The singer-songwriter James Blunt (or Blount to use his birth name) fascinates me. A former captain in the British Army, he served in Kosovo, stood guard over the coffin of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and, according to some reports, once played a part in preventing World War III. He also has a chairlift in Verbier named after him. What a guy. Earlier this year, Blunt joined 20 celebrities in a castle in the Scottish Highlands to film The Celebrity Traitors – a show that drew more than 10 million viewers each week. I was one of them.

Like everyone else, I was aghast when Richard E. Grant walked into the bar and blithely announced he was a traitor. Watching from the control room, executive producer Sarah Fay confessed that ‘a little bit of sick came up’ as she heard Grant disclose his identity. I also enjoyed Ross Kemp’s paranoia – for a man so terrified of being killed in plain sight he did a terrible job of detecting Maya’s comedic fake yawns. Jerry Hall’s one-liners were also a highlight. At one point, she was so convinced that Blunt was a traitor she declared he had ‘a face redder than a fox’s arse at gooseberry time.’

There was one scene, however, that made me uncomfortable. Believing King Kenny to be faithful, Blunt shares his theory that Sharon Rooney is a traitor with him. Kenny lets Blunt believe he can trust him, grabbing him by the shoulders and declaring, ‘I really want you to be right, James’. As they leave the room, Blunt’s face lights up and he turns to Kenny and simply says, ‘My friend’. At this point, he’s not an award-winning musician, a soldier or a social media personality; he’s just a boy in the school playground trying to get the cool kid to like him.

I was thinking about this when I sat down to talk with Bonnie Smith Whitehouse for the podcast recently. Bonnie is a writer, professor and multi-passionate creative. In her new book, In Our Hands: A Maker’s Manifesto for Changing the World Through Creative Practices, Bonnie argues that we contain multiple versions of ourselves. ‘The wild child who melts crayons in the microwave, the restless teen scribbling dreams in the margin of a diary, the humble seeker in midlife…These versions of ourselves are not gone,’ she writes. ‘They are waiting for us to give them a voice.’

To illustrate her point, Bonnie asked me to imagine a tree. ‘If you cut a slice of a tree, you can see all these rings that embody different years, and the same is true of all of us,’ she explained. ‘We contain all these different ages.’ Fifty-year-old Bonnie contains six-year-old Bonnie, who never saw her art displayed on the wall at school, and forty-something Bonnie, who picked up a pack of Posca pens and rediscovered a love for making things. ‘I contain multitudes of potentialities, stories and histories,’ she writes.

Bonnie believes that we must recognise and honour all the different ages, stages and seasons that live within us when we sit down to create. ‘Welcome the selves you’ve already been to the creative space alongside you,’ she urges. ‘Let your younger selves clash, play, argue, and dance with the self who is here now.’ Bonnie’s words reminded me of a poem by author and photographer Emory Hall. My yoga teacher read Hall’s poem, I Have Been a Thousand Different Women, aloud in class a few months ago, and it genuinely moved me. ‘Make peace with all the women you once were,’ writes Hall. ‘For they are the bones of the temple you sit in now.’

When Blunt shared his thoughts with Kenny in the bar, he wasn’t looking for a traitor; he was looking for acceptance, validation and friendship. Watching this, and chatting with Bonnie, reminded me that we all contain multiple versions of ourselves. When we create – and when we criticise each other – we forget that we are six and 15 and 42 all at the same time. When we honour all the different ages and stages we contain, we allow ourselves – and others – the grace to be human.

• Bonnie and I talk about how making can be an act of rebellion, why trying to be perfect is a lost cause, and how developing a creative practice can help you feel less anxious and more empowered in the latest episode of the We Need to Make Things podcast. Season 4 is now well underway!

See more things I’ve noticed, collected and would like to share.

As a free subscriber you receive a monthly essay exploring stories, ideas and practical wisdom to help you build and sustain a creative practice.

Paid subscribers also receive a fortnightly companion newsletter packed with recommendations, creative discoveries and resources to help them keep making things between essays.

When you upgrade to paid, you also receive my eBook, Top Insights from 25 of the Best Books on Creativity – a distillation of the best ideas from 25 books I believe every creative should read.

If you find these letters useful, becoming a paid member is the best way to receive more of them – it also helps me keep writing We Need to Make Things.

Thanks so much for being here.

Tracy x

On today’s list:
1. Things I have no intention of doing before I die
2. Every version of ourselves we’ve ever been
3. How to know when you’re done
4. A man with high expectations
5. Things I’ve learnt from my dad’s old copies of National Geographic (part 4)

1. Things I have no intention of doing before I die
We’ve all heard of a bucket list, but what about a reverse bucket list? It’s a new trend where people make a list of things they’ve already achieved and use it to feel better about the things they haven’t got round to.

I’m all for this, but I think we can take it a step further. I propose we make a list of things we have no intention of doing before we die. Imagine how much time and energy we can save by removing things from the bucket altogether. I’ll kick things off.

I have no intention of:

Climbing Mount Everest. It’s cold, it’s exhausting, and anything above 8,000 metres is known as the Death Zone. I’d like to see the view from the top, but I’m less keen on acute mountain sickness and frostbite. Ditto K2, Annapurna I and Nanga Parbat.
Armchair alternative: Read Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane.

Spelunking. No, I’m not being rude – it’s another word for cave diving (and exploration). The very idea of squeezing through a tunnel and immersing myself in a water-filled cavern is enough to make me scared to close my eyes. I have, however, visited Škocjan Caves in Slovenia, which are incredible.
Armchair alternative: Read Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver by Jill Heinerth

Attending Glastonbury. I’m sure the sense of camaraderie and community is incredible, but I’m a reluctant camper, and an even more reluctant user of temporary toilets. Also, if I want a mud bath, I’ll go to a spa – I can get a massage and an afternoon tea there.
Armchair alternative: Enjoy Glastonbury Festival from home via BBC iPlayer. Hang up some fairy lights, get some friends over and revel in the modern marvel of a flushing toilet.

Reading all the classics. A few years ago, I read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, followed by Frankenstein and Persuasion. All of them were excellent, but the slow-moving plots and excessive descriptions proved a bit much for this modern reader.
Alternatives: The Times recently published a great list of 21^st century novels to read.

Riding a horse. People rave about the connection between rider and animal, but the work (and money) involved in riding and looking after horses seems bigger than the payoff to me. I owned a My Little Pony toy as a child, but my passion for horses ends there.
Armchair alternative: Watch the theatrical adaptation of War Horse, available to stream via the National Theatre Platform from 22 October.

What would be on your anti-bucket list? Hit reply and let me know.

2. Every version of ourselves we’ve ever been
I had a wonderful chat with Bonnie Smith Whitehouse about her new book In Our Hands: A Maker’s Manifesto last week. Bonnie believes that creativity can soothe our souls, and making can be an act of rebellion. In one section she asks us to welcome every version of ourselves we’ve ever been into the creative space. ‘Let your younger selves clash, play, argue, and dance with the self who is here now,’ she urges. You can listen to our chat on the We Need to Make Things podcast soon.

An accident on a Scottish mountain in 2024 was the catalyst for a new self-published book by Joe Cornish, which features more than 150 images and plenty of personal insights. Any Given Day: A Landscape Photographer’s Story goes on sale in mid-November (the initial pre-order allocation has already sold out!)

First published in 1983, The Art of Organizing Thoughts by Shigehiko Toyama was a bestseller in Japan and is now available in English (translated by Arthur Reiji Morris). Toyama aims to move us from overloaded to clear-minded by helping us to think well.

3. How to know when you’re done
How do you know when a piece of creative work is truly finished? Is it when the deadline hits? When every inch of the canvas is covered in paint? Or is it when you feel that a puzzle of some kind has finally been solved?

Read more

Earlier this week, I walked into two rooms I’d never been in before. One made me instantly sad; the other made me ridiculously happy. The first room was lit by fluorescent strip lights, which gave everything an unsettling, clinical glow. The walls were bare, and the carpet was a dirt-masking shade of grey. Basically, it was grim. The second room was bathed in natural light. There were photographs, magazine clippings and plant specimens pinned to the walls and, curiously, a saucepan of conkers by the window. It was glorious. The first room was at my daughter’s school; the second was at an artist’s studio just a few minutes down the road.

There’s growing evidence to suggest that children are facing a ‘play deficit’. Is it any wonder when we dress them in blazers, sit them in mock offices, and talk to them as though they’re adults-in-training? According to Cas Holman, founder and chief designer at toy company Heroes Will Rise, protecting childhood play is essential. ‘Play is how we learn to be human, how we learn who we are, how we learn to fail, communicate, love, fight, rebel, desire, build, survive,’ she argues in her book, Playful.

In fact, the right to play is so important that it’s listed under Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It’s also ancient. Archaeologists have discovered toys, dice and gaming counters dating back thousands of years, suggesting that humans are hardwired to play. And it’s not just children who benefit from play; it can also help adults regulate emotions, embrace new ways of thinking and connect more deeply with one another. ‘For both children and adults, play can encompass and amplify all the things that make us human,’ writes Holman.

Play is clearly beneficial to our physical and mental well-being, so why don’t we do more of it as adults? Well, at some point – often under those strip lights – we learn to suppress our urge to play and label it as childish. ‘We devalue the input of our Play Voice and assume our Adult Voice is the authority, right about everything,’ says Holman. Our Adult Voice is obsessed with productivity: every task must have a purpose, every minute must be accounted for. We let society dictate what it means to be an adult, then we abandon our play instincts to fit in.

Of course, adults do play, but our idea of what counts as play can be surprisingly narrow. ‘The same four things come up again and again when I talk to people about playing as an adult,’ says Holman. ‘Sports. Video games. Booze. Sex.’ These activities can be playful, of course, but Holman believes we need to think more broadly about what play can be. ‘If these activities are all we think of when we think of Adult Play, we’re boxing ourselves in,’ she writes. ‘What about all the other ways we can play?’ Holman is a big advocate of ‘free play’, for example.

They might be fun, but organised sports, competitive video games and craft kits with step-by-step instructions don’t necessarily count as free play, particularly when rules, goals or prescribed outcomes dictate what we do. According to Penny Wilson – a play advocate and colleague of Holman’s – free play describes behaviours that are ‘freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated.’ Naturally, this type of unstructured play can trigger our Adult Voice. ‘What’s the point in this?’ it shouts. ‘Why are we wasting time?’ This is when we need to stand our ground and allow our Play Voice to shout louder.

Holman argues that we all know how to play, but it can take a little work to shift from Adult Voice to Play Voice. To make things easier, we need to assess which rules of adulthood are important and which are inconsequential. ‘My friends respect rules that are in the interest of the greater good, while rejecting those that govern social norms,’ she says. Maybe start by asking yourself whether constant productivity is genuinely important or just something you’ve been taught to value. Does every activity need a clear, measurable goal, or can you do something just for the fun of doing it? And does it really matter if you look a little silly?

Most play involves some kind of risk. For children, this risk is often physical: falling and hurting themselves in the playground, for example. For adults, it’s more likely to be emotional or social. We risk social rejection when we fail at something in public, for instance. For this reason, adult play can look quite different from child’s play. ‘In adults, play is less about developing and more about sustenance,’ says Holman. ‘It’s like the difference between drinking milk as a child to help grow your bones and taking in calcium as an adult to maintain bone health. We adults need help sustaining our well-being.’

