It’s time for another studio self-reflection, as part of an ongoing effort to be more present to and open with my creative development, and encourage others to do the same. In this entry: The winter can be a long, tough stretch, but sometimes good things come of it.

If you’re curious, take a look at the two previous entries.

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By the end of last year, I began a commitment to live by a new self-narrative and new scripts. …So of course over the long night of winter I dredged through the past.

For example, I started the quarter feeling that my drawing – a steady natural outlet when I was a child – had become stagnant and under-reliable. With the fresh success of my writing routine in mind, I identified that, not only did I lack a consistent drawing practice lately, I never had one. In my memory of childhood, drawing just sort of …happened, without me trying; as an adult, it mostly came in fits and starts as needed for individual projects. Given my intention to be a visual storyteller, this drawing gap seemed worth addressing.

As a follow-up to my October check-in, and in an ongoing effort to be more open with my creative development, I’m sharing my recent studio self-reflection.

Unlike the last check-in, which was constructed as a tweet storm, this one uses a more conventional paragraph-oriented format. And a note of clarification: I’ve been following a term structure, which is simply a semester-like schedule for planning, studio work, and reflection. The term in question ran September through December 2020.

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So here I am, in 2021. Many things are still / yet again on fire, but I’m alive. The fall with its brimming energy ebbed quickly as winter emerged. Starting in November, side projects slowed, but scripting held strong – in fact, it got stronger. I close this term with a freshly completed first pass of a long graphic novel script. (And by “long” I mean over 500 pages, though this will most likely change once revisions begin.) It was my primary focus this term, and I’ve seen it through successfully.

This was possible thanks to the significant progress I made over the last few months toward defining my goals and focusing my practice – what they are, what they aren’t, and how my days and weeks should look in order to reflect that. My success was also aided by starting the strange, slow, soft process of “rewiring” my subconscious into better alignment with where I want my life to go.

In the spirit of being more open with my creative efforts (even / especially the messy process stuff), I offer my recent studio self check-in. This will be a lengthy read!

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The pandemic has made everything harder, and it has made the good things feel less good. I spent most of March through August surviving and redirecting myself out of crushing depression as best I could. For the time, that needed to be enough.

Thankfully, by September I was ready to move beyond survival and back into the studio more consistently. Little did I know just how much foundational work I would accomplish. I end October in the midst of rewriting my self-narrative, personally and creatively.