501 - How To Create Gentle Habits with Sophie Yanow

29:33And I just have to like, I have to figure out a way to routinize these things that I know put me, put me in shape to actually achieve this. Yeah, man, that's, it's so funny how I don't feel like this is talked about a lot with creative people. As I'm hearing you say that, I'm thinking, man, like it's literally like, like the brain being just this muscle of creativity. It's, it's literally like thinking about athletes that aren't taking care of their body. It's like, but it's hard. I'm not, I am, look, I am not the, I shouldn't be talking about habits cause I find it so fricking difficult, but, um, well, Hey, I don't run anymore.

30:15Right. And it comes and goes and I have, you know, it's a lot of, it's a lot to, to, to be a creative person, let alone someone with ADHD that maintains habits. But they are, you know, the more I've learned, the better off I've been. So I think it's really important anyway. I want, you know, I was thinking about you talking about your teacher having you lie down and do this meditation. I actually think like why I have resistance to meditation is probably my hyperactive side of my ADHD because I have both types. Yeah. Both types. I'm not so much the hyper. I don't know. I, yeah, I I'd have to look back at my charts.

30:54I would say intuitively I'm, I think I'm less on the hyperactive. It depends though. You get me talking about a certain thing and yeah, I'll just, I'll be like, Oh, I'm sorry. Did I not let you talk for the last 30 minutes? Yeah. I have a problem with that. Um, the, uh, But, but so I think the hyperactive thing makes me a bit resistant. Although sometimes when I'm really stressed, I will do like some meditation app stuff. But I thought maybe also I have some like hangups memory wise, because our music teacher did this guided meditation once and I was really like so relaxed. And then at the end she went, okay.

31:37And we're all freaked out. know. It was like, yeah, I was like, this is abuse. We were like, it was like heart attack. Oh my gosh. What are you doing? Like just, you know, drunk with power with these kids, but with meditation, what has helped you get into it? Because for me, it's just an overwhelming idea. I already struggle with just sitting still, let alone, you know, so I don't know what things help you to get in that i only do guided meditation like i don't sit down and go like all right let's go we got this like me too i solo no way yeah so you know i mean uh there's headspace there's breathe i think i haven't really i i don't know there's free two minute meditations on youtube yeah i for me it's like i gotta find the voice that's like sometimes i'll put one on.

32:32I'll be like, Nope, nope. We're noping on out of here. But, um, but yeah, there's, there's, uh, on YouTube, there's meditations of all, of all links. So you can, you can, it sounds silly to have a two minute guided meditation, but like, turns out it's not silly. It's awesome. Yeah. It can really do the trick. One thing you touched on was the identity portion. Could you just elaborate a little bit on that? Yeah. Okay. So again, I mean, it's funny. Cause I'm saying this stuff. I'm like the research stays but i can't cite my sources really here uh a lot of it is in james clear's book and also bj bj fogg's book tiny habits i mean he's fogg is the actual researcher yeah i guess you know i would say i think that james clear's book is much more accessible but fogg's book it's closer obviously to the actual research because he's the researcher um so any of this stuff you know if you want to look it up afterwards that's that's where those things would be i guess but the identity thing is just that it's it's easier to form a habit if it's if it's part of an identity that you either want or already identify with so for me i have identified as a cartoonist for so long that building habits around making comics you know it's like i want to be i want to maintain my you know being part of the in-group and so this is the thing that I you have a little more I don't know if it's willpower what you call it but just compulsion to actually follow through um you know I think when I was when I had those virtual work buddies they were all cartoonists so I think that that also helped it was like okay you're doing the thing that I want to do and I'm doing the thing that you want to do and you know so it reinforced the identity portion of it as well yeah yeah and And, you know, when I first started the show, if I would get to a point where I was like, oh, this really just, just go check out the book.