If adults need play to sustain well-being, children need it for another reason: to develop the skills that will help them navigate an uncertain future. In 2017, the Institute for the Future issued a report (with Dell Technologies) that suggested 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 had not been invented yet. To prepare for this changing job market, today’s children need to be flexible, empathetic, creative and proficient at critical thinking. ‘[These skills] can be learned in play,’ argues Holman. ‘Play is a path to all of it.’

Preparing children for adulthood by dressing them in blazers and telling them to leave play outside the classroom door is not the answer. Play is not something to be squeezed into the curriculum when all the important stuff has been done. Play is vital, enriching and life-affirming. Ultimately, the urge to play is part of what makes us human.

P.S. The second room I walked into - the happy one - belongs to artist Eileen White. You’ll be hearing more about Eileen and her wonderful work in a future letter.

Looking for recommendations?

As a free subscriber you receive a monthly essay exploring stories, ideas and practical wisdom to help you build and sustain a creative practice.

Paid subscribers also receive a fortnightly companion newsletter packed with recommendations, creative discoveries and resources to help them keep making things between essays.

When you upgrade to paid, you also receive my eBook, Top Insights from 25 of the Best Books on Creativity – a distillation of the best ideas from 25 books I believe every creative should read.

If you find these letters useful, becoming a paid member is the best way to receive more of them – it also helps me keep writing We Need to Make Things.

Thanks so much for being here.

Tracy x

On today’s list:
1. Truffles of the sea
2. The magic of mushrooms
3. Fierce creativity at any age
4. ‘The Human Superiority Complex’
5. Things I’ve learnt from my dad’s old copies of Nat Geo (part 3)

1. Truffles of the sea
I love seaweed. Giant kelp can grow as much as 60cm a day, sea otters wrap their pups in seaweed to stop them floating away and, together with other marine photosynthesizers, this incredible algae is responsible for more than half of the oxygen we breathe. In short, seaweed is cool. I’ve bathed in it, snorkelled through it, eaten it and photographed it.

Last week, my wonderful friend, Kelly, and I went on a seaweed pressing workshop hosted by Molesworth and Bird in Lyme Regis. The pressing process is really straightforward - if you fancy giving it a go, I suggest getting hold of Seaweed: Foraging, Collecting and Pressing (co-written by one of our hosts).

The session was as much about noticing as it was about seaweed pressing. First, we foraged for seaweed on the beach, then we tipped our treasures into a tray and chose the best to preserve. Studying each specimen made me pay attention to every curve, colour and shape. It also made me want to learn more, which led me to revisit one of my favourite natural history books, The Seaweed Collector’s Handbook by Miek Zwamborn.

2. The magic of mushrooms
Phaidon has published some great visual surveys over the years – the shelf above my desk groans under the weight of Flower: Exploring the World in Bloom and Plant: Exploring the Botanical World, for example. These beautifully illustrated books will soon be joined by Fungi: The World of Mushrooms (which can be pre-ordered now.) This celebration of fungi, mushrooms and mycelium features more than 200 images, and an introduction by Francesca Gavin who has produced various exhibitions exploring the role mushrooms play in art and design – an unusual addition to a CV.

Also available to pre-order,

Read more

Welcome to Creative Breadcrumbs, the fortnightly newsletter featuring things I’ve noticed, collected and would like to share.

On today’s list:
1. Confusing bats, and the benefit of hairy eyeballs
2. Boo on a Horse hurts my heart
3. Recovering your creative mojo
4. Being hit by an emotional hurricane
5. My favourite type of camel
6. Things I’ve learnt from my dad’s old copies of Nat Geo (part 2)

1. Confusing bats, and the benefit of hairy eyeballs
I’m currently co-hosting the judging sessions for Close-up Photographer of the Year and, as ever, I’m learning so much from the photographers, scientists, editors and conservationists who make the competition what it is. Last week, photographer David Maitland told me that certain species of butterfly generate ultrasonic clicking sounds that are thought to confuse bats and stop them from being eaten. This chat reminded me of a conversation I had with photographer Andrew Fusek Peters a few years ago during which he told me that speckled wood butterflies are thought to have hairy eyes because they like faeces but don’t want to dunk their peepers in it. These are the kind of facts I live for. If you feel the same, I recommend David’s book The Shape of Nature and Andrew’s book Butterfly Safari.

2. Boo on a Horse hurts my heart
Chris Killip’s images of the northeast of England during the 1970s and 1980s are nothing short of extraordinary. His book In Flagrante (first published in 1988) is regarded as one of the defining books of post-industrial Britain, and his picture Boo on a Horse hurts my heart.

Read more

Last week one of my closest friends asked me to name something I’d changed my mind about. We were talking about death in a sauna – a conversation that cleared the room – so I think she was expecting me to say something profound. ‘Tuna,’ I replied, ‘I used to hate it, but now I don’t.’ I was being facetious, but it got me thinking about the opinions and beliefs I cling to, and how I might need to revise some of them.

To help me be more open-minded, I read Adam Grant’s book, Think Again. Grant is an organisational psychologist who believes that we need to put ‘scientist goggles’ on and practice the art of unlearning. (At this point it’s hard not to think of a scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Yoda shakes his head at Luke Skywalker and says, ‘You must unlearn what you have learned.’)

It’s not a bad idea. After all, some of the knowledge we accumulate over the years turns out to be spectacularly wrong – remember when everyone thought the Earth was flat and the Piltdown Man was the missing link between apes and humans? Knowledge constantly evolves, but we often hesitate to update our beliefs and opinions, even in the light of new information.

Part of the problem is that we often think our beliefs, ideas and opinions are tied to our identity. According to Grant, this can be a mistake, ‘when it prevents us from changing our minds as the world changes and knowledge evolves.’ To remain open-minded, we need to hold our opinions lightly and accept that, on occasion, we might be wrong. This can be hard, but if we put our scientist goggles on things get a lot easier.

Scientists constantly rethink what they know, and they are often wrong on the way to being right. ‘If you’re a scientist by trade, rethinking is fundamental to your profession,’ says Grant. ‘You’re paid to be constantly aware of the limits of your understanding.’ Basically, scientists know what they don’t know, and they have the mental dexterity and willingness to revisit and revise their opinions.

Grant calls knowing what you don’t know ‘intellectual humility’, and he believes that we all need more of it. Discovering gaps in our knowledge, in his experience, is not a bad thing. It gives us the opportunity to reexamine beliefs and, when needed, to ask further questions. According to his research, the most successful scientists and forecasters, ‘saw their opinions more as hunches than as truths – as possibilities to entertain rather than facts to embrace.’

It’s easy to see how scientists and forecasters benefit from being actively open-minded, but creatives need to nurture intellectual humility too. In his book Rethinking Sitting, the late industrial designer Peter Opsvik asks us to reconsider how we use chairs and other sitting devices. Most of the time, office workers sit upright, knees bent at right angles, feet firmly on the floor. In Opsvik’s opinion, this is far from ideal. ‘The more variation in sitting postures that are attainable on a chair, the better,’ he argues.

Our bodies need to move. Even when we’re asleep, we shift position, constantly seeking relief and variation. ‘It is unnatural for us to stay put in the same position for any length of time,’ he claims. ‘Being forced to stay put in one posture is a recognised means of torture.’ Just watch children fidgeting in their seats at school.

Opsvik’s unconventional seating solutions allow freedom of movement, encouraging the body to decide how it wants to be supported. Garden, for example, is less of a chair and more of a tree: a series of balls sit atop pillars, allowing you to drape your limbs over the branches. Flysit, on the other hand, is a chair with springs: the user controls the tilt of the seat with their feet.

Opsvik’s sitting solutions prioritise versatility, movement and variety. When the world said sit up straight, he hit back with chairs that tilt and recline. When manufacturers said design for sedentary lifestyles, he bucked the trend with chairs that encourage the body to move freely and frequently. Like the scientists and forecasters that Grant studied, Opsvik had the mental dexterity to revise his opinions and the confidence to challenge conventional wisdom.

How do you unlearn?

Put your scientist goggles on. Scientists actively question beliefs and assumptions, and they’re not afraid of being wrong, especially if being wrong eventually leads them to being right. Think of your opinions as hunches.

Hold your opinions and ideas lightly. We often think that our beliefs, ideas and opinions are tied to our identity, which can make it hard for us to change our minds. Grant argues that ‘Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.’

Become aware of the limits of your understanding. Knowing what you don’t know is a strength, not a weakness. When you hit a dead end, get curious about what lies beyond the boundaries.

Make a list of areas where you’re ignorant. It could be politics, personal finance or beekeeping, most of us are ignorant about most things. Now find someone who can enlighten you and go and learn from them.

Seek a second opinion (from yourself). If you think you’re right about something, think again. Revisiting beliefs doesn’t mean you have to change them, but there might be a few that could do with an update.

Look for evidence that you might be wrong. Most of the time, we look for proof that our opinions and beliefs are correct, but actively seeking evidence that challenges our views can keep us alert and open-minded. ‘The purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs,’ echoes Grant.

Don’t be afraid to change your mind. It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong, but sticking to your guns prevents you from learning and growing. ‘Focus less on proving yourself – and more on improving yourself,’ suggests Grant.

Looking for recommendations?

As a free subscriber you receive a monthly essay exploring stories, ideas and practical wisdom to help you build and sustain a creative practice.

Paid subscribers also receive a fortnightly companion newsletter packed with recommendations, creative discoveries and resources to help them keep making things between essays.

When you upgrade to paid, you also receive my eBook, Top Insights from 25 of the Best Books on Creativity – a distillation of the best ideas from 25 books I believe every creative should read.

If you find these letters useful, becoming a paid member is the best way to receive more of them – it also helps me keep writing We Need to Make Things.

Thanks so much for being here.

Tracy x

Welcome to Creative Breadcrumbs, the fortnightly newsletter featuring things I’ve noticed, collected and want to share. Thank you for being a paid subscriber. I’m so glad you’re here!

On today’s list:
1. Dangerous and distracting underwear
2. Digging up the dirt
3. ‘Don’t just go with the old farts’
4. Belly buttons and bottled-up bitterness
5. Jumping through hoops
6. Things I’ve learnt from my dad’s old copies of National Geographic

1. Dangerous and distracting underwear
In the early 90s, there was a billboard ad that caused such a stir that it was labelled ‘dangerous and distracting’ by British road safety experts. The poster featured a picture of runway model Eva Herzigová wearing a Wonderbra and the text read ‘Hello Boys’. (There were other variants, but this is the one I remember.) Up until this point, underwear adverts had been mainly confined to women’s magazines, so posting a 48-sheet version by the side of the road was both controversial and, judging by the sales figures, highly effective.

Creatively speaking, there’s a lot to be learnt from adverts. Image choice, typography and juxtaposition are all critical, but the main skill lies in distilling a complex message into something visual that can be read and understood in seconds. I was thinking about this when I stumbled across the History of Advertising Trust website earlier this week. Here you’ll find print ads, TV commercials and ghost signs nestled together in a free-to-access archive. It turns out there are quite a few online ad archives: Ads of the World by Clios seems especially popular. Take a look and see what you can learn (but try not to buy anything.)

2. Digging up the dirt
Frank Ashwood spends a lot of time digging in the dirt. Ashwood is a scientist and macro photographer who specialises in soil invertebrates, and his first book, The World Beneath Our Feet, celebrates an ecosystem that many of us take for granted. One teaspoon of soil can contain up to six billion organisms, ranging from pseudoscorpions to nematode worms. Without it, we’d struggle to grow crops, store water or sustain forests. In short, it’s essential.

