Other bits and bobs I’d like to recommend this week.
Books
I may end up writing a whole post about this, but I finally opened Making Comics by Lynda Barry, which has been nestled in the kitchen with my cookbooks for almost a year. It is wonderful. Lynda is essentially teaching university students to draw like kids and it’s been such an inspiration to sit and draw with Davy and not worry about whether what I’m drawing is any “good.” I’m curious to see what comes of it.
Substack Reads
The best thing about Substack has been discovering so many new creators over the past year. Here are a few of my favorite reads from September.
After watching I immediately ordered Beth’s book which has been on my TBR list for years. (I believe this was originally a paid post and has been temporarily unlocked so maybe don’t put this one off if you’re wanting to watch it.)
Because it is a creative work written for an academic journal the tone is different than what you might be used to from me. There was actually some debate over whether what I submitted was an academic article or a creative piece. In the end we decided to lean more into my personal experience and I ended up removing the academic articles I originally referenced.
I’ll chat more about the writing and editing process with paid subs next week.1
My article is about neurodivergent friendship from the perspective of an autistic adult. I wrote about how “asynchronous friendships” and how online spaces are ideal for neurodivergent friendships.
If you’re not familiar with the term, asynchronous means “not happening at the same time.”
Most of our online interaction is asynchronous (with the exception of Zoom) so we can come to it when we have capacity and access it from the comfort of our own home where our sensory needs are met.
Online connection benefits all kinds of neurodivergent people (autistic, ADHD, OCD, etc.) and I explore that in piece whilst reflecting on the photography project that I co-created with .
Yes, after a brief panic of not having a sitter I have decided to continue making bonus content for the paid tier. We are finding a groove or a rhythm or something being at home together. And I rather like having somewhere to share more personal / intimate parts of the creative process with people who “get it.” If you’d like access to those pieces, but can’t afford it please let me know and I’ll gift a 6 month subscription.
Earlier this week Lauren Frances Evans invited me to speak on Zoom with Katherine Duclos at Samford Art Gallery in Birmingham, Alabama. Here’s the recording. We talk about neurodivergence, motherhood, and creativity.
This conversation with neurodivergent artists Katherine Duclos and Sarah Shotts is hosted by Lauren Frances Evans, Gallery Director and Assistant Professor of Art at Samford University in Birmingham Alabama and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition titled MORE-THAN-HUMAN WORLD featuring works by artists from Studio By The Tracks.
Links below.
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I’ve had a few questions about where to start with The Wheel of Time.
So I thought I would write a short post about the books, show, and community that I could point people too. I talked quite a bit about my connection to Wheel of Time (WoT) in my recent podcast chat with after she brought up the maps from The Lord of the Rings (LOTR).
As part of processing I’m a human – not a brand, maybe I will occasionally post deep dives into things I love. 🥰
These books came into my life at a time that was very formative and needed and they are essentially etched into my bones. Considering the time they were written (the first book was published in 1990) they were incredibly forward thinking and ambitious. If you’re a fan of fantasy books or television you’ve probably read or seen stories that were influenced by this series.
The first book purposely mirrors Tolkien’s world.
But it soon expands and comes to include a diverse cast of flawed and interesting characters. Compared to LOTR which completely sidelines women (don’t get me started) the most powerful people in the world of WoT are women and some characters even read as nonbinary.
While it is definitely true that some of the gender dynamics didn’t age super well, I feel confident that Robert Jordan would have added more nuance if he wrote the books now.
It was also purposefully diverse in a time that fantasy books were very white. And while the story begins with a male protagonist this is really an ensemble story.
This is a character driven story that takes place in a magical world.
It’s also rooted deeply in our own myths and legends. There are direct and indirect references to Arthurian legend, as well as Welsh folklore, and that of other cultures around the world.
The magic system is not hand waving; nor is it overly complicated and technical. I don’t think it spoils things to say that it is based in the elements (earth, air, fire, water, spirit) and described in a really interesting and captivating way. The way that “spells” are formed is called weaving, which I also find an artistic connection to.
I will include a content warning for depictions of violence.
Robert Jordan was a war veteran and the themes he explores in the work are directly influenced from his time in service. He does not shy away from the horrors of war so if you are sensitive to onscreen violence the show may be too much. When I read the books my mind somewhat glossed over the horror and graphic elements, but the show is putting them front and center and reminding me just how dark some of these characters are. This is a story of good trumping over evil after all.
That said, this is not a show to watch with young kids.
I know I have a sensitive readership and want you to be fully aware of what you’re getting into. From my perspective the story is not centered on violence, but there are some disturbing images when it does occur.
Season 2 is out now!
If you want to explore the world of the Wheel of Time the Amazon show is a great place to start. The actors all fit their parts amazingly well and are doing a beautiful job of bringing this show to life.