34:36I realized like some people want to do that, but a lot of people that are creative artists, you know, they're actually appreciating me condensing it and translating it to creative people. So, you know, I'm happy that you're here talking about it because not everybody wants to go read these things. Yeah. But I, yeah, the identity thing's huge. And I experienced that firsthand where growing up in the Midwest, where not just the Midwest, but my particular family and upbringing, like we had terrible eating habits, like just really, really bad, like fast food, like tons of crap. And when I moved to the UK and lived over there for five years, it really quickly changed who I was.

35:22And I think it's James Clear that talks about how, you know, joining groups where the desired behavior is normal. Like it's accepted. It's what everybody's doing. It changes you so quick. Now, moving to England didn't help me on the drinking front. That actually took me, you know, way worse off in terms of drinking habits. But yeah, this idea of like owning the identity, getting into those groups. and that's, you know, groups like this one online. How did you end up setting that up? Were these people that you went to school with, you said?

35:59It was a range. One of them was one of the folks that I used to teach at the Center for Cartoon Studies with. One of them was someone who had been one of my grad students and was now working on his own book. Different. I mean, you know, I guess the thing is I was instating this habit at a point where I had a community. It was just a community that I was physically far from because I had moved. So, um, but I did have, I did have folks to tap in to that with, and which is, you know, and I think that's an, that's an interesting thing also that it's like this in-group thing is so, or, you know, being a part of a group where the thing that you want to do is, is the norm.

36:42It's like so helpful. And, and when you're a part of maybe a more organic community, you know, like when I was first making comics, I was in the San Francisco Bay area. I had a lot of comics, like cartoonist friends who were a fair bit older than me, but they were, they were just sort of in, there was an artist community. Right. But I would see with my grad students that they would come together for two or three years and have that. And then they would, you know, move to the whatever four corners of the world. And suddenly it was like, they didn't have it. So I, I witnessed that. I think before I had to figure that out for myself and some of them figured it out better than others.

37:29So, uh, yeah. If anyone asked me about, should I go to art school. I always say like, if you can do it without going into tremendous debt, yeah. Uh, I highly recommend it, um, to be a part of at least some kind of organized community where the desired behavior is the norm. Like that it's so, it's such, such an important thing. And I wish, I wish it was easier to cultivate online. It feels like it should be, but it's, it doesn't, I don't know. It's not easy. Yeah. Some of it, some of it. Yeah. I did this thing. This is a little, I don't know, funny. I did this thing called that I called backpack like a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, which was BAC PAC build a comics practice among community.

38:17And I was doing these, like I was doing these, um, zooms where it was just like an hour and a half. And it was just I was walking. I was walking them through an exercise and it was like a free thing. It was kind of just an experiment. And I would have like 30 or 40 people in the in the call. And we would do the exercise. But then after every couple of steps, I would just put them into breakout rooms. And then they would like talk amongst themselves and just talk about what they had been doing. And then we would come back and keep doing the exercise. And one of the folks that, that attended this, I've now, I've met a bunch of people, you know, in different places who were like, Hey, I did your backpack thing.

38:58And one of the people was like, Hey, I did backpack. And then one of the people that was in one of those breakout rooms came and stayed with me. And I was like, yes, we did it. So I don't know. You got to get a little weird, but it's possible. I don't know. Yeah. That's awesome. So you're going to ever going to do that again, you think? I would I would do it again I would like to do it again it's just like yeah the teaching and I started doing I don't know I have a lot of I have a lot of different plate spinning that's cool yeah I get that and I you know there's a lot of things I'd like to do that I just don't can't make time for something I wanted to I got really interested in like creating some kind of creative incubator thing where you get people together they're they're talking about a project that they wanted to do for a long time, couldn't find the willpower, couldn't find the structure, you know, whatever, and just have some kind of accountability that lasts for a semester, you know, 12 weeks or something.