Fellow nature lover Hans Strand also has a book out this autumn. Woodlands is a love letter to the forests and trees that Strand has photographed over the years. ‘Forests are, by their very nature, places of untamed chaos,’ he writes. ‘To photograph a forest, you must become one with it.’ Woodlands is available for pre-order now (delivery September/October).

Finally, while it’s not a new title, I’ve been enjoying Anna Lovind’s 2019 book The Creative Doer. Lovind describes it as a book for ‘the woman with a story to tell, art to make [and] a world to change.’

3. ‘Don’t just go with the old farts’
In July, it looked as though photobook publisher Steidl was in serious financial trouble,

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Welcome to Creative Breadcrumbs, the fortnightly newsletter featuring things I’ve noticed, collected and want to share. Thank you for being a paid subscriber. I’m so glad you’re here!

On today’s list:
1. Orphaned pictures and a parrot called Mango
2. Cackling marsh frogs and lunar moons
3. The colour of a heartbeat
4. Bookshops save civilisation
5. Something of note

1. Orphaned pictures and a parrot called Mango
Last week, I bought a box of glass plate negatives from a man in a field two miles north of Hurstpierpoint. I’d just met a parrot called Mango riding on his owner’s shoulder, so my senses were attuned to the unusual – one of the great joys of attending the car boot sale. The negatives are more than 100 years old and feature a mixture of everyday scenes and formal portraits. Subjects include a leopard in a cage, a village gravedigger and two boys resembling Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I love them.

Found photography has always been a source of inspiration for me, and I’m not alone. In 2001, Tacita Dean released FLOH, a book of prints the artist picked up at flea markets across Europe and America. When photographs become detached from their owners, they become open to interpretation. The woman standing by the lake is no longer admiring the view, for example, she is perhaps revisiting the scene of a crime. For me, pictures with faces that have been scratched out are among the most intriguing – the fury of the betrayed becomes etched into the print itself, forever part of its story.

If found photography is your thing, I highly recommend Photo Trouvée by Michel Frizot and Cédric de Veigy, Found Photography (Photofile Series) by Anne-Marie Garat, Photo Trouvée Magazine (and Instagram) and Anonymous: Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers by Robert Flynn Johnson.

2. Cackling marsh frogs and lunar moons
Driving down the long track to Elmley Nature Reserve on the Isle of Sheppey is like being on a British safari: hares bound across the meadows, marsh frogs cackle in the ditches and barn owls sit on fenceposts, silently scanning the fields. Having stayed overnight on the reserve a few times, I can attest to its beauty. For more than three decades, photographer Robert Canis has been capturing the changing weather, shifting tides and seasons here, resulting in a glorious book that explores both his emotional connection to the site and his love for the wildlife that live there. Elmley: First Light to Last is now available to pre-order.

Sticking with photography, Eva Chupikova’s book, Wool, Wind and Waves: Faroe Islands, captures the archipelago through texture, silence and attention. ‘The book is for those who have been to the Faroes. And for those who feel drawn to them without yet knowing why,’ she writes. ‘What interested me was not what the islands look like – but what they feel like when they slowly seep into your body.’ The book is purposefully tactile, with paper chosen for depth, and ink that ‘holds grey the way fog holds light.’ (B+W Photography magazine is running a feature on Chupikova’s work next month, so be sure to keep an eye out for that.)

As a fan of artist and etcher Luke Adam Hawker, I was delighted to hear that he has a new book coming out in October (pre-order now). The Tree Zodiac: 13 Trees for 13 Moons: Which Tree Are You? features 13 lunar moons represented by 13 symbolic trees, ‘each imbued with its own personality and spirit.’ To get a flavour of Hawker’s work, take a look at his Great Trees of London series. While you’re waiting for The Tree Zodiac to arrive, take a minute to vote for Tree of the Year 2026. Can anything top last year’s winner, Glasgow’s Argyle Street ash?

3. The colour of a heartbeat
When we are young, our senses merge and intermingle but, as we get older, our bodies tend to sort sensory impressions into one of five Aristotelian senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste or touch. If you’re a synaesthete, however, this intertwining can remain. Artist Jack Coulter, for example, ‘hears’ colours.

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A few weeks ago, I was asked to appear on Front Row, an arts and culture programme on BBC Radio, to talk about the Jacques Henri Lartigue exhibition at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. Now, I love photography and, weirdly, I enjoy public speaking, so this should have been an instant ‘yes’. Having given it some thought, however, I could think of two people who were far more qualified (and eloquent) than me, so I passed on their details and politely declined. The next day I told a friend about this, and he was furious. ‘You should have done it,’ he snapped. ‘That’s how you blow up.’

I thought about what he’d said and, having mulled it over, I decided he was wrong. In my experience, things that look like big opportunities rarely are. Earlier this year, writer and creativity coach Amie McNee published a two-part manifesto entitled I Don’t Want a Job/Not a Real Job in which she explores, among other things, the ‘lie’ of the lucky break. ‘None of the biggest opportunities I’ve gotten as an artist have made a measurable impact on my career,’ she reveals. ‘None of the flashiest opportunities have made me richer (most of them made me poorer because of travel costs etc).’

While McNee was promoting her book, We Need Your Art, she appeared on Jay Shetty’s podcast, On Purpose, which attracts more than 20 million listeners every month. When the episode aired, McNee and her publisher braced themselves for the anticipated ‘blow up’, but it never came. ‘I sold 308 We Need Your Art copies the week the pod came out, a little under the 311 books I sold the week before,’ she admits. ‘I didn’t get an increase in social media followers either.’ It's not that McNee isn’t grateful for the opportunity, she is, but this ‘lucky break’ had no obvious impact on her career.

Over the years, my work has been exhibited in various art institutions including The Photographers’ Gallery, Saatchi Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery. Obviously, I’m very grateful for these opportunities but, like McNee, I can honestly say that none of them has had a measurable impact on my career. This has led me to several conclusions: 1. Big breaks are overrated. 2. Attention isn’t the same as connection. 3. Success is often best measured by contribution. 4. I’m terrible at self-promotion.

This is all good news (apart from the self-promotion bit). Once we recognise that big breaks are often overrated, we can stop waiting for them to arrive and start taking responsibility for our own success. Equally, when we understand that 10,000 likes on Instagram (without proper engagement) is more likely to serve Mark Zuckerberg than it is to serve us, we can stop chasing attention and start sharing content that we genuinely care about. ‘Instead of constantly trying to make viral content to further our careers, we must rebelliously and revolutionarily make art that haunts people, heals people, holds people,’ says McNee.

Often, we have no way of knowing who our art has touched. There will be people who see our photographs, hear our music or read our stories and feel less alone or more alive because of it. Most of the time we never hear about it, but sometimes we do. A few years ago, I heard that a charity had used some of my photographs to encourage members to express their feelings and make their own art. Seeing what they’d created made me very happy. Contribution, after all, is a great way of measuring success. In her book Everything is Figureoutable, Marie Forleo writes, ‘The measure of our lives is not determined by what we achieve for ourselves; it’s determined by what we share, give, and contribute to others.’

We all have our own definition of success. We might measure it by what we have in the bank; personal growth; how much agency we have, or how our work impacts others. Often, it’s a combination of things. We’re allowed to choose what success looks like, and it’s fine if our version doesn’t look like anyone else’s. In fact, it’s preferable. We are allowed to want more, and we are allowed to want less. Success is a private matter and, despite what we’re led to believe, it has nothing to do with external sources. ‘Success occurs in the privacy of the soul,’ writes Rick Rubin in The Creative Act. Amen to that.

How do you define success?

Be clear about what you want. Whether your goal is to write a book, exhibit your work or spend more time with your family, defining your dream is the first step to realising it. Be specific and work out which habits and behaviours you need to adopt (or drop) to get you there.

Think contribution over accumulation. When we measure success purely by what we hold in our bank account, we sell ourselves short. ‘A bigger, more expansive purpose beyond our own personal gain is what gives our lives meaning,’ argues Marie Forleo.

Value process over outcome. The work we put into our projects, and the personal growth we often see as a result, are great measures of success. When we work on a book, painting or a play every day, we are moving forwards. Most of the time we have no control over how our work will be received, so finding value in the process is one way of staying the distance.

Get comfortable saying ‘no’. Big breaks are often overrated, but smaller breaks over time can amount to great things. ‘If an opportunity comes along that will allow you to do more of the work you want to do, say Yes. If an opportunity comes along that would mean more money, but less of the kind of work you want to do, say No,’ says Austin Kleon in Show Your Work.

Stop looking for attention. Social media platforms make sure we place great emphasis on how many likes we get, but attention isn’t the same as connection. ‘We spend years of our careers trying to make the thing that best captures the most attention, without ever asking ourselves whether attention is the marker we should be striving for,’ argues Amie McNee. ‘Attention doesn’t lead to sales, value and connection do.’

Recognise that success is an inside job. Relying on external sources to help achieve success is unsustainable. True success, as Rick Rubin suggests, ‘occurs in the privacy of the soul.’

Don’t compare yourself to the competition. From the outside, it can look like all of our peers are getting better opportunities and moving ahead faster than we are, but instead of feeling bitter about it, try viewing their successes as evidence of what is possible. Trust me, it works.

When you reach the top, lift others up. If you find yourself ahead of the game, reach out and give others a hand. Thank anyone who has helped you achieve your goal and pass on opportunities (big and small).

Looking for recommendations?

As a free subscriber you receive a monthly essay exploring stories, ideas and practical wisdom to help you build and sustain a creative practice.

Paid subscribers also receive a fortnightly companion newsletter packed with recommendations, creative discoveries and resources to help them keep making things between essays.

When you upgrade to paid, you also receive my eBook, Top Insights from 25 of the Best Books on Creativity – a distillation of the best ideas from 25 books I believe every creative should read.

If you find these letters useful, becoming a paid member is the best way to receive more of them – it also helps me keep writing We Need to Make Things.

Thanks so much for being here.

Tracy x

Welcome to Creative Breadcrumbs, the fortnightly newsletter featuring things I’ve learnt, loved and believe are worth sharing. Thank you for being a paid subscriber. I’m so glad you’re here!

On today’s list:
1. Envelope art that made a postman blush
2. Sea shanties, town criers and calligraphy
3. Where do you sit on the ‘life of a project’ graph?
4. For big impact, think small
5. Bottlenecks and a death mask
6. Turn off the ideas shower

1. Envelope art that made a postman blush
Someone I follow on Instagram recently shared a piece of envelope art that made her postman blush. Sadly, I can’t reproduce it here, so you’ll have to use your imagination! Envelopes make great canvases for sketching because they come with constraints – you need to leave room for the address, for example. Also, when you know the surface you’re writing on was designed to be thrown away, you tend to be less precious about what you draw or paint on it.

Plenty of people have embraced envelope art over the years – Axel Scheffler, Henri Matisse and Mark Powell, to name a few. A few weeks ago, Unicorn Publishing Group released Envelope Art: A Selection from the W.H. Chignell Collection which features a selection of hand-painted envelopes sent to the artist’s children.

If you want to try your hand at envelope art, Lindsey Bugbee, host of The Postman's Knock blog, has written an introductory guide. When your artwork is finished, how about sending it to Janine Vangool, editor, designer and publisher of Uppercase magazine. Since 2016, Janine has been creating an Encyclopedia of Inspiration and she's currently looking for submissions for the next volume, which is on the subject of ‘journaling, note-taking, sketching, bookmaking, handwriting, and other ways of jotting down thoughts on paper.’ As an aside, you can listen to Janine and I chatting about her love of print (and hatred of AI) on the We Need to Make Things podcast.