The best thing about watching first is that you can carry the visuals into the book as you read.
The show runner Rafe Judkins is a long time fan of the books and his team is working with the source material in creative and interesting ways. They are taking hundreds and hundreds of pages and keeping the heart of the story while translating it to a new medium. To me it feels like they’re collaging the material together in new and interesting ways.
You can always jump into the books later on. (Or the audiobooks which are great!)
Selfishly, I’d love to see the viewing numbers skyrocket so we can get the whole series. They’ve already been renewed for Season 3 and started shooting that before the strikes.
Joining the WoT fandom
The Wheel of Time fandom is the best – statistically the best – when it comes to being welcoming and inclusive.
That said, there are some trolls (especially on reddit & Facebook) but those are generally outliers. If you see someone being hateful or racist they are not speaking for the larger WoT community.
Twitter of Time
If you’re a new watcher (or reader) the WoT community really loves hearing and seeing your thoughts. You can jump into the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #TwitterofTime. (I know, I know, but I only follow #TwitterofTime and it’s actually a nice place – we collectively block the trolls.) Most of us have accounts just for WoT content so it is not a dumpster fire like the rest of Twitter.
We are pretty careful not to spoil new readers, but you do need to be careful. Here’s a helpful thread of how to block spoiler hashtags on Twitter.
The Light’s Work Podcast
You can also subscribe to The Light’s Work podcast which is generally spoiler free.
The Dusty Wheel YouTube
Watch out for spoilers, but The Dusty Wheel is the heart of the fandom. Be sure to check spoiler levels on this channel so you don’t run into secrets before you’re ready.
Keep in mind I love this series with my whole heart (while knowing it’s imperfect – everything is). If you only want to complain maybe find someone else to talk to. 😂
But I’d love to hear what you enjoy or find inspiring about the series.
What resonates? What Ajah are you? Who’s your favorite character?
This film is a documentation of sensory care. I am shown carefully removing clothing tags from my son’s clothes while he plays nearby in the studio. By recording the process I am making this invisible care visible.
Clothing tags are a sensory trigger for both myself and my son. Due to neurological differences in sensory modulation clothing tags can contribute to sensory overload. Removing tags is an act of care to prevent overstimulation and related meltdowns.
The tags collected were used to create a companion piece titled, Meltdown.
While documenting the removal process was part of the work I knew I wanted to display the tags themselves in some way. I considered many different things, but it was only after making my gleeman’s cloak that my brain considered sewing the tags onto a garment.
It was a great reminder that following our curiosity and doing things we might consider a “waste of time” can feed into our art practice in surprising and unexpected ways.
In retrospect this form seems somewhat inevitable. Sewing the tag back onto a garment. But I had to come at the idea sideways because my previous ideas were overly complicated.
I do have a penchant for over complication.
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Other bits and bobs I’d like to recommend this week. (I’ve been saving links all summer so I have more than usual.) 😉
Read
First off, love this piece about Zelda and neurodivergence by !
I also enjoyed this piece which resonated with my own tangled experience of perfectionism masquerading as professionalism. And the call to “do it messy” from .
“So, what makes these daily habits a ritual? For me, it’s about slowing yourself and the process all the way down. Essentially, you want to do what my Grandma called “making it nice”. Making it nice means taking the time over something you enjoy but could easily rush through and noticing how you can elevate experiences you’re already having to make them more special.”
I love Adam Savage’s YouTube channel and learning about his creative process. (You may remember Adam from Mythbusters.) He is also neurodivergent and I get so much inspiration from watching him work. This video is his reflection on (intentional) visual cacophony. Something I also find inspiring, but have been taught is “wrong.”
A peek into what I was watching and reading last year:
That’s all for this week. I’d love to hear from you.
Feel free to share a link to a post you’d like to share or tell me about a project you’re working on in comments below.
Cheers,
P.S. I don’t seem to be sticking to my fortnightly schedule. 😂 I have too much to share.
If you’ve been around you’ll notice this cycle between posting weekly, trying to pull back, and posting weekly again. I think allowing myself that space is helpful, but I am sometimes afraid I appear erratic. Nevertheless I want to be transparent about my process and this push and pull to manage energy levels is part of it.
It seems to happen when I try to write too many long form posts in a row. While I need to remember Substack posts can take many different shapes!
Last week I wanted to share my chat with .
This week I’ve finished two art works for my portfolio. Then I found this half drafted Rabbit Hole email which has been waiting to go out for some time.
I’m still going to be mindful of my energy levels, but I may pivot back to weekly because I just have too much to share for every other week. I’m musing on what this means for the paid tier and if I will go back to monthly bonus content. 🧐
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I’m back from my podcasting hiatus and so excited to share this episode with autistic artist & poet . We talk about creativity and its intersection with neurodivergence. It was such a great chat I completely forgot we were podcasting because Morgan was such a joy to talk to. Join us as we geek out about the things we love and our shared experiences.