39:58Yeah, that's really cool. I love that. So, okay, so let's go back real quick to after you hand this comic in and then, you know, even just the workload you probably needed a break from, But then I wondered also if once it came out and it wins an Eisner award and Alison Blackdale is loving it and all of that, did that also add to the, I don't know if I, I don't know how to make stuff or are you making it more complicated? Cause I was, I mean, I'm putting myself, I'm projecting. Cause if that was me, I'd be like, oh God, what do I do now? Is that, was that an element of it? Okay. Yeah. I do think I talked about this in a blog post a little bit.

40:44I, there definitely was a suddenly like, Oh no, people are looking at me like feeling of like, like, yeah, I had published like quite a bit of stuff before that. But I don't know if it was the book itself or it was just like an accumulation of enough stuff where I was like, huh? Yeah. Okay. like I'm an author and when I put a thing out, it's like, it feels representational of, of what I do, you know, like your body of work and you're not an author, you're now a celebrated author. Like that's, that's a whole other thing. Um, so how do you, how did you get back into making stuff? So, uh, yeah, it took me so, so, so long and I just like, it really took me getting fed up and just being like, okay, Sophie, get it together.

41:39Like, you want this thing, you've figured out how to do these things in the past that you wanted, and you found hard. Like, let's figure it out. So I hadn't, you know, up to and during making the contradictions, I had been really into the habit building stuff. But I hadn't had such a focus on it, you know, in the time after it, I think I was just doing a lot of different other things. And, um, so I was like, okay, I'm going to revisit this stuff. Maybe I can get myself out of this slump, um, by doing, by doing this. And that was like, um, it was almost four years, I think after I had handed the book in.

42:21So I sat down and I tried to, I tried to come up with, With a habit that would address a few different things, like including this fear of putting sort of uncooked work out into the world. I do think that was a big, a big hindrance, like a big root. I think it wasn't just this thing of like, I can't sit down and draw comics. It was like, I am a little bit afraid of showing my soft belly to the world right now. Um, so, uh, yeah, you know, I, I think it's really an interesting, um, notion because before you get any accolades, you, you, us, anyone, you feel like, well, you know, it'll be so good to get that validation and then I'll feel really confident and whatever.

43:16And then you realize like, oh, there's just two different chapters. The first one we're like waiting for it. And then the one after we're like, oh my gosh, now I have to do, I have to keep it up or, you know, prove something. So it's not, you know, you have to figure out how to have this relationship to confidence and putting stuff out and no matter what you're doing. So what, that was that where the gentle comic making came in? Yeah. Yeah. Could you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So, okay. So when I sat down and was like, what, what am I going to do? I was like, okay, I have to do, I just have to think about it in these, in these terms where this is another thing that clear talks about is this idea that like, good work is the byproduct of habits, right?

43:59Like, it's not go out and try to make the thing that is the best thing you've ever made. It's make a bunch of stuff and somewhere in there probably will be the best thing you've ever made. yeah which is like ah you have to make all this embarrassing stuff and then like and hope that people just forget about that stuff i guess or or hope that everyone is generous and um you know and we'll eventually read the thing and that they're like oh yeah oh this is the this is the one here um but it's like so hard yeah it's impossible when uh oh god yeah overcoming that is it's very hard it's very hard I I think I was really uh really obsessed with thinking about creative arcs and how what a creative career looks like and I knew I didn't want to be a one-hit wonder and I didn't want to be I didn't want to be someone who only made stuff when they were younger I wanted to and I the people that I would see do this long-term thing that had even, you know, some of their best stuff come out way deep into their creative journey.

45:09I think the, almost all of them had published a lot of stuff that wasn't great. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I just felt like I, I, I'm willing to do that if that means, you know, growing over time and, and sticking at it and, you know, all that. Yeah. Like intellectually, I can say I'm willing to do that, but emotionally. less shame in terms of just artistic integrity. I'm not, you know, I don't know that probably that's a benefit of coming from the Midwest suburbs or something. I never, I don't know. I didn't even know, like you weren't supposed to call yourself an artist for a long time. Like I, I didn't have that, that phase.

