There is an evil purity to the blank page. The same evil purity found in un-molded clay or bare canvass. The evil that lives in pricey Italian notebooks that are too good for your writings. To write, to create, is to conquer this evil pure. To take something that’s been industrially made with a small threshold of error and difference, to take it and make it unique. Squiggling a line on the page would make it unique, but that’s not the thing most of us aim for. We aim for perfection. We think of what we will write before we write it, thus we are left thinking more than we are left working. Writing and creating are not things done in the head, but are things done with the hands. Only our hands can erase the evil pure with making marks, making mistakes and not being afraid.

• Make a mark
• Make a mistake
• Don’t be afraid

These are three things I write on the first page of every notebook I own. It helps me use them. There is something terrifying about breaking in a new notebook. There is this idea that the first thing you write will somehow be defining of the work you do. This can lead to us wearing out notebooks before they even have a page filled. Worse it makes us wait for inspiration, those little perfect moments when the words come together for you. That’s not creating. Inspiration is like finding money on the street, it’s nice, but you won’t find it there everyday. It will not be a way for you to live. Most importantly it’s not really yours. You can take credit for it, it can be the best thing you ever write, but it isn’t yours. It’s a discovery, not an invention. It’s important to invent. Invent something everyday. Make an imperfect something on the first page of your precious notebook and move on to inventing things.

When you’re not inventing you should be consuming. Read everything. Watch everything. Listen to everything. Give your mind something new to explore. It’s okay to have favorites, but it’s not okay to get comfortable. Don’t get stuck in a loop. If you just consume the same as you create, you’re in a loop. If you just consume a few genres of things, you’re in a loop. Ever feel like you had everything figured out? Just to later be surprised about how much you didn’t really get/know? You got comfortable. Life should be a constant struggle of getting new information and trying to process it while looking for more to consume. If you think you have it figured out, go consume something you wouldn’t, you’ll quickly see that you have it wrong.