2. Sea shanties, town criers and calligraphy
Watching singer-songwriter Essy Sparrow perform ‘gossip-filled nostalgic indie folk’ with her husband, Tom, last week was such a joy. Essy takes ordinary moments and spins them into fun-filled yarns. Her songs are inspired by, among other things, sea shanties, gulls and town criers. Hearing the stories behind her music made me think about the value of casting a wide net when it comes to inspiration. I recently learnt, for example, that Steve Jobs took a calligraphy course in college and applied what he learnt to his design philosophy at Apple. I was so taken with Essy’s performance that I immediately booked a ticket to hear her sing on Brownsea Island in September. Huge thanks to my friend Claire for introducing me to Essy and her crew.

3. Where do you sit on the ‘life of a project’ graph?

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Welcome to Creative Breadcrumbs, the fortnightly newsletter featuring things I’ve learnt, loved and believe are worth sharing. Thank you for being a paid subscriber. I’m so glad you’re here!

On today’s list:
1. When Turner took aim at Constable
2. Beautiful ‘snapshot chic’
3. The man who almost burnt down the Smithsonian Institution
4. More than just the Moomins
5. The joy of being late to the party
6. Finding where the magic happens

1. When Turner took aim at Constable
In 1832, J.M.W. Turner fired a gun at fellow painter John Constable in the Royal Academy. It wasn’t literal of course, the pair were rivals, but they weren’t pistol-wielding fools. Basically, Turner’s seascape, Helvoetsluys, had been hung next to Constable’s painting, Opening of Waterloo Bridge, and it didn’t hold up well. ‘Constable’s picture had taken him over ten years to produce and was a triumph,’ says Will Gompertz in Think Like an Artist. ‘Turner’s effort, by comparison, looked grey and weedy.’

In a bid to regain the upper hand, Turner loaded his brush with red paint, dabbed it onto his painting and stood back to admire his handiwork. ‘He watched as the thick blob of blood-like paint started to seep into the canvas, transforming it from what had been a slightly dull image into a far more vibrant affair,’ suggests Gompertz. When Constable saw the shock of red on Turner’s work, he cried out, ‘‘He has been here and fired a gun!’

Last week I bought a 2008 copy of On Reading by André Kertész in a charity shop. In the preface, Robert Gurbo describes how Kertész was disappointed with an earlier version of the book. ‘The highlights in a handful of images were slightly washed out,’ he explains. So Kertész carried a soft No.2 lead pencil with him to book signings. ‘He would tell a beguiling story, in his charming old-world way, about one of his photographs to give him enough time to tone down the highlights with his pencil.’

This got me thinking, how many artists have ‘finished’ a piece of work and then attacked it with a paintbrush, pencil or dramatic edit. I’m thinking Ridley Scott and Blade Runner, Francis Bacon and his slashed canvases, etc. If you have any examples, I’d love to hear them. Just reply to this email.

2. Beautiful ‘snapshot chic’
Joel Meyerowitz – alongside his contemporaries William Eggleston and Stephen Shore – proved that colour photography could be serious art. His book Cape Light (originally published in 1978) includes everyday scenes – a grocery store at dusk, the view from a bedroom window, etc. – transformed into extraordinary moments due to the light of Cape Cod and, of course, the photographer’s discerning eye. To mark nearly 50 years since its initial release, Aperture has created a remastered version of Cape Light, under the watchful eye of the artist himself. ‘This book was the result of two summers of joyous and feverish seeing,’ recalls Meyerowitz. It’s a beauty.

Speaking of colour pioneers, The Photographers’ Gallery will be hosting a major exhibition of Eggleston’s dye transfer prints later this year, which I’m excited about. In 1976, art critic Hilton Icramer was asked to review Eggleston’s show at the Museum of Modern Art for The New York Times. He described it as ‘banal’, ‘boring’, ‘snapshot chic’. He even suggested that it had ‘derailed [John] Szarkowski’s taste as far as contemporary photography is concerned.’ Reading this made me chuckle.

3. The man who almost burnt down the Smithsonian Institution
Nothing beats experiencing art in the flesh. Entering the chapel-like Rothko Room at Tate Modern always makes my legs turn to jelly. But it’s not always possible to visit a gallery in person, so it’s great to see major institutions upping their game when it comes to digital tours. The National Gallery, for example, just introduced

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Welcome to Creative Breadcrumbs, the fortnightly newsletter featuring things I’ve learnt, loved and believe are worth sharing. Thank you for being a paid subscriber. I’m so glad you’re here!

On today’s list:
1. Pea-souper texting
2. The pinkest pink
3. Unexpected passion
4. No fat to trim
5. Spellbinding duo
6. Blooms and biscuits

1. Pea-souper texting
As a teenager, I collected postcards. I know, I’m so cool. It wasn’t the pictures on the front that attracted me, it was the messages on the back. In the early 1900s, some households received four deliveries a day (eight in London), so postcards were like text messages – it wasn’t unusual to send a card saying, ‘I’ll be late home for dinner tonight.’

My days as a deltiologist are over (kind of), but after chatting to a lovely guy at the car boot sale last week, I ended up buying his collection of cards for £5. Surveying my treasure at home, I was struck by the message on the back of a card sent from London to a Miss A M Hough in California. It reads:

‘17 January 1923, London. An unpleasant fog prevails. It chokes, makes the eyes smart and blackens your face with deposited sulphur. Love B.’

The writer is describing the ‘pea-souper smog’ that killed thousands of people in the city. What an incredible piece of social history.

(If you want to start a postcard collection, take a look at The Postcard Century by Tom Phillips. I also like Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard and Postcards by Martin Parr and Thomas Weski.)

2. The pinkest pink
When I booked tickets for the Anish Kapoor show at the Hayward Gallery in January, I had no idea my visit would coincide with the hottest June day (in the UK) on record. Thankfully, the air con in the gallery was excellent; unfortunately, much of the work left me cold. I’m a fan of Kapoor, but I have to agree with Laura Cumming in The Observer when she writes, ‘Kapoor’s sincerity is not in doubt, with this work, but once again it affects the eyes above all else.’ This show is a feast for the eyes, but not for the soul.

So, why am I recommending it? Well, I’ve always been interested by Kapoor’s use of Vantablack: a material developed by Surrey NanoSystems that absorbs 99.96% of light – basically, it’s the world’s blackest black. Kapoor secured exclusive artistic rights to use Vantablack for painting and sculpture a decade ago and he uses it to brilliant effect in his optical illusion work. This hogging of Vantablack is not without controversy – artist Stuart Semple was so incensed by Kapoor’s purchase he formulated ‘the pinkest pink’ and made it available to everyone except Kapoor. Customers had to sign a form to prove they weren’t Kapoor, or buying on his behalf. It’s extreme, but I admire Semple’s commitment.

3. Unexpected passion
In June 1936, the Museum of Modern Art hosted a one-man, one-week show celebrating work by Edward Steichen. Nothing surprising there, Steichen was a well-established photographer by then, working for the likes of Vogue and Vanity Fair. But the gallery wasn’t filled with photographs,

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In 1960, Theodore Geisel (more commonly known as Dr Seuss) took on a bet that would change the course of children’s literature. His publisher, Bennett Cerf, promised him $50 if he could write a book with 50 or fewer unique words. After much revision and pruning, Geisel came up with Green Eggs and Ham, a masterclass in rhyme and repetition that sold more than eight million copies, making it one of the best-selling children’s books of all time.

It wasn’t the first time that Geisel had used constraints to stimulate creativity. Prior to his ‘Sam-I-Am’ success, the author and illustrator had been asked to write a story for six-year-olds using 225 words from a list of 348. On this occasion, he failed – running over by 11 words – but as the result was The Cat in the Hat, I don’t think we can hold it against him.

This idea that constraints might actually encourage creativity has been known to artists and writers for years, but in 2017 psychologist Catrinel Tromp wrote a paper in which she outlined ‘The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis’*. According to Tromp, when we’re looking for a solution to a creative problem, our brains tend to follow the path of least resistance.

This is only natural – after all, reaching for a familiar solution saves cognitive effort and energy – but if we always reach for a familiar solution, chances are we will always come up with familiar results. In order to come up with something original, we need to force our brains out of their default mode. Which is where constraints come in.

In his latest book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better, David Epstein echoes Tromp’s view that constraints work by blocking the path of least resistance. ‘Because we are cognitive misers, breakthrough creativity happens when the easy and intuitive path is blocked – by choice or by force,’ he claims.

By challenging ourselves to move beyond the obvious, we encourage our brains to switch to a deeper problem-solving mode. ‘That’s the thing about constraints that spur creativity,’ he writes, ‘they shut down many possibilities, but stimulate more varied and novel exploration of those that remain.’ In fact, according to Epstein, ‘Total freedom is the enemy of creativity, and constraint its companion.’

The damaging effects of too much freedom can be seen everywhere, but Epstein uses the story of General Magic to illustrate his point. GM was a Silicon Valley tech company, founded by Marc Porat, Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson (all former Apple employees), in 1990. Sworn to secrecy, they took a sketch that Porat had made in his notebook and essentially tried to create the world’s first smartphone.

As the project grew, so did the team, and so did the ‘to-do’ list. The staff at GM had limitless money, time and freedom to experiment. On paper, the company looked set to revolutionise the way we communicate. In reality, it was an expensive misadventure.

There were multiple reasons why GM failed to produce a marketable computer/phone: firstly, the team attempted to build everything from scratch; secondly, the target market for the product was unclear; thirdly, the staff failed to seek honest feedback at pivotal moments. But the main reason the project failed was down to a lack of constraints.

Without clear boundaries, the team spent too long fussing over non-essential details, such as the way a coin flipped in a game. As a consequence, it lost sight of the bigger picture and failed to ship a practical product. ‘The magicians [the name the team gave itself] had so much, and could do so much, that they were rarely forced to set limits and choose what not to do, at least until it was way too late,’ explains Epstein.

It wasn’t all bad. Some of the technology GM developed – touchscreens, emojis, mobile app ecosystems, for example – form the basis of technology we take for granted today. What’s more, the team learnt from its mistakes. ‘Tony Fadell came away from the General Magic experience obsessed with constraints,’ says Epstein. He went on to co-create the iPhone and iPod. Megan Smith learnt the value of solid project management. She became the third Chief Technology Officer of the United States, serving under President Obama.

Other GM alumni include Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, Kevin Lynch, the lead engineer behind the Apple Watch and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. (If you want to hear more about GM, take a look at the documentary General Magic – it’s worth it for the knitwear alone.)

So, if constraints are so important, how do we design ones that serve us and our creative projects?

In 2013, Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg (two highly successful marketing experts) wrote Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. Over the course of eight chapters, they describe how innovative products and solutions often share certain patterns that can be turned into templates.

‘Surprisingly, the majority of new, inventive, and successful products result from only five templates: subtraction, division, multiplication, task unification, and attribute dependency,’ they explain. These templates form the basis of a method Boyd and Goldenberg call Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT). Stay with me, it’s not as dry as it sounds.

The first template, Subtraction, is when something considered essential to a product or service is removed, creating a new, simplified version. Boyd and Goldenberg use the Apple iPod as an example. ‘The first-generation iPod was a huge success,’ they explain. ‘Then Apple, in classic innovative fashion, eliminated the display altogether, leaving just the random “shuffle” function.’

