Hi! My name is Ashlyn Anstee, and I tell stories with words and pictures. Sometimes, that’s picture books (like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Select “Hedgehog”), or graphic novels (my series “Shelby and Watts”), and sometimes it’s animation (I’ve directed at places like Warner Bros. and Cartoon Network).
This column, “For the Fun of It”, will also have words and pictures. Sometimes it will be stories, or how-tos, or thoughts. A little bit of everything. Hope you enjoy!
Poop.
Listen, I can already see the look on your face. Poop?! Really, Ashlyn? You made less than a half dozen columns already, and you’re already using POOP in the title?? But I swear, this method of journaling changed my brain. I stole this from my amazing writer husband, Grant Pardee, who developed this particular adaptation of the technique.
When I first heard the name, my face was like yours, but it really sticks with you- or rather, it doesn’t…. Haha.
You may have heard of “morning pages”. Julia Cameron describes them in “The Artist’s Way”.
In her method, she recommends writing three pages of longhand (aka handwritten) stream of conscious journaling. It’s a great technique, and the book itself is full of lovely methods to get your artist brain going.
But listen- I’m a self-conscious, anxious little bumblebee. I never kept a journal growing up. I would literally look at previous pages of my diary and judge myself for them. I found it really hard to write in general unless there was a specific clearly defined purpose. And since the purpose of this column and “play” is to explore creation without judgement, I wanted to show you the way cooler way to do morning pages. Cos here, we’re cool.
Here’s how you write poop pages.
Grab anything you like to write with- a google doc, a pen and paper, a bunch of post-its, some loose blank paper.
Set a timer for 10 minutes (and listen, your phone has a timer so no need to buy some cute apple-shaped timer from the internet, I see you googling!!!!!!!). Then write. Don’t stop. Don’t even pause, just write as you think. It can be as simple as “Argh what do I want to write about, what should I be doing, I’m pretty excited for dinner…”
Don’t worry about spelling mistakes, or anything. Just write what’s in your brain. Whatever you do, don’t stop moving that pencil or tapping on your keyboard. 10 minutes, that’s it.
Compared to the artist’s way method, it probably won’t be three pages. But maybe it will be! And when you’re finished, you can delete the document, or throw the pages away, or keep them. The point is that you wrote for 10 minutes, and it doesn’t really matter what they are. It got your brain moving, your fingers moving. There’s no judgement in them. They’re quite literally, a poop for your brain.
For me, this method helped remove some of the weird judgement I had about nice writing in my journals. It also feels nice because it’s only 10 minutes, not something like 3 pages where it can feel daunting. It feels like I can fit it in to every day, even the mornings where I wake up late. Sometimes I do them before I start writing, just to scrape off the rusties.
Thing of the Week
My thing of the week this week is a filofax- or any 6 ring binder! I’ve been using a filofax paper planner for years (I loooove pulling out and recycling days and weeks when I’m finished with them.).
I’ve recently been enjoying them for planning, I’ve actually been writing out outlines for each of these columns in this one!
I love it because I can pull out pages that I don’t like. While I am working on celebrating my mistakes, I love the ability to pull out pages when I don’t like them, or when I’m done with them. Sketching and outlining is allowed to be ephemeral, and it takes the pressure off creating something perfect with the first stroke of your pen. Let yourself make 5 or 10 ugly pages first. Remember, we all gotta poop.
ok love you bye.
For the Fun of It - poop pages
I really need to try this, I hate being precious about my materials and paper but I also have SO MANY blank sketchbooks