This Thursday, July 16 @ 4:30pm EST — Substack LIVE for Paid Subs
We’re co-creating together! Live. 15 min of writing or drawing, 15 min of chit-chat. I’ll be live-writing Friday’s letter right there with you.
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I made a little audio intro here — but I’m a bit sleepy because Substack threw an office party last night for the best seller crew in NYC. Very excited and honored to be there, to be a ‘bestseller’ thanks for supporting my work. I so appreciate it. 🧡
This summer let us all find 15 minutes and start making hunks of work. Using time as a guide, we can create drawings, photos, do research, letters, songs, movements, collections, books even!
Exhibit 15: This is me writing a letter in 15 minutes. Engaged, thoughtful here, listening to an NTS infinite mixtape droning.
We can catch 15 min in our commute, in our lunch break, while watching TV. It doesn’t need to be a room of one’s own. It can be a shared space, a loud space, public transit, or a complete vacuum of silence in the desert.
It works in infinite ways. Just like this mixtape.
There are 3 parts to this concept.
Tools for making marks, sounds, movements. It depends on the medium you’re working with.
15 minutes in a row, mostly uninterrupted. But you can also roll with the disturbances and make while you roll. Set a timer, or monitor the clock.
A place to take space in a physical way. Hop on a bus, a backseat in SUV, a rollercoaster, or a park bench.
You could have music blasting, TV sounds, children shouting, or not.
You could choose to collab with your environment, or not.
That is the 15 minute session rule book.
Do we even want rules? Yes.
Rules hold me/us in place. The world is pummeling all around.
Please strap me in with some rules so I feel safe to create.
It’s daylight time and I, even me, have dillydallied to avoid writing. Then I finally relax, thinking — only 15 minutes. I could create something small and direct and succinct in this bit of time. I could create multiple things even, with these clumps of 15 minutes I have before me.
It’s quiet in the room, aside from the light-slow drone and twinkle of the fantastical music.
Room to write. Room to move on and live life after the writing, all while feeling accomplished. Building new confidence in every quarter hour.
These are the kinds of projects I want to encourage readers (and myself) to try. You don’t need a six-week art residency or writers’ retreat, or to quit your day job, to make interesting, satisfying work — visual or written — at a desk, on a break, with whatever you’ve got in front of you. Of course, if you have the opportunity to reside, go for it. Dreamy.
You don’t need more time. You need a tiny studio ritual that runs parallel to your paid work and returns you to your work and your sense of self.
Confidence returns as these 15 minutes stack, and the pile of daily creation grows.
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