It might sound like a step backwards – preventing people from choosing the order in which they play their music catalogue – but, as we know, the Shuffle was a huge success. ‘People loved it,’ say Boyd and Goldenberg, ‘the device delivered your music like a radio station – you never knew which song would play next. That surprise made listening even more fun.’

The second template, Division, is when a product or service is divided into multiple parts and then reconfigured in a novel way. Anything with a remote control fits this description. ‘Division helps us achieve one of two things,’ say Boyd and Goldenberg. ‘Either we get a new benefit altogether or we get an existing benefit delivered in a novel way.’

The third template, Multiplication, involves copying one aspect of a product or service, altering it in some way, and then reintroducing it. The marketeers use razor blades as an example. ‘Since the Bronze Age, men have been shaving using a single blade. Then in 1971 Gillette introduced the TRAC II Twin Blade Shaving System, which sported two blades instead of one,’ they explain. One blade pulled up the hair and the second blade cut it off, resulting in a closer shave.

The fourth creativity tool, Task Unification, describes instances where unrelated ideas are fused together in a single product or service. ‘Facial moisturizers now have the additional task of providing sunscreen protection,’ say Boyd and Goldenberg. ‘You simply force an existing feature to work harder by making it take on additional responsibilities. You unify tasks that previously worked independently of one another.’

The final template, Attribute Dependency, describes what happens when seemingly unrelated attributes become dependent on one another. Take chameleons, for example. ‘[A] chameleon’s skin colour depends on the colour of its physical environment,’ say the writers. ‘As one thing changes, something else changes.’

Like Epstein, Boyd and Goldenberg understand that total freedom is the enemy of creativity. When we set ourselves boundaries, however, we force our brains out of default mode, and open ourselves up to new ways of thinking. Without constraints, Theodore Geisel might never have written Green Eggs and Ham, and we might never have experienced the iPod Shuffle. What a world.

* Tromp’s paper, The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis: How Constraints Facilitate Creativity, was published in vol 11 of the peer-reviewed journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

Looking for recommendations?

As a free subscriber you receive a monthly essay exploring stories, ideas and practical wisdom to help you build and sustain a creative practice.

Paid subscribers also receive a fortnightly companion newsletter packed with recommendations, creative discoveries and resources to help them keep making things between essays.

When you upgrade to paid, you also receive my eBook, Top Insights from 25 of the Best Books on Creativity – a distillation of the best ideas from 25 books I believe every creative should read.

If you find these letters useful, becoming a paid member is the best way to receive more of them – it also helps me keep writing We Need to Make Things.

Thanks so much for being here.

Tracy x

I’ve spent the last five years reading, experimenting and distilling the wisdom of hundreds of books on creativity. The result of this is now available to paid subscribers in my 30-page eBook, Top Insights from 25 of the Best Books on Creativity.

This curated list isn’t just a collection of titles; it’s a shortcut through the clutter. With each title, I’ll explain why it should be on your bookshelf and the key insights I got from it. These books have helped me break through creative blocks, generate better ideas, and build a sustainable creative practice. Now, it’s your turn.

Your copy is below. Click the link to download and keep.

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Unfortunately, the skills required to execute ideas don’t come naturally to everyone. ‘Creative professionals…constitute what is likely the most disorganized community on the planet,’ claims Belsky.

Those of us who fall into this category must ‘battle against our own essence’ and literally force ourselves to become more organised, because productivity increases when we introduce procedures and processes to our workflow.

Thankfully, we don’t have to battle our creative psyche alone. To be organised, argues Belsky, we just need to approach everything in life as though it were a project. Want to improve your fitness? Make it a project. Planning a holiday? Make it a project. Inventing magic custard? Make it a project.

Next, take each project and divide it into three parts: Action Steps, References and Backburner Items. Action Steps are specific tasks that move the project forward, References are project-related materials we might want to refer back to, and Backburner Items are things we might want to act on in the future. Belsky calls this ‘The Action Method’ because it encourages us to live and work ‘with a bias towards action.’

The second part of Belsky’s formula, ‘Communal Forces’, is particularly interesting. According to the author, harnessing the energy, support and knowledge of those around us plays a vital role in keeping projects alive. ‘Ideas gain new dimensions when other people get involved,’ he says. ‘The forces of community help you to capitalize on feedback, stay nimble, and share the burden of execution.’

But choosing who to share ideas with requires some thought. When we are in the throes of a project, it’s tempting to seek reassurance, in which case we might ask our partner or a friend for their opinion. But trying to avoid negative feedback means we never course correct.

Painful as it is, we need to welcome criticism and share ideas with people who are willing to kill projects as well as support them. ‘The value of feedback is inarguable,’ stresses Belsky. ‘It is a powerful, sobering force that can help refine good ideas, kill bad ones, and postpone premature ideas that are not yet ripe.’

The author uses Walt Disney as an example. When Disney and his team were developing feature-length films, they used three rooms to assess their ideas. The first room was for idea generation; the second was for organising ideas; and the third was for kicking most of these ideas out. ‘The idea bloodshed that occurs in Room Three is just as important as the wild ideation of Room One,’ adds Belsky.

The final part of Belsky’s formula (Leadership capability) looks at how our ability to lead impacts the quality and scalability of our ideas. If, like me, you work alone, you might think you can skip this part – but not so fast. According to Belsky, our ability to lead ourselves is critical to the success of the projects we undertake.

To understand our leadership style, we first need to carry out an honest self-assessment. Do you procrastinate, for example? Are you distracted by new ideas? Do you avoid negative feedback? ‘Everyone with the gift of creativity has a series of tendencies that can become obstacles,’ argues Belsky.

Recognising our destructive tendencies allows us to address them during the course of a project. If we tend to procrastinate, for example, we might introduce a system or process that pushes us into acting faster. Likewise, if we flit from one idea to another, maybe we can find a way to gamify the process and make sticking with the same idea fun. ‘Self-leadership is about awareness, tolerance, and not letting your own natural tendencies limit your potential,’ says Belsky.

How we apply Belsky’s formula (Making ideas happen = Ideas + Organization + Communal forces + Leadership capability) is entirely up to us. But apply it we must, because executing ideas is hard – it takes passion, stamina and blind faith to transform an idea into something real. If we’re going to invent magic custard, we need all the help you can get.

How to make ideas happen

1. Beware the project plateau. There comes a point in a project when the honeymoon is over, and the hard work needs to begin. At this point, a new idea will suddenly appear, distracting us with all its novelty and mystery. But pursuing a new idea prevents us from exploring the full potential of the original one – essentially, we’re starting over. To survive the project plateau, we need to find ways to stay engaged and motivated.
   

2. Think energy, not time. How we manage our time is important, but how we manage our energy is even more significant. Belsky suggests that we visualise all our projects along a spectrum that ranges from ‘Extreme’ to ‘Idle’, and allocate our energy accordingly.
   

3. Get to know yourself. Many of the barriers that stand between ideas and their execution are a result of our own destructive tendencies. Overcoming these begins with carrying out an honest self-assessment. If you are prone to over-researching, for example, adopt processes that remind you to start before you feel ready.
   

4. Partner up wisely. Belsky believes creatives fall into one of three categories: Dreamers, Doers or Incrementalists (polymaths). Dreamers are great at generating ideas but struggle with focus; Doers concentrate on logistics but aren’t great at ideas, and Incrementalists switch between dreaming and doing but often fail to explore the full potential of an idea. Decide which category you most identify with and use this knowledge to shape project partnerships.
   

5. Curate your space. The room you work in, the stationery you use, and even the height of your ceiling can affect the quality of ideas and your ability to execute them. Surround yourself with reminders of your achievements to boost morale; buy colourful notebooks and pens to make Action Steps seem more attractive, sit in a room with a lower ceiling to concentrate on details (all Belsky’s suggestions.)
   

6. Get ready for battle. Ideas face an uphill struggle from the moment they come into our heads. ‘The road is littered with the carcasses of half-baked ideas that were abandoned or surrendered along the way,’ warns Belsky. By focusing on process and developing a bias towards action, we can weather the storms.

Read. Inspire. Listen.

To read.
David Campany (Creative Director of the International Center of Photography, New York) has written a major reassessment of Walker Evans, and I can’t wait to add it to the shelf. Featuring photographs and projects from across Evans’ career, the book (entitled Walker Evans) includes self-portraits, Polaroids and shots of small-town America. Meanwhile, Michael Kenna has teamed up with Pico Iyer to create Same Sun Same Moon, a beautiful book of photographs and essays designed for ‘slow reading’. Finally, I want to bring your attention to Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Daisy Fancourt – a book that proves, beyond doubt, that art has the power to heal.

To inspire.
As a fan of both Pixar and Gretchen Rubin’s newsletter, Five Things Making Me Happy, I was delighted to see Rubin recommend Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling – a checklist compiled by storyboard artist Emma Coats. (If you want to learn more about Pixar’s processes, I recommend reading Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull.) Sticking with creative stories, I found the results of a survey conducted by Creative Boom an uncomfortable but necessary read. 10 Truths About the Creative Profession We Don’t Like to Admit looks at imposter syndrome, originality (or the lack of it) and creative burnout, among many other things.

To listen (and watch).
Heidi Zuckerman believes art saves lives and has the power to make the world a better place, which is why she’s on a mission to remove as many barriers to creativity as she can. It was such a joy to chat with Heidi for the We Need to Make Things podcast – we covered everything from the importance of personal taste to dropping into the flow state, her five-step morning routine, and the story behind her love for the song Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey. I hope you enjoy listening to it. From ears to eyes, two films have got my attention at the moment: Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, a documentary about the life and work of one of my favourite poets; and Le Chant Des Forêts (Whispers in the Woods), a film about Vincent Munier’s journey into the forest with his father and son. (It’s also worth checking out French producer Thylacine’s tribute to the film on Instagram.)

One more thing…

The breath-holding beauty of book marbling.

Bill has been playing Stammas in the stage adaptation of Stephen King’s novella since September 2025, so you’d think every move, line and gesture would be delivered verbatim night after night. According to Bill, however, this isn’t the case. ‘I try to keep the door open to experiences as long as I possibly can,’ he explains.

Over the Christmas period, for example, Bill decided to research king cobras to see if he could bring something reptilian to his performance. ‘They make themselves look bigger than they are, and they’re slow and graceful until they strike,’ he explains, ‘and then it’s absolutely violent.’

Staying open to new ideas and experiences is easier said than done. ‘The temptation when you’re making a piece of theatre is to close it down early,’ explains Bill. ‘Actors start getting jittery if they’re asked to improv too long; they want things nailed down.’ It takes courage to stay open, and discipline to remain curious, but doing so makes room for magic. In his book The Creative Act, Rick Rubin describes it as, ‘a state of continual welcoming’.

By staying open, you allow a project to develop naturally, taking all the twists and turns it needs, even if some of the pivots are unexpected or disruptive. ‘Being open to possibility gets you to a place you want to go that you may not know you wanted to get to,’ he says. Essentially, you’re inviting energy in and allowing the project to take on a life of its own. ‘The surprises along the way can expand your work, and even the art form itself,’ adds Rubin.

Allowing a project to shift and mutate under your leadership can be unsettling if you’re not prepared for it. ‘You need to have confidence you are not lost; you are just at the point of new discovery,’ urges Kent Nerburn in The Artist’s Journey. ‘As a creator, you need to respect, even savour, the magic of accident and care less about what is being lost than what is being born.’

If Nerburn ever feels lost in the midst of a project, he reminds himself of the analogy between an architect and a gardener. The first has a clear idea of the end result and builds with that in mind; the second plants seeds and nurtures them, knowing that chance plays a large part in whether or not they will thrive. ‘As artists, we must learn to be gardeners, not architects,’ says Nerburn. ‘We must seek to cultivate our art, not construct it.’

