What if We Were a Little More Analog?
What if We Were a Little More Analog?
A weekend prompt and a creative newsletter experiment, snail mail style
Welcome to the weekend’s Creative Fuel prompt! These weekly prompts and musings are focused on helping us tap into our creative process, no matter our medium. Today’s is going out to everyone (because there are quite a few new subscribers… welcome!). Paid subscribers have full access to the archive of prompts. I very much appreciate you helping to make this work sustainable.
When I was in the fourth grade, we got our family’s first PC. There were games of course, but what I was even more excited about was Microsoft Publisher. The chance to have the design tools to layout and print a newsletter? Yes, please!
Together with a friend I started a little newsletter: The Minter Creek Gazette, named after our elementary school. We would get people in our class to contribute as well as write our own stories, add in very bad jokes and games like little word searches and brain teasers, put it all together, and then hand it out. And according to the April 1994 edition, every contributor was paid in chocolate easter eggs.
A true act of making something simply for the joy of making it.
Why did I start this? I don’t remember what the exact impetus was, but I will say that people have been creating newsletters for a very long time. As humans, we have an urge to create and we want to share.
My little publishing seed, planted way back, has taken many iterations in my life, from books to self-published zines. That is to say, I like things that are tactile and analog. Books. Magazines. Sketchbooks. Hand-knit wool sweaters.
Moving my newsletter over to Substack has been fun and intimidating all at once. It promises the chance to expand what I write and create, as well as share it with more people, and also potentially create an additional income stream (which is great when you are self-employed).
But it also means that I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to figure out the “right” balance of content. I feel like I have an editorial calendar floating in my head, and it causes me to self-censor, edit myself before I’ve even started.
There’s also the underlying feeling that I’m flooded with content. I love newsletters, but there are so many to follow and read, and only so many hours in the day. Often I feel that I’m just adding to that overload for other people.
And you know what our respective creative practices don’t need? Being overloaded with so many things, so many notifications, so many links, that we never end up making anything. That we never take any time to just be.
There’s a fine line between being inspired and getting blocked because we took too much in.
I think this goes without saying, but I doubt that any of us need more time on our various devices.
Digital tools have made so many things possible, and as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, we’re not going to entirely extricate ourselves from technology. Even hands-on, tactile projects often require some level of digital interaction. But when it comes to the matter of creative acts, we need analog time.
There is something about writing, drawing, and cutting by hand that I just don’t get on a screen. When I make papercuts, I have to commit to the composition and size of something when I begin. I know that I can’t just move it around and adjust it. I know that once I cut something away, it’s gone, there’s no going back. All of this immediately puts me in a different headspace. These are different constraints, and there are different expectations. There’s inherent imperfection and you either have to embrace it or pick a different medium.
The digital space—this one included—has become a catalyst for us to expect things to be clean and finished: if we’re going to post something, then it better be perfect. What a ridiculous assumption. What about the messy process to get there in the first place? What about the unknowing?
Are we all just expecting ourselves to be robotic machines churning out perfect work without making mistakes along the way? Where is the space for learning, where is the space for growing? Where is the space for not doing things? Where is the space for pushing our own comfort zones?
I’ve been toying with the idea of making an analog newsletter for a long time now. A couple of years ago during my digital Advent calendar, there was a power outage one day, so I hand wrote the whole thing and just took pictures of it—it ended up being one of my favorites, and I have often thought about doing it again.
Since then I’ve had the idea floating around to make something in the style of photocopied zines and newsletters from the 90s. A little arty, a little punk, a little weird. I’m always inspired by all the cool things that Sarah Shay Mirk makes (who has an actual monthly snail mail club!).
But of course, instead of making it, I’ve been overthinking it. So we’re clear, I DO not recommend this as a creative strategy. If anyone else came to me with this conundrum I would immediately say: Make. The. Thing.
After some encouragement from
and that a printed newsletter would in fact be a fun idea, I've decided to stop worrying about what the perfect format or shipping strategy looks like and just try an analog newsletter experiment!I’ve been doing some sketches and it all seems to be coming together. I don’t really have a plan besides it being a one-page handwritten, hand-drawn newsletter that I will finish in the next week, scan, print, and then send to some people by snail mail. If you’re a paid subscriber and you want to get one in your actual physical mailbox, you can sign up at the link all the way down at the end of this newsletter. I’m making this an option for paid subscribers because you know, printing, shipping and handling and whatnot.
Now that I’ve drummed up all this analog energy (or at least, 1990s publishing software energy), and I hopefully have you itching to ditch your computer and device for the weekend, it’s time for the weekly creative prompt. I’m sending this one out to all subscribers because I think we all just might need it.
CREATIVE PROMPT
Keeping it simple for today:
Analog methods of course can look like all kinds of things. Opening a physical cookbook instead of the internet when you need a recipe. Listening to the wind in the trees instead of a playlist. Reading a book while you drink your coffee. Making something with your hands!
Have at it.