45:46These hangups are the worst. They're so these stupid barriers. And so what is the gentle comic habit? Okay. Yeah. So the habit itself was, it was four things. And so the first thing was to spend to start out spending one minute drawing a comic. And this is like the just putting your shoes on to run and not doing the other things. Not running, right? It's like spend a minute drawing a comic. Don't spend more than that on the first day. And then the second thing is to try to draw a comic every day. And I was saying, okay, I'm allowed to miss one day, but I can't miss two days in a row. And I would track it.

46:26You know, I had a little like, I think it was just like graph paper that I would put little X's on or whatever. And then every day that I draw a comic, I spend one additional minute drawing the comic. And no more than that. Yeah. And then the last thing is to post it to my blog. Not to Instagram, not to Twitter, whatever. post it to the blog and then that's it. Yeah. So that's great. And what, what, I mean, I can see a lot of benefits to the idea of just posting to your blog, but what was your thinking behind that? I think that, I mean, some of it was the, I wanted to do, I mean, so something that I know that you've talked about in, on this podcast in the past is the idea of like practicing on stage.

47:23Right. And I wasn't fishing, by the way. I did not think that's not what I was thinking. Well, that's one of the things, right? So, but I mean, I think that, so I wanted to be, I wanted to do the embarrassing thing again. Like I wanted to put the stuff out because I was like, this sucks. Like it sucks that I'm stopping myself from putting stuff out into the world because I'm afraid of how I'm going to be perceived. And so I do think putting it on the blog, it meant that, you know, there's no likes on my blog. There's like comments are allowed, but it just meant like, okay, I'm putting a thing out, people can see it.

48:00But I'm also not putting it out in this way where I'm like gonna have I'm not gonna stress out about it. And if I if I post it, and I feel good about it, I can repost it somewhere else if I want to. But the primary thing is I'm going to publish this thing. You know, maybe I'll put it in my newsletter, which is very infrequent. But like, maybe I'll put it there, whatever. But the idea is like, I'm not hiding, right? I'm not, I'm not putting it, you know, on every, whatever, plastering it across the land, and then having weird feelings when people, you know, like it or don't. So there was there was that element, but also it was like a public commitment, which is also something that is useful for habit building, right, is to say, I'm going to do this thing.

48:43And even if even though I knew at first, it was only like a handful of my friends probably reading it. Because I told some of my friends, I'm going to do this thing. And then they would text me and be like, hey. And I was like, okay, this is the level. And eventually, it was more people reading it. So that was the idea behind posting to the blog. I wanted to have a place where the stuff would end up. I wanted to rip the bandaid off from this publishing fear that I developed. And I also just think that people... I just think people should have blogs yeah like especially in this era where it's really clear that social media is just like who the heck knows like major death spiral right yeah it's just like have your little garden you know like yeah so when some of those little comics though did take off on some level how did that happen with them being on your blog that was just i mean i did post stuff on like sometimes i would do a comic and a couple days later, I would be like, you know what?

49:46I kind of like that one. I would get to the point where I was like, I don't feel tender about this. It was a nice thing to be able to be like, I'm going to put this out while it's still raw enough that I'm not giving myself a chance to second guess it and think like, well, is this really good enough to publish? That's not the question. There's no question. It's like you're publishing, right? If you're making the thing, you're publishing. And then later I would be like, hmm, I kind of feel like I'm going to feel all right about that one. And then, you know, sometimes posting it and then, whoa, like, okay, this one really hit.

50:18So. That is amazing. And this is the proof that I wasn't fishing for some thing about me was that I didn't even think of it that way. And this actually is really evolving my thinking of the writing on stage idea, because I was thinking about how So anytime I've told anybody to write on stage on the internet, I've always thought, yeah. And the problem with that is it's public. It is public. Whereas with a standup comedian, they're going into a club, lots of which have you lock