Scroll down for the show notes and links to everything we mention in today’s episode.
is an autistic artist, poet, and musician. She has published several books, including the WSJ Bestseller All Along You Were Blooming. Morgan uses a wide range of media to make her work – everything from pencil and acrylic to digital collage and 3D virtual spaces, and much more.
Neurodivergent Space Time is a Substack publication by artist and author Sarah Shotts. If you would like more content about creativity and neurodivergence subscribe below.
Reconnecting to The Wheel of Time has reminded me what creativity felt like before it got all tangled up in career and profession and entrepreneurship.
Everything I did became fodder for “content” on Instagram, YouTube, or (eventually) Substack.
I love documenting the process, but the frame of creative business definitely impacted the types of things I chose to make and spend my time on. This was particularly tangled up in “positioning” myself as a professional artist & author.
Certain parts of my identity got lost along the way. I’m in the process of untangling it all which I wrote about a few months ago: I’m not a brand. I’m a human. 🫀
What I didn’t share then is that rediscovering my humanity was largely tied up in a book series called The Wheel of Time.
During my teenage years I had basically no friends my own age. What I did have was The Wheel of Time. I logged in to a fansite called Wotmania every morning and later on a fan fiction site called Silklatern. The interactions I had with other fans was the one place that I really “fit in”.
Navigating two degrees as an undiagnosed autistic took pretty much all of my social energy. During that time I completely lost touch with fandom and reading for fun. By the time I finished my postgraduate studies I’d pretty much forgotten what it felt like to get lost in a book.
Enter 2020. I had a one year old baby. The world was chaos. And I turned to… The Wheel of Time. I pulled the Eye of the World off my shelf and fell into a world of magic that I knew and loved. The characters were old friends and the story was comforting in its familiarity, but that wasn’t all.
Rereading the books awakened something in me.
A creative spark. It is no coincidence that these are the books I was reading when I starting writing my first book, Discover Your Creative Ecosystem.
The writing of Robert Jordan just has this effect on me. I love other authors and other books, but the Wheel of Time is etched into my bones.
It’s hard to explain. It’s… ineffable.
But there must be some kind of soul connection to something in this story for me. Why do we love the stories we love? It’s something I’m really curious about. It always feels flat and superficial when I try to explain.
The Wheel of Time has always inspired me to create. I high school I filled notebooks and notebooks with world building. I made sketches of costumes and drafted stories and put myself to sleep imagining characters in worlds of my own.
I gave up writing somewhere along the way, but after self publishing my first book I’ve also started writing fiction again. I’ve been working on a fantasy story that I’d like to tell for the last two NaNoWriMo’s and I’m ready to start working on it year round.
Meanwhile I have felt the ta’veren tug (if you know you know) pulling me deeper and deeper into WoT fandom community.
It’s becoming an important part of my life so you can probably expect to hear more about it here.
It all started in March when I created a muppet style puppet for a song parody contest… an in world version of These are the People in Your Neighborhood. The first project I’ve done purely for creative joy in YEARS. 🤯
This was in no way for my portfolio, content marketing, or even something for my family. It was a gift for the Wheel of Time community and complete joy to make.
I really loved the challenge of creating in a brand new medium (I’d never made a puppet before) and figuring it out through trial and error. I drew on various creative skills in a way I haven’t done since working on set and props during my undergraduate degree.
Almost immediately after finishing it I jumped into another project. A gleeman’s cloak.
Something I noticed about making something for me was that I didn’t have to fuss over setting up a camera to film or creating perfect process photos.
I wasn’t making this for DIY content. I was making it for me.
Because of this I worked for many hours at the kitchen table (much less photogenic than my studio) simply because I could cut squares or I could sew while Davy role played as Link from Zelda.
I wrote a bit about that here:
I sat down to write about the cloak itself today, but instead I found myself wanting to share the story behind how it came to be.
The shift that opened up “time” for something like this. News flash: I didn’t actually have more time. I just used my time differently. I spent a similar amount of time last summer making this.
And the value I’m finding in creative joy.
Let’s discuss.
What would you make if you had a dedicated period of time where you couldn’t do anything productive and had to let yourself play?
Where do you find creative joy?
Cheers,
Kindle Curiosity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I suppose I’ve always had limits, but before motherhood I always had the bandwidth (read: time and supports) to recover after overextending myself.
What I’m learning is that my autistic brain finds the daily reality of parenting to be overstimulating and exhausting. So I have much less ability to “push through” than I used to. And forcing myself to try can have some very real consequences.
So I’m considering all the plates I have spinning and which ones I need to set down.
I already know I’m at max capacity.
So I can’t start new things (like the fall semester of teaching university) without putting some plates down.
