DISCOVERY: 28-Day Creativity Reset Wk 2

Welcome to week two! This week is all about discoveries, both near and far. Each day this week, I have picked topics to explore and created writing and art prompts for each one. As always, take what you like, do as much or as little as possible, and be gentle with yourself. For a bit more context, consider checking out this post or this video.

You are receiving this because you subscribed to my Substack. For this month, I’ll be delivering daily creativity prompts in a weekly guide.

• Fruits — Monday (day 8 of 28)

  • Meditation: Fruit has played an outsized role in our lives and imaginations from the beginning of time. Many a gorgeous still life is anchored by colorful lemons, pomegranates, apples, grapes, or other sweet, delicious drupe*. Fruit has also played a giant symbolic role in myth, religion, and even music. Today, as we near peak summer in my area of the world, let’s cut open a juicy peach and enjoy it while we explore fruit on a more personal level. Maybe there was a particular fruit that your mother grew in her garden (mine’s tomatoes were legendary and, yes, they are fruit) or a fruit you’ve tried on a trip to an exotic place.

  • Writing: Think about memories related to fruits that are personal to you. Or fruit in literature — such as William Carlos Williams’ masterful poem, “This is Just to Say.” What do these memories and references evoke? What recipes have you cooked or eaten on repeat? Write down your thoughts, or a recipe that you love — maybe an apple pie with stone fruit? Capture that in your notebook.

  • Art: Raid your fridge or pick up a few fruits of your liking at the grocery store. Place in a simple arrangement. Create a drawing in whatever media speaks to you today. You can stick with color native to these fruits or use colors of your own liking. Use grand gestures, move your whole arm, make it messy, and stand if you need. Spend 8-10 minutes or longer if you are having fun.

    

• Kitchen — Tuesday (day 9 of 28)

  • Meditation: Kitchens are often the heartbeat of a home, in my experience. For me, my favorite kitchen memories are from my grandparents’ house. I have vivid memories of the scent of tea, the beautiful, rustic pottery, and the windows looking over the herb garden. The kitchen had a large round wooden table and an oversized off-white paper spherical lamp that hung from the center of the ceiling. There were always flies! And my grandmother kept one of those fly catchers with sticky paper up at all times—I loved that room anyway.

  • Writing: What are some of the memories you have from a kitchen that is special to you? Holidays, learning to cook with your mother or a favorite aunt, homework as a child, while your father grilled out the back door? Describe the space, and explore it in depth.

  • Art: I love packaging on tinned fish, condiments, and Amarena cherries in blue and white ceramic jars. Pick an item or two from your own kitchen and draw it/them, keep it loose and messy. Add notes on why you chose what you chose. Paint or color in, or color around the negative space, if appealing to you.

    

• Garden — Wednesday (day 10 of 28)

  • Meditation: Gardens are magical places. Whether growing vegetables and herbs, or flowers, there is an energy to the act of growing something. So optimistic, so messy and rewarding. Whether you have small planters on a patio, a full irrigation system in your backyard, or you admire the roses at a local rose garden, everyone can appreciate a beautiful garden. Gardens are also metaphors. What are you hoping to grow in the garden of your life? Would you design a messy open crop, or a highly disciplined, geometric set-up?

  • Writing: Take a moment to think back on gardens that have meant something to you — maybe it was your friend’s backyard growing up, when you picked carrots out of the soil, brushed them off, and ate them right there. Or the wide expanse of the Englischer Garten in Munich, Germany, with so much green and dogs romping about in the grassy areas, the views of the historic Frauenkirche visible just over the tree line. Write about the garden you are imagining or remembering. Or write about how you want the garden of your life to look at the end of the season.

  • Art: Go to your favorite garden or just to a windowsill. If you are in an apartment, any public park will do. Find a wide view and a plant with leaves or flowers; paint or draw them both in two thumbnails. Then pick one to draw or paint in more detail.

