The Backspace Treatment

The computer is...not really good for generating ideas.

There are too many opportunities to hit the delete key.

The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us -

we start editing ideas before we have them.

The cartoonist Tom Gauld says he stays away from the computer

until he's done most of the thinking for his strips,

because once the computer is involved,

"things are on an inevitable path to being finished.

Whereas in my sketchbook the possibilities are endless."

- Austin Kleon

Steal Like an Artist

My journal is my sketchbook.

If you've seen my journal, you probably noticed it is massive. Hundreds of pages large.

The larger my journal, the more ideas I seem to have. Maybe it avoids telling my subconscious that there isn't enough room to map out ideas fully, I don't know.

My journal is chalk full of ramblings, drawings, and exclamation points.

It's where my dreams begin, with all of the enthusiasm and clear thinking that happens when a project is just being born.

You won't find anything blacked out, marked out, or torn out. It's where my free-thinking occurs.

Yet, somehow, I find myself drawn to my computer - as if the only "real" or "legitimate" work is typed up and published.

How many successful ideas have received the backspace treatment before you had time to develop them?

Destiny Yarbro

Provo, Utah

19 Feb 2016

5:00 AM

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