I actually meant spinning plates on sticks, which I learned to do in uni, but juggling plates and dropping them is also the right vibe. 😂
Something I can’t change is that we’ve lost our sitter. This may sound like small potatoes, but we have very specific needs for childcare. Finding a replacement will take some time.
One thing I can change is how often I post to Substack.
Moving forward I’ll be posting fortnightly instead of weekly… at least for now.
(That’s every other week if you’re not a Jane Austen nerd.) 😘
Kindle Curiosity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Ok, that’s it for this week. But I want to hear from you.
Let’s discuss.
Are you at capacity too? Do you have space to grow? Or need to cut some things loose?
Cheers,
P.S. I’m quite aware one of those spinning plates is my anthology. If you want to submit please send everything by August 15 so I don’t have to track you down!
Also I’m sorry I cannot review anyone’s material in advance. If you are interested you need to complete the submission form.
Submit below:
Down the Rabbit Hole is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a Messy Middle ramble podcast for paid subscribers. A peek into my creative process mid pivot.
Here is the transcript. It is messier than usual this week because we lost our sitter and I’m stretched a bit thin. But I think it’s close enough to follow along.
Here’s a peek at my gleeman’s cloak which I will write about next week!
And here is the Sensory Processing Training I mentioned.
A couple weeks ago I got stuck writing this post. Mostly because I needed 2-3 emails to explore everything I wanted to say. Here is the first. Sending it out early since I’m traveling this weekend. ✈️
I started publishing on Substack one year ago. 🥳
Today I’m pulling back the curtain on that experience including sharing exactly how much profit came in and where it went.
I feel like we’re all expected to project this smokescreen of ultimate professionalism when the real magic is human to human connection.
Over the past 10 years longform content seemed like it had it’s heyday and was a thing of the past.
Engagement on my blog gradually declined until it was crickets. My podcast was getting downloads, but there was no convenient way to hold discussions.
What I love best about Substack is the community. The robust commenting system that allows for ongoing discussion and connecting.
Over the past year I’ve noticed more and more comments in my posts and watched connections bloom and flourish.
My words now exist in an ecosystem instead of a vacuum and are having a real tangible impact.
I write for connection.
My goal isn’t more eyeballs or ever increasing paid subs (even though Substack seems to want us to want those things).
It’s about connecting with kindred spirits.
As an autistic person who spent most of my life feeling like an outsider… I do not take that connection lightly.
I write to exchange experiences about creativity, about neurodivergence, about identity, and about motherhood.
I don’t write to hear myself talk.
I write to hear from you.
Comments are the lifeblood of my Substack. Your words are what keep me coming back to the keyboard week after week.
Financial Transparency
I see more and more folks who are showing up to Substack as a full time job (or a big wedge in a multi passionate pie.)
Maybe one day Substack will be profitable for me, but for now it is a self sufficient passion project.
I also want to share transparently that my partner’s IT job covers most of our living expenses. And my university adjunct position helps us pay for childcare (a neurodivergent sitter who we love and are so grateful for.) Growing up in families with less financial stability I really want to name that privilege.
Last year I made a stab at envisioning my creative work as a business. But after my husband received a generous promotion I had to reevaluate.
Why are we always trying to make more money? What is the point?
What does it matter if I have two degrees and am not financially contributing to the family? What about all of my unpaid labor parenting and educating?
What if I didn’t ask myself what my work was “worth” but instead focused on the impact I’d like it to have?
I’m reimagining everything – starting with my paid tier here on Substack, but more on that later.
That said, I would love for my creative pursuits to break even.
Paid subscribers help me afford transcription for podcast episodes, upgrade equipment (like when my microphone stopped working earlier this year), and invest in materials and tools to make things.
Your support here helps me focus on making non commercial art like this:
And this:
Rather than chasing whatever seems the most marketable. 🐇
I’ve also decided moving forward that educational content I create about neurodivergence will be FREE for EVERYONE.
Which means the Sensory Processing Training I created last summer is now free to share with anyone (including schools and teachers!)
Here’s a breakdown of the money that came in and went out last year.
Paid subs came to $340.
Substack and Stripe took the first cut.
Then I paid for transcription services through Otter.
I paid for VSCO which I use to edit photographs on my iPhone.
Then, when my podcast mic died on me, I used the rest of the generous funds to upgrade.
NOTE: You DO NOT NEED a fancy microphone to podcast or share audio content. But when you invest in my creative work I like to use that to help improve my gear and pay for creative supplies.
After buying a cable for the new mic I was $8.15 in the hole. I see this as a huge win and am so grateful to everyone who has pledged for any length of time.
What’s next?
I want to do something BIG. Something EXPANSIVE. 💫
I’ve asked myself what I would create if I completely removed the pressure to monetize and I’m excited to share that with you soon.
Let’s discuss.
If you had the privilege and funding to undertake a passion project what would it be?