Just like seedlings, ideas need protection in their early stages. Too much exposure and they’ll scorch and die. For Bill, this protection comes in the form of the rehearsal room, where ideas can be expressed without fear of judgement. ‘Every idea is an offer,’ he says. ‘In the rehearsal space, sometimes you will consider stuff and then discard it, but you will always consider it just to see if it can help you on your way.’ At this stage, play and experimentation are positively encouraged. ‘You just chuck ideas into the melting pot and see what you can make from them,’ he explains. Nothing, it seems, is off-limits.

One of the best examples of a safe space for ideas is the Braintrust at Pixar – the animation studio responsible for Toy Story, Brave and Inside Out (among many others). ‘The Braintrust, which meets every few weeks to assess each movie we’re making, is our primary delivery system for straight talk,’ explains Ed Catmull in Creativity, Inc.

The purpose of a Braintrust meeting is to identify problems and generate new ideas without apportioning blame or passing judgement. Staff at these meetings are expected to be totally candid with one another. ‘Without the critical ingredient that is candor, there can be no trust,’ says Catmull. ‘And without trust, creative collaboration is not possible.’

In a Braintrust meeting, there is no fear of looking stupid, no hierarchy and no personal agenda. In fact, Catmull claims there are just four key ingredients to a successful meeting: ‘Frank talk, spirited debate, laughter, and love.’ What’s also clear from chatting with Bill (and reading Catmull) is that you cannot have a safe space for ideas if you invite ego into the room.

Staff attending a Braintrust meeting often argue, but criticism is directed at the project rather than the individual. It’s a shift in mindset that Bill mastered early on. ‘One of the things we learnt at drama school is to serve the play,’ he explains. ‘It’s not about you. It just isn’t.’ While it might feel like you are under attack, ultimately, it’s the play (or project) that’s under scrutiny.

‘You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offence when they are challenged,’ suggests Catmull. ‘To set up a healthy feedback system, you must remove power dynamics from the equation – you must enable yourself, in other words, to focus on the problem, not the person.’ In the rehearsal room (or the Braintrust meeting) everyone is working towards a common goal: to create the best play or film they possibly can.

To create something that you feel energised to share, you need to send your ego out of the room and direct your passion towards your project. You also need to accept that some of your ideas will suck. ‘The only way to find something new is to be prepared (or even eager) to be wrong on our way to being right,’ writes Seth Godin in The Practice.

Mistakes and failures are evidence that you’re trying something new, breaking boundaries or trying to find balance between order and chaos. In such instances, failure is not to be feared. ‘Befriending your bad ideas is a useful way forward,’ urges Godin. ‘They’re not your enemy. They are essential steps on the path to better.’ Success is rarely guaranteed, but playing safe is the most direct route to mediocrity.

In reality, the end result may differ wildly from your original plan. ‘If you look at a finished play and where it started, those two things are utterly different,’ says Bill. ‘But you can’t get to the place at the end without the misses on the way. The misses force you to make other choices.’ Staying open allows you to accept that there is no definitive performance, no perfect answer and no final outcome. The play continues to evolve on stage, the jazz solo takes an improvised turn, and the painting you made changes its meaning depending on who is looking at it. The goal is not perfection; it’s evolution. ‘Allow the work to grow in the direction it seeks, evolve in accordance with its natural state, and have its own life,’ urges Rubin. Just keep an open mind.

You can listen to my full conversation with Bill on the We Need to Make Things podcast.

13 ways to stay open to ideas

1. Make space. Staying open to new ideas and experiences takes courage, but it’s essential that we remain receptive. ‘We need new and unusual experiences to think differently,’ say Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire in Wired to Create. ‘In fact, cultivating a mind-set that is open and explorative might be the best thing we can do for our creative work.’

2. Find a rehearsal room. When we feel safe to share ideas without being judged, we tend to be more candid and creative. When managed well, Bill finds the rehearsal room to be a good place for candid discussion, but you might find similar support in a Facebook group or Braintrust-style meeting.

3. Generate, but don’t judge. Come up with as many ideas as you can, but resist the urge to judge them straightaway. ‘In this phase, we are not looking at which iteration progresses the quickest or furthest, but which holds the most promise,’ explains Rick Rubin. ‘We focus on the flourishing and wait to prune.’

4. Try everything. Ask, What if? Why? What else? Good ideas rarely announce themselves in a booming voice, so listen to the whispers. ‘Sometimes the smallest seed grows into the biggest tree,’ says Rubin. ‘The most delicate message could be of the greatest importance.’

5. Follow the energy. If you feel excited about an idea, this usually means you should pursue it. ‘A good idea is one that turns you on rather than shuts you off,’ says Twyla Tharp in The Creative Habit. ‘It keeps generating more ideas and they improve on one another.’ Look for what lights you up and follow that energy.

6. Hold your nerve. Many great ideas start out ugly, but don’t dismiss them too quickly. ‘I call early mock-ups of our films ugly babies,’ says Ed Catmull. ‘They are not beautiful, miniature versions of the adults they will grow up to be…They need nurturing – in the form of time and patience – in order to grow.’

7. Get serious about playing. When we approach our creative work as play, it reduces the pressure and encourages a sense of lightness and freedom. ‘In play, there are no stakes. No boundaries. No right or wrong,’ suggests Rick Rubin. ‘It’s an uninhibited state where your spirit can run free.’

8. Find balance between safe and novel. People will have expectations about the medium you work in, but following the ‘rules’ slavishly can lead to dull, predictable work. ‘There is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens,’ says Ed Catmull. ‘The key is being able to linger there without panicking.’ Humans enjoy novelty, use it to your advantage.

9. Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is a necessary part of the creative practice; it’s also a sign that you are trying something new. ‘If you are not failing, you are not growing,’ suggests Guy Armitage in Everyone is Creative. ‘If you are not growing, you are failing.’

10. Join forces. Working with a group of people willing to discuss a project candidly and without apportioning blame encourages you to raise your game. ‘One of the most powerful sources of creative inspiration and rejuvenation is other people,’ suggests Todd Henry in The Accidental Creative. Work with the best in the business and your work will become even better.

11. Remember, it’s not about you. Leave your ego at the door. Your one job is to create the best version you can of whatever it is you’re working on. Bear this in mind when you give or receive criticism – it’s the project that’s under scrutiny, not you or your abilities.

12. Set a deadline. It’s important to stay open to ideas for as long as possible, but don’t use it as an excuse to procrastinate. ‘If you are just exploring ideas then be sure to set a time frame for your exploration,’ says Guy Armitage. ‘By all means go and get lost in the world, but be back before sunset.’

13. Remember, there is no definitive performance. Despite appearing in more than 200 performances of The Shawshank Redemption, Bill says every night is different. ‘The actors say the same words, but they say them in a slightly different way because they’re bringing something different to the stage every night,’ he says. ‘My job is to listen and respond.’

Read. Watch.

To read (and watch).
First, The Last Resort 40 Years On is a hardback catalogue designed to accompany a show of the same name at Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. This book contains a selection of Parr’s most well-loved photographs, along with fresh texts and a rare glimpse at his contact sheets. Second, ss a fan of William Eggleston, I was keen to get my hands on William Eggleston: The Last Dyes. It’s a beautifully produced book (although the typeface is a little jarring). If you like Eggleston as much as I do, you might enjoy this video describing the process behind a dye-transfer print. Finally, Still: A Mindful Practice for Photographers by Paul Sanders is now available. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, I urge you to do so.

To watch (and listen).
Sean Tucker’s videos are always inspiring. His recent offering, The Ego Trap in Street Photography, discusses the dangers of trying to force your aesthetic onto a subject. It features the usual mixture of honesty, instruction and personal insight. The latest issue of his magazine PARABLE is also out. (You can listen to me chatting with Sean on the We Need to Make Things podcast.) While you’re on YouTube, you can also catch up with the latest videos from Nigel Danson and Simon Baxter.

One more thing…

Whimsical paper art.

I have mixed feelings about The Beatles. On the one hand I think ‘Hey Jude’ is a work of genius; on the other hand, I still remember singing ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ at school and the stage curtain getting caught on my Mary Jane patents. Damn those buckles.

Over the Christmas period, I finally sat down to watch Peter Jackson’s three-part documentary The Beatles: Get Back and it proved to be excellent exposure therapy; seven hours and 48 minutes of singing, scatting and arguing that eventually led to the album Let It Be. When this miniseries was first broadcast in 2021, Guardian writer Alexis Petridis described it as ‘TV so aimless it threatens your sanity’. I beg to differ. If there’s a better example of creative minds at work, I’ve yet to find it.

The synergy between Paul and John is electric. One look or nod of the head is enough to spark an idea or smooth out a clunky chorus. They don’t need words to communicate their ideas. ‘It’s like you and me are lovers,’ jokes John. It’s fascinating to watch. George, on the other hand, is clearly frustrated by how quickly his ideas are dismissed. ‘Maybe we should have a divorce,’ he suggests after yet another rebuff.

At times, watching Get Back feels like being trapped in a lift with three petulant children (Ringo manages to stay neutral), but it’s hard not to be seduced by, to quote director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, ‘[the] smokers, nose pickers and nail biters’ in front of the cameras. ‘We are rather uncouth,’ admits Paul.

Fuelled by cigarettes, tea and toast, The Beatles spend a messy month in the studio creating some of the most celebrated music in rock/pop history. The songs ‘Let It Be’, ‘Get Back’ and ‘The Long and Winding Road’ all emerge from this chaotic period, proving, as Paul suggests, ‘We are best when our backs are against the wall.’

Ultimately, the sessions generate more than 60 hours of film footage and 150 hours of audio, all of which Jackson ploughed through before releasing his version of events to the world. Without input from all four band members, The Beatles: Get Back was never going to be completely objective, but by the time the end credits roll, you know you’ve witnessed something messy but magical: the creative mind at work.

11 lessons in creativity, inspired by The Beatles

1. Drop anchor. Whether you burn a candle, listen to the same song or dress in a certain outfit, having a short ritual or routine that lets your body know it’s time to start work can be useful. Tea, toast and marmalade were anchors of choice for The Beatles, helping them drop into a flow state – although many would argue they had less healthy ways to prepare themselves too!

2. Save the scraps. Most big ideas don’t arrive fully formed; they evolve out of smaller ideas and encounters. The starting point for George Harrison’s song ‘I, Me, Mine’ was a waltz in the science fiction programme Out of the Unknown, for example. Don’t wait for complete ideas to fall into your lap; save interesting scraps – they might add up to something more one day.

3. Don’t fear influence. The Beatles often ‘borrowed’ riffs, chords and melodies from other artists. (If you’re interested in their sources, I recommend reading A Hard Day’s Write by Steve Turner.) While it’s crucial to know the difference between copying and plagiarism, it’s also important not to fear influence. Nothing is 100% original.

4. Embrace constraints. We often believe we need more time, money or resources to complete a project, but sometimes what we actually need are more constraints. There’s a scene in Get Back where Paul recognises the perils of too much freedom. ‘What you need is a serious program of work,’ he advises his bandmates, ‘not an aimless rambling amongst the canyons of your mind.’

5. Play around. As we age, we sometimes lose the lightness we enjoyed as children. Watching John swap his guitar for a Stylophone, Ringo tap dance, and the arrival of an anvil and hammer to achieve a sound effect, it’s clear that The Beatles understood the value of play. Don’t take your art too seriously. Keep exploring and experimenting.

