Creative work is not an exam

it’s a personality quiz

Hallå ol’ pals, welcome new ones!

Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.

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A rock I found by the sea this weekend

This week is week 1 of a 10 week writing challenge. The challenge is to write articles with great “Shiny Dimes.” A Shiny Dime is a surprising idea told simply. If I’m lucky I might discover something that will end up being one of my core ideas, at least that’s what I hope. This is not so different from how I usually think when I write. But I get to be part of a community of other people who participate and I’ll get free prompts for the newsletter for a couple of weeks. I present Shiny Dime #1…

Creative work is not an exam, it’s a personality quiz.

I’m waiting outside the classroom to do a chemistry test, my classmates are stressed and tired, they’ve been studying hard and are going through their notes one last time before we step into the class room to start the exam. I’m doodling aliens in my sketchbook.

We take our seats and the teachers hand out the tests face down. The teacher tells us we have one hour and that we can leave when we’re done. He starts the timer, we flip our papers. I write down the answer to each question to the best of my knowledge, or simply “I don’t know.” After 12 minutes I’m through all of the questions. I hand in my papers at the teacher’s desk and leave before anyone else. I don’t remember my results on that exam (or any of the other). All I know is somehow I passed my courses and got through school okay.

I must have been at least moderately interested in chemistry and most of the other subjects.

After school I’m in my room, I boot up my computer and grab my drawing tablet. I’m staring at a blank canvas in Photoshop. I want to draw a comic strip. But I don’t know what it should be about. I decide to start simple, I draw 3 empty panels. Still no idea. I fill the first panel with something, not sure where this is going. I draw the next one, still no idea. Then only the third one’s left. I stare into it, it’s a big gaping hole. Nothing comes to me. I don’t know the answer.

How can I make Panel 1 + Panel 2 = funny?

I think hard. I try something. No good. I erase it. I try again. No good either. Try again. Even worse.

I try one more time. This attempt is still bad, but it’s unclear enough that I might get away with it as absurd humor or something incredibly deep. I don’t think I can do better than this. I post it online even though I’m insecure about it. It gets 4 likes on tumblr.

I manage to make a couple good strips this way. But the process is too painful. I stop. For a long couple of years.

I didn’t give a crap about my school exam, those results meant nothing to me. And yet, I did ok. On the other hand I gave a huge crap about my comic strips. I wanted to be proud of them and for people to love them. Despite that, I didn’t get the results I wanted.

Without realizing it I thought I could be just as carefree about my creative practice as my school work. That it would be enough for me to just show up, try my best and to be done with it. But that’s not how it works. Shipping great work is not like passing an exam and getting an “ok.”

Creative work requires that you pay interest in life and strive to understand it.

Sometimes when I sat there by my blank screen I would open google and type, “The Office personality quiz,” into the search bar (or whatever show I was into at the time). I’d go through the questions thoughtfully but quickly, I don’t wanna overthink it too much cause the first reaction is probably more sincere. I take it seriously, I got a nervous feeling in my stomach. After 12 minutes I was done and found out that I’m Jim Halpert. I tried my hardest to be honest. I can’t fail on a personality quiz, it’s up to me to decide whether it feels like the results make sense. The key is to be honest, if I’m lucky I’ll find out who I am. To me practicing that honesty is much more interesting than getting the facts straight on an exam or a three panel comic strip.

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Mini Notes

📝 Article - The Never-Ending Now

An example of a very good Shiny Dime. This is one of the main reasons I’m trying to use social media less and to search out what interests me instead of what is new and trendy.

💬 Comic strip - Snoopy can’t sleep

I’ve gotten super into Peanuts recently. I started reading the strip from the very beginning to see how it develops. It felt as if Charles Schulz didn’t know what exactly the strip was supposed to be. The characters didn’t look or act like they eventually would. It’s like a parallel universe version of Peanuts. This strip makes me think of how Schulz is lying awake at night, tossing and turning and thinking about the strip, very much like how I’m pondering about Space Deer right now.

It feels to me like writing comic strips is a lot like searching an entire piggy bank worth of Shiny Dimes.

(also this website is great, you can read entire comic strips from beginning to end, legally and for free.)

🐦 Tweet - First adopters

I’ve been curious about the new AR headset Apple just released. It sure looks ridiculous to wear it in public, it’s easy to make fun of the people wearing it. But this has always been the case when new tech starts showing up. I remember when I first saw people wearing wireless earbuds I used to think it looked stupid and pointless since it already worked okay with wires. But now that I have a pair of wireless earbuds myself it’s hard to imagine going back. Some poor soul gotta be willing to look silly so the rest of us can jump on the train.

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Take care and have a creative week.