Making the Abstract Material

Breaking the dam

Last week’s meta-analysis on writer’s block got my wheels turning on how I could make strides toward conquering it. So it served its purpose. I had been attempting to clear this creative hurdle for far too long, and I finally broke through with a legitimate solution. I’ve longed for the ability to write regularly and continuously improve the quality, but all the borrowed approaches I tried failed me. So, I decided to cook up my own brew. As I delved into podcasts, books, and conversations with legendary creatives like John Mayer and Rick Rubin, I stumbled upon a thought-provoking connection that could be the key to unlocking my creative output. Join me on this expedition as we explore the art of making abstract thoughts material and discover how a simple change in perspective and a tangible system can unleash the words that have long been dammed.

I continued to mull this quote over in my mind:

“Turning something from an idea

into a reality

can make it seem smaller.

It changes from unearthly to earthly.

The imagination has no limits.

The physical world does.

The work exists in both.”

- Rick Rubin

And it wasn’t until I reviewed my podcast notes from the John Mayer - Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin that I made a connection.

Mayer discusses his digital whiteboard method:

I use this digital whiteboard I swear by … I’ve sold a lot of people on the whiteboard idea now. It seems silly at first but you get to see it right up there.

I had one of those holy shit moments when I realized what John Mayer was describing with his whiteboarding was precisely what I was describing as missing from my creative process. The immediacy with which we can transfer ideas from our heads to reality is paramount. Now, I’ve known this intuitively, which is why I’ve always carried a notebook, digital or physical, around with me since I could write. The missing component, however, has been a system to work through these ideas after the initial spark.

As Mayer puts it:

Just get a circuit going. Get the light bulb to light up because all the wiring is there.

I have a proverbial garage full of precious hand-blown glass light bulbs with the potential to light up, but I’ve never bothered to spend the time to see if all the required wiring was there to make any of them glow. I was suffering from the same paralysis a hoarder does when confronted with cleaning out their garage.

Mayer goes on to say that once you have a spark :

You don’t leave the room. You put sweatpants on. You’re in a hoodie. You’re not going out tonight. Your friends are going out and you’re not. Why? Because the biggest thing is about to happen to you. All these songs that I play on stage now represent a night. I went, “Shut it down. We got work to do”. It’s my favorite and least favorite. It’s just wonderful torture you know you’re in for.

As much as I LOVE this sentiment, yours truly works a demanding day job, has twin 18-month-olds, a wife, and a very needy dog, so I needed to reimagine this approach to fit my requirements. Here’s how I approached creating my own inspired-by method.

I distilled my writer’s block into three main issues:

1. The need or ability to make incremental progress on multiple ideas.

2. When inspiration strikes, the ability to capture the seed of that idea and create a physical relic.

3. The physical relic represents the start of something requiring a “hoodie on” moment. For me, “hoodie on” moments will likely last 20-45 minutes, with an occasional late night where I can make incremental progress over weeks, months, or years.

With my problems defined, I compiled a list of requirements for designing a physical manifestation of my ideal setup.

Requirements:

1. Analog (a large piece of this is bringing ideas into reality, so I wanted to create a physical/material artifact as quickly and as frictionlessly as possible.

2. Readily Visible (somewhere I can walk past it or stand and stare at it)

3. Flexible and rearrangeable

4. Low stakes (I don’t want to be concerned with costs or starting over)

5. Aesthetically pleasing

6. Semi-permanent (currently renting)

7. Mirror the pages and navigation of this website

8. Allow me to zoom in and out (see the website as a whole or isolate one idea/topic)

9. Enable starting, stopping, and picking up where I left off quickly

10. Shareable (with a tight selection of people)

Here is what I ultimately came up with:

1. Analog - several years ago, I bought these giant legal pads of graph paper for an art project; I lined up four of them to match the main areas of my website.

2. Visible - the right wall of my office is visible to me 50+ hours a week, so I nailed that one.

3. Flexible - blue painter tape and sticky dots are wonderfully temporary and re-stickable.

4. Low Stakes - I think the entire setup costs less than 20 dollars, and I have hundreds of each component paper, note cards, and dots in reserve.

5. Aesthetically pleasing - this could be improved upon, but it's not terrible for a minimum viable prototype.

6. Semi-permanent - see flexible. No holes were created in the wall during the installation process.

7. Mirror website - while the order is out of wack, the big pieces are there

8. Zoom in/out - I love being able to see everything all at once and being able to pluck a card off to isolate it. Nailed it!

   

9. Start/stop - this is the aspect I put the most thought into and am most proud of. What I love about this setup is whenever I have a spare 5,10, or 20 minutes, I can stare at my wall of possibilities, hone in on one that I’m inspired to write about at that moment, pluck it off the wall, put it up in front of me while I write and really narrow my focus. I can also make notes on the card about where I left off for the next time I pick it up or where I’m stuck so I can keep that on simmer while doing something else.

   

10. Shareable - while this isn’t necessarily portable, I can share this with anyone I invite to my home/office. (or take a photo)

This piece you are reading is the first I’ve written using my new method, and it was significantly more enjoyable and far less brute-forced into existence. I enjoyed thinking through and bringing it to life, and I’m now looking forward to refining my process over my lifetime as a writer.

Lastly, while working through all this, I’ve decided to start fresh; I will put all of my previously hoarded light bulbs into a metaphorical storage locker for safekeeping and let them age. If the same ideas are quality enough to surface again, I now have a process to capture them AND a method to work through wiring them up to see if they glow.

In embracing this new method, I have discovered a practical solution to writer's block and unearthed a pathway to elevate my creative output. The physical manifestation of my ideas on my office wall is a constant source of inspiration and focus. With each passing day, I find myself honing in on the seeds of ideas that can now be nurtured into reality.

Standing before my wall of possibilities, I am filled with a renewed sense of purpose, excited to embark on this journey of continuous improvement.

With spirited resilience.

AP