    

• Mountain — Thursday (day 11 of 28)

  • Meditation: When I feel lost, I go to the mountains, like a Thomas Mann protagonist, and I feel better as soon as I reach the foothills. It started with my father, who brought me to any mountain he could for years. He always felt better in the mountains, and he was his best self when we were outside, hiking, skiing, or just spending time with the dog. Our conversations were richer, our focus uninterrupted by the day-to-day. What do mountains mean to you? Were you ever moved to explore remote wilderness areas, or do you feel mountains are best left alone, an area for the imagination or a good book, not for your own flesh and blood trying to stay warm during a gnarly stream-crossing in backwoods Alaska?

  • Writing: Write about literal and figurative thoughts on mountains. Did you grow up in the Alps? Is it part of your identity? Or are you more of a city person, who would prefer to exercise in a comfortable, climate-controlled gym? Do you enjoy them from afar, or do you hope to one day visit a Buddhist monastery in the far reaches of Bhutan?

  • Art: Draw, paint, or make a collage of a mountain. Choose one you know well or one you read about in a magazine. Capture what it is that attracts you to it: the light, the shape of the cliffs, the history of the rock. Capture it as a journal entry, not a final work of art. It is fine to work from a photo — maybe one from a wonderful vacation. Scribble notes all over it if you feel you need to.

    

• Swimming — Friday (day 12 of 28)

  • Meditation: Swimming is synonymous with summer. Especially in a lake or the very cold New England ocean. There is a weightlessness to swimming, a carefree quality that I’ve not found with any other activity—save the trampoline. Think about swimming adventures you have had. Where were you? Were you skinny dipping? Were you on a beach blanket with your family, enjoying ocean breezes, perhaps a summer camp memory from a long time ago?

  • Writing: Pick one memory and explore it more fully. What were you wearing? Who were you with? Will you ever go back? How did the water look and feel? Do you enjoy swimming?

  • Art: David Hockney, who died recently after a long and glorious artistic life, loved to paint swimming pools, and they are wonderful. Google “Hockney’s pools”, study the paintings, and create a master copy of your favorite. Or just study the color choices and swatch them around what you have written. If you are lucky enough to have your own pool, draw or paint your pool. Pay particular attention to the color and shapes in the water. Look for the textures and try to bring them to the page.

• Map — Saturday (day 13 of 28)

  • Meditation: I miss the days of the driving atlas and paper maps. I also love maps that explore something unusual, specialized, or counterintuitive: habitat maps for butterflies or specific bird species, topographic maps of wilderness areas with few trails, a beer map of the state of Vermont, or the bookstore map of Hudson Valley Bookstores.

  • Writing: Imagine maps that you could create based on things you love and are passionate about. I could do a map of places that are dear to me in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire, or my personal map of my New York City vs the typical tourist map. A map of the special things you’ve done with your best friend. Maybe it’s just a map of your house, your apartment, or your garden. A map of a trip or itinerary you’ve been planning for years. Write down the ideas.

  • Art: Draw it. Use the tools of cartographers of the past: symbols, a key, cardinal directions, a scale, titles, and variable fonts. And as always, imperfection is the whole idea; humor gets extra credit.

    

• Zip-line — Sunday (day 14 of 28)

  • Meditation: Several years ago, when my son was about 12, we took an epic road trip to British Columbia and ended up in Whistler, where we proceeded to do two rounds of zip-lines over the course of a single day. The beginning was tough. My son was afraid, and I was afraid, but after the initial jump, we experienced an astonishing adrenaline rush and got hooked. The zip-line represents to me a special moment in your life — a time when you took a chance and did something extraordinary — and did it with someone you love. A memory that you will savor forever.

  • Writing: What is your zip-line adventure? Has it happened yet? It’s okay to have more than one. Pick one and describe every aspect of it that you remember — or imagine the one you are planning and how it might come to fruition.

  • Art: Draw or paint some depiction of the moment — whether the people, the landscape, or the activity. Place it beside or over your words. Or simply add a photograph that brings you back to that day.

    

We are now officially halfway! Thanks so much for playing along with week two. Please tag me on Instagram, YouTube, or here on Substack, so I can admire and share your work!

*A drupe is a “one-seeded indehiscent fruit having a hard bony endocarp, a fleshy mesocarp, and a thin exocarp that is flexible (as in the cherry) or dry and almost leathery (as in the almond)”, as defined by Merriam-Webster.