafting endlessly beyond the need, sometimes they disconnect and keep wanting to start all over. Extending the period of “making” too long makes it hard to capture an aliveness, or a State of Being. It decreases the artist’s connection to the work and decreases enthusiasm over time. The work grows stiff and stale.

The microseasons bring just enough immediacy to the creative process. Immediacy is not urgency—or worst of all, false urgency. Immediacy has an intensity that is energizing and full of presence. Five days seems to be a good increment of time. It helps me avoid rushing, but I can keep moving ahead steadily and without delay.

Give it a try! The practice of curation by the microseasons is an easy way to organize ideas and begin anew every 5 days. It’s a way to feel your creative seeds bursting into life again, and again.

I’ll see you in the next microseason,

—Ann

1. I’m really looking forward to Kyle Chayka’s new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. Listen to him talk about it on The Art of Curation podcast.

2. A list of the 72 Microseasons of the year.

3. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867), The Virgin with the Crown , 1859–1859, Oil on Panel, 69.9 x 50.8 cm.