6. Know when to stop. Perfection is rarely possible. There comes a time in any project when one more revision might ruin something, so be aware of this tipping point. Paul, George and John are always rehearsing, tidying up and asking for one more chance. On a few occasions you can see songs that we now consider classics on the point of being ruined!

7. Be clear about the payoff. After a month in the studio, The Beatles have a rooftop concert and most of the material for an album (Let It Be). Multiple times during the project, however, Paul complains that he can’t see the payoff. ‘We’ve got to have a serious reason for doing this or else we won’t,’ he gripes. ‘What’s it for?’ Decide on your payoff early.

8. Remember creative work is still work. Day after day, most of the band turn up at the recording studio; they often look tired, bored or frustrated, but in the midst of all the weariness there are flashes of brilliance. Their talent is clear, but what’s also clear is that it wouldn’t amount to much without hard work.

9. Inject some energy. When you’ve been working on a project for a while, things can get stale. To keep things fresh, The Beatles enlisted Billy Preston who came on board to play keyboard. Look for ways to inject some energy into your project – maybe you could collaborate with someone who works outside your field?

10. Seek useful feedback. George could do with some lessons on how to deliver feedback after this classic critique. ‘It sounds like the same old sh*t,’ he argues. ‘If we had a tape recorder now and then just taped that and played it back, you’d throw that out straight away.’ Be careful who you ask for feedback and be clear about what you need from the exchange.

11. Be aware of your audience, but don’t pander to it. As egos start to flare and the band starts to fall apart, Michael Lindsay-Hogg (who is attempting to make a film out of the sessions) tries to ease the tension. ‘We all need you,’ he declares. ‘If you all can’t get it together, that’s very sad.’ Sometimes the pressure to please an audience can push you in directions you don’t want to go in. Be aware of your audience, but don’t become a slave to it.

Read. Inspire. Listen.

To read.
Latest additions to the shelf include The Minimalist Photographer by Antony Zacharias, a beautifully illustrated book providing 50 tips on capturing beauty in simplicity. I’m also loving Helen Levitt, a new publication from Thames & Hudson designed to accompany a major touring exhibition of the photographer’s work. As a big fan of Larry Sultan’s 1992 book Pictures From Home, I’m keen to get my hands on Water Over Thunder, a book devoted to his love of writing. Next up, Brutal Scotland, a photographic survey of Scotland’s post-war architecture by Simon Phipps. Finally, Portrait of Britain – Volume 8 is now available. When it comes to online offerings, I highly recommend reading Mike Curry’s article Fleeting Reflections: Access, Obsession, and the Discipline of Patience on the Nature Photographers Network website.

To inspire.
Consultant and author Beth Pickens runs a Homework Club that provides creatives with the support and encouragement they need to make their projects a priority (membership is £14 a month). The community recently embarked on a Year of Rejections, which basically means individual artists chose a Personal Rejection Number (PRN) and apply for opportunities until this figure has been reached. Pickens chose 10 as her PRN for 2026, so I have decided to follow suit. So far, I’ve entered work to the RA Summer Show, asked a photographic legend to come on the podcast and sent a proposal to a magazine I’ve always wanted to write for. I’ve had a ‘yes’ from one and I’m waiting to hear back from the others. (If you need to bolster your nerve, take a look at Rejection Proof: How to Beat Fear and Become Invincible by Jia Jiang.)

To listen.
I recently went to see This Is What You Get, an exhibition celebrating the creative collaboration between Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and artist Stanley Donwood in Oxford. The exhibition is now closed, but if you’d like to get a flavour of what the artistic duo gets up to, have a look at their conversation with Gareth Evans on YouTube. Meanwhile, on A Small Voice podcast, Ben Smith was talking to photographer, filmmaker and founder of The Anonymous Project Lee Shulman this week. Shulman directed the 2024 documentary film I Am Martin Parr. He’s a busy man.

One more thing…

A digital field guide to the oak.

Anthropomorphising ChatGPT is a clever (and fast) way of encouraging trust, and the speed at which it responds to prompts tricks us into believing that it’s superhuman. It’s all a big fat lie of course, ChatGPT is no more human than a dishwasher and its emotional intelligence is on a par with an ostrich. It might be fast, and it might be ‘chatty’ but all it’s really doing is making predictions based on rules and patterns it has identified during training. Large language models are machines, not humans.

I recently read a limerick about a toaster possessed by demons. It was ‘written’ by ChatGPT. It was fine. Later that day I picked up my copy of The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear and felt like an idiot. Here was a world where people went in search of missing toes, a man cooks a bustard in mustard and a woman twirls round till she sinks underground. It’s a masterful blend of absurd situations and unexpected, often made up, language.

The difference between Lear’s limericks and the ChatGPT limerick couldn’t be more obvious – one is lively and spirited while the other is prosaic and predictable. The AI version is entirely acceptable – there are no problems with grammar, syntax etc – but is acceptable really enough?

According to John Warner in More than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI it might be time to double down on our humanness. He believes that good writing is a result of thinking, feeling and clear intention. ‘Generating syntax is not the same thing as writing,’ he argues.

If you ask ChatGPT to write an essay, the grammar it delivers will be faultless and the syntax good, but what will you learn about yourself during the process? How will you know your own mind or opinions better? ‘We vastly underappreciate the importance of the act of writing to the work of being human,’ he suggests. ‘I think there’s something, many things, essential about what happens as humans write that cannot and should not be outsourced to automation posing as intelligence.’

Artificial intelligence is a bit of a misleading term. AI applications are tools of automation, they don’t acquire or act on knowledge in the same way a human does. Large language models can’t reflect, review or think. They can’t lie, apply reason or express personal opinions. ‘They do not think, feel or experience anything,’ says Warner. ‘They are fundamentally incapable of judging truth, accuracy, or veracity. Any actions that look like the exercise of judgement are illusory.’

Of course, upholding this illusion benefits large language models such as ChatGPT, so tech giants work hard to develop interfaces that mimic human interaction. Tell ChatGPT that you’ve flooded your bathroom and it will begin it’s advice with something reassuring like, ‘I’ve got your back.’

Of course, AI (and ChatGPT) can be incredibly useful. While I never use it for longform writing, I do use it for sharpening up emails, automating workflow and summarising complex documents. I don’t see it as the Dark Side of the Force, and I’m not particularly worried about it stealing my job.

As Warner puts it, ‘If ChatGPT can produce an acceptable example of something, that thing is not worth doing by humans and quite probably isn’t worth doing at all.’ What does worry me, however, is the way we are encouraged to think about ChatGPT as some trustworthy friend with superior intelligence to our own. Outsourcing our feeling and thinking to an AI application that is designed to make money doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

In order to wrestle back control, we need to identify situations where being human genuinely matters. In recent years I’ve written eulogies for both my in-laws and my mother. Writing these pieces caused me to reflect on what it means to love and to be loved. It made me think about connection, responsibility and legacy. ChatGPT wouldn’t have helped me navigate grief. Warner offers an extreme example in his book. After a mass shooting at a university campus in the US in 2023, a statement composed using ChatGPT was issued to the press. Nobody was impressed. ‘Outsourcing expression following tragedy to tools of automation is the kind of thing that happens in a faceless dystopia,’ he argues. AI should never be used to replace our humanity.

It might help to consider what we stand to lose when we hand a task over to AI. If we want a step-by-step guide for preparing a lasagne, then retrieving information from the internet using ChatGPT is unlikely to hurt – although it’s worth remembering that every online search has an environmental impact. However, if we want to engage with something, really explore a feeling or expand an idea, then we need to put in the work. ‘If we aren’t careful, we will lose things that it turns out we need but might have a hard time getting back once they are lost,’ warns Warner. Ultimately, only humans transform thinking and feeling into writing. And I rather like it that way.

Read. Ponder. Listen. Memoriam.

To read.
Stephen Shore was given a darkroom kit at the age of six and it ignited a passion for photography that continues to this day. Early Work brings together images made between 1960 and 1965 when Shore was just a teenager – everything he later became is right here. An issue of Hotshoe magazine is dedicated to Shore and his work, and it’s a beauty. I also enjoyed reading Shore’s thoughts about the colour red on the Aperture website. Also on this site, you’ll find Aperture’s Must-Read Features of 2025. The article on Neil Selkirk, the only person authorised to print from Diane Arbus’ negatives, is especially good.

To listen.
In a recent episode of We Need to Make Things my guest, the artist and writer Cig Harvey, shared her thoughts about the value of art, how colour affects the body, the importance of valuing the journey over the destination and, ultimately, what it means to be human. I loved every minute in her company.

To ponder.
Author and entrepreneur Tim Ferris has released a free PDF entitled 17 Questions That Changed My Life. Who knows, asking ourselves things like, ‘What if I did the opposite for 48 hours?’ might lead to some interesting insights. I also enjoyed Creative Boom’s piece How Creatives Are Surviving the 2025 Slowdown.

In memoriam.
There have been so many wonderful tributes paid to Martin Parr in recent weeks. Martin was a huge inspiration to me and his contribution to the world of photography cannot be overstated. I was lucky enough to work with him a few times and I will never forget the day he called my parent’s wallpaper ‘claustrophobic’ on national television. He was one in a million. I highly recommend watching I Am Martin Parr on BBC iPlayer and buying a copy of Utterly Lazy and Inattentive: Martin Parr in Words and Pictures. You won’t regret it.

One more thing…

The mind of a toddler expressed in song form.

He went on to explain that most scientists are delighted when their opinion turns out to be incorrect. ‘You get most things wrong, and you get some things right, and that’s how you make progress,’ he assured. ‘If you’re not comfortable with uncertainty and being on the edge of the known then you never learn.’

My daughter and I love chatting about the unknown – dark matter, life after death, all the weird creatures living undiscovered on the ocean floor. Last night she turned to me with a puzzled look and said, ‘If the human brain is so clever why can’t it show me what the inside of my body looks like?’ I didn’t have an answer to that, so I told her that there are some things we will never know, and that’s as it should be. This made her very agitated. ‘I don’t like it,’ she scowled. ‘All the unanswered questions and all that uncertainty. Doesn’t it drive you mad?’ The response I gave surprised even me, ‘No. I love it.’

The discomfort we feel when we’re uncertain about something is understandable. As social animals, we want to avoid making mistakes because mistakes could lead to us being thrown out of the tribe. ‘We are hardwired to stay close to the herd and blend in a much as possible,’ argues Todd Henry in The Accidental Creative. ‘After all, in the animal world the members of a tribe that stand out are often eaten soon.’

Our lizard brain wants to keep us safe, so it tries to limit our exposure to failure (and risk). Elizabeth Gilbert sums it up perfectly in Big Magic. ‘Your fear – programmed by evolution to be hypervigilant and insanely overprotective – will always assume that any uncertain outcome is destined to end in a bloody, horrible death.’

Unfortunately, our inability to accept uncertainty can have negative consequence. Let’s take love as an example. A few years ago, a good friend of mine told me that he had never been in love. This made me sad. But, on the surface, it seems like quite a wise move. Falling in love is risky. It requires loss of control, emotional vulnerability and a willingness to accept that we might get hurt.

In fact, when you think about it, it’s a miracle that our lizard brain ever allows us to be exposed to this kind of risk! In biological terms, the payoff is obvious – procreation – but there’s much more to it than that. Building strong bonds with people boosts happiness, builds confidence and fosters a sense of belonging, among other things. The jump into the unknown is worth the risk.

Most creative acts have uncertain outcomes. Each time we moisten a paintbrush, pick up a pen or sit at a piano, we don’t know how things will turn out and we don’t know if what we create will resonate with anybody. So why do we do it? Well, we do it because it’s fun. We do it because we’re curious. We do it because we’ve made a commitment to the practice. We do it because we want to make something better. We do it because we trust the process. We do it because we trust ourselves. We do it because we don’t have a choice. ‘What else are you going to do with your time on earth – not make things? Not do interesting stuff? Not follow your love and your curiosity?’ asks Gilbert. It’s a good question.

In order to create, we need to accept that no outcome is guaranteed because it relies so heavily on things outside of our control. We can’t say how an audience will respond to our work or whether it will be considered a success or not, but we can learn to trust the process, apply ourselves and accept the outcome – whatever that may be.

‘Simply put, making art is chancy – it doesn’t mix well with predictability,’ suggest David Bayles & Ted Orland in Art & Fear. ‘Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the pre-requisite to succeeding.’

Physicists like Cox work on the frontiers of knowledge. They take what they believe to be true as their base camp and venture out into unexplored territories. They test theories, question beliefs and ultimately ask more questions than they answer. They get most things wrong, they get some things right, and then they return to share their findings – it’s a process that many creatives can relate to.

At the age of 89, composer and producer Quincy Jones declared, ‘I may not know everything, but it makes my soul smile to share what I do know with those willing to listen. And honestly, I hope that I still won’t have all of the answers when I’m one hundred, because learning is essential to growth, and I always want to continue growing.’

Living with uncertainty can trigger our fear response, but if we learn to sit with the fear and trust the process, we stand a good chance of creating something that’s honest, brave and impactful. ‘Any creative work is a walk into the dark, moving out towards uncertainty, trusting those quick darts of feeling, the almost physical twitch of recognition, the bubble-float dip that says “pay attention here.”’ writes Samantha Clark in The Clearing. ‘I keep stepping forward, carrying my questions gently.’

Why we need to get comfortable with uncertainty:

1. What we believe to be true now, might not always be true. The amount of knowledge we have about anything changes all the time. ‘It was considered impossible to climb Mount Everest without extra oxygen until the Austrian Peter Habeler and the South Tyrolean Reinhold Messner did so on 8 May 1978,’ reminds Erling Kagge in The Philosophy of an Explorer. It’s important to stay open-minded.

2. The edge of the unknown is where we grow. Staying in our comfort zone keeps us safe, but it also keeps us small. Take some advice from Chase Jarvis in Never Play it Safe, ‘You were built for a wild, rich, spirited, heartfelt, loving, and fascinating ride! Not for frickin’ SAFETY.’

3. It’s a necessary part of the process. ‘Moving through fear and other negative feelings and experiences requires accepting that they are a normal, natural, human part of the creative process,’ suggests Lisa Congdon in Find Your Artistic Voice.

4. What we can control is limited. We can’t control how someone feels about our work, but we can control how much effort we put in, how open-minded we are and how much emphasis we place on the end result.

5. The process, not the outcome, is what really counts. When you commit to the process, the outcome becomes unimportant. ‘Measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures,’ urges Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic.

6. Most of the work we do will fail. ‘If you need a guarantee you’re going to win before you begin, you’ll never start,’ says Seth Godin in The Practice. ‘The only way to find something new is to be prepared (or even eager) to be wrong on your way to being right.’ Failure (for the most part) is not to be feared.

7. It encourages us to trust our gut. Most of us are familiar with the idea of gut instinct, but many of us have been conditioned to ignore it. Recent research suggests that the gut is a reservoir of knowledge gained from past experiences, so listen up!

8. Being comfortable with uncertainty helps us avoid perfection paralysis. ‘Perfectionists often decide in advance that the end product is never going to be satisfactory, so they don’t even bother trying to be creative in the first place,’ warns Gilbert. ‘The drive for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time.’

9. The more we seek answers, the more questions arise. We might feel like we’ve perfected our craft, but as we advance, our expectations and standards advance with us. Uncertainty is a constant, no matter where we are on our creative journey.

Read. Inspire. Listen.

To read.
So many great books to shout about. First, The Haunted: Contemporary Photography Conjured in New England. This book of imagery and poetry features work by more than 20 photographers including Cig Harvey, a previous guest on my We Need to Make Things podcast. (To get a taste of Cig’s work take a look the film she made with River Finlay, Eat Flowers.) Next up, After London by Simon Roberts. This book speaks of loss, temporality and human fragility, communicated via deliberately out-of-focus photographs of London landmarks. Then we have Oak: From Seed to Ancient Tree by Beth Moon. I was lucky enough to chat with Beth about this book for B+W Photography magazine a few weeks ago. Finally, it’s a joy to see Ingrid Leegte’s book The Forest That Became a Muse is now available to pre-order. This visual love story of an orchard in the Netherlands is a true beauty (text in Dutch).

To inspire.
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Sally Mann share her choices on Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4). Mann talks with such honesty and openness.

To listen.
Season 3 of We Need to Make Things kicked off this week with photographer and filmmaker Alys Tomlinson (@alystomlinson) as my guest. Alys and I chatted about creative problem-solving, what it feels like to let go of a project and the extraordinary meeting with a nun from Belarus that reshaped her life and career, among many other things. Aly’s book Gli Isolani (The islanders) is out now and Mother Vera (the film she co-directed with Cécile Embleton is in selected cinemas. Huge thanks to everyone who has been tuning in!

One more thing…

Addictive pop mashup.

What she doesn’t know, however, is that I’ve just spent an hour walking around the local nature reserve trying to avoid sitting at my desk actually writing. Last week when she suggested a job swap, I’d just been to a yoga class where I’d hung myself upside down trying to drive blood to my head and words down to my fingertips. Writing is what I do. I love it. I hate it. I hope I do it until the day I die.

We often make the mistake of thinking that creative work should be easy. In truth it can be absolutely maddening. Author Gene Fowler once declared, ‘Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.’ It sounds dramatic, but there’s a ring of truth to it.

Writer and artist Austin Kleon clearly agrees. In his book Keep Going he describes what it feels like to work on a creative project day in, day out. ‘When I’m working on my art, I don’t feel like Odysseus,’ he says. ‘I feel like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill.’ It’s a feeling that most of us can relate to and one that Anne Lamott echoes in her book Bird By Bird. ‘[Writers] do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment,’ she says. ‘Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.’

The rewards of a creative life are manifold, which is why we keep rolling that boulder up the hill. When we paint, write, compose or perform a creative act we improve our problem-solving skills, boost our confidence and make meaningful connections. ‘When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love, and faith,’ writes choreographer Twyla Tharp in The Creative Habit.

We were all born creative, but keeping that creativity alive takes effort. In the book Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland say, ‘Those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue – or more precisely, have learned how not to quit.’ I’m not against quitting – in fact, I’m a big advocate of leaving a project or career that no longer serves you. As a result, I would like to suggest a re-write: ‘Those who continue to make art are those who stop thinking it should be easy.’

It’s a lesson that photographer Sally Mann learned the hard way. In the 1990s she made a series of trips to the Deep South, each time hoping to catch its melancholy with her 8x10 view camera. By this time, she was an expert in her craft and her artistic eye was second to none. Imagine her surprise, then, when she found herself struggling to take a decent photograph .‘Everybody had joined me in the slough of despond,’ she writes in her latest book, Art Work. ‘I announced there were no pictures anywhere in this god-forsaken landscape. Needed to get to the river. Pissed at everybody. Everybody pissed at me…No good pictures after 800 damn miles.’ Mann had clearly forgotten how difficult it was to make the earlier pictures that made her a household name. ‘If I’m so good, why is this new work so damned hard all of a sudden,’ she raged.

In the end, Mann got her pictures. She stopped believing that creative work should be easy, and she embraced the process. ‘Even though they were dumb pictures – and I knew they were – I kept taking them. Monkey at a typewriter. Sooner or later, there was going to be a good one, the monkey was going to get lucky, even if it was by accident,’ she recalls.

This refusal to quit is something that photographer Alys Tomlinson can relate to. Tomlinson had been working on a project about faith and pilgrimage for four years before things started to fall into place. ‘I kept going because I knew there was something special there, but I just couldn’t quite touch it,’ she once told me. ‘I had a feeling I could come up with something special, but I knew it was not going to happen overnight.’

For Tomlinson, the breakthrough came when she dusted off her large format camera and loaded it with black & white film. Adopting a slow, meditative approach suited her subject matter and the resulting series, Ex Voto, won her first place in the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards. (One of the pictures she made led to her next big project, the award-winning film, Mother Vera, which Tomlinson co-directed with Cecile Embleton.)

Both Mann and Tomlinson refused to quit because they knew that great pictures were within their reach and that creative work is rarely easy. All too often books go unwritten, canvases remain blank and sculptures stay hidden in blocks of stone because people forget that creative work is still work.

Last year, I read Walking on Alligators, Susan Shaughnessy’s collection of short meditations for writers. There’s so much wisdom in this little paperback, but when I revisited it a few days ago, I noticed that I’d underlined the following sentence. ‘To finish a long project is to join the ranks of an elite. It is to be transformed.’ Creative work can be maddening, repetitive, painful and, in the words of Mann, it can make you, ‘pissed at everybody’. But it can also be fulfilling, life-affirming and transformative. We just have to learn not to quit.

How to keep going when things aren’t working:

1. Accept that creative work isn’t always easy. At some point, every project hits a rough patch and the desire to quit is hard to resist. When you reach this stage, ask yourself if quitting really is the best solution. If you keep quitting and starting again, you’ll never feel the satisfaction of finishing a long-term project.

2. Develop a daily routine. Decide on a place or time of day when you will work on your project (even for a short while) and stick to it. Everybody’s routine will be different, but Mason Currey’s book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work will give you some ideas.

3. Find satisfaction in the process, not the end product. Creative projects take many turns before they reach their conclusion, so don’t become fixated on the end result. According to Bayles & Orland you need, ‘a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way.’

4. Try a new technique or tool. If you get stuck writing a short story, jump over the blockage and write the ending – I used to do this a lot, and it really works. Alternatively, if your photo project hits a bump in the road, experiment with a new (or an old) piece of kit – it worked for Tomlinson.

5. Take things step by step. In her book Bird By Bird, Lamott tells the story of how her father helped her brother finish a school report about birds that he had been putting off (it was due the next day). ‘My father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird,”’ she writes. Keep things manageable. If the idea of finishing a book feels overwhelming, concentrate on writing the next sentence.

6. Find an outlet for your work. When you’re at school or university you have a readymade audience for your work – teachers grade it, students discuss it – but when you leave, you lose the encouragement and feedback of this community. It can help to find a new creative circle to share your work with, or a new outlet – this could be an Instagram account for your latest project or maybe a Substack account for your writing.

7. Remember that vision is always ahead of execution. The photograph, book, painting or film in your mind is almost always perfect, but when you try to convert it into something tangible you introduce your own humanness to it. Thankfully, your flaws, mistakes and limitations (essentially your humanness) are what other people want to see.

Listen.

To listen.
I’m so grateful to everyone who has taken the time to listen to the most recent episode of my podcast, We Need to Make Things. My guest, the photographer and travel journalist Suzy Bennett, shared so many wonderful stories about what lies behind our desire to create, how craft can benefit mental health and the importance of celebrating traditional techniques and ‘practical, earthy’ people.

One more thing…

The Japanese craftsman who brings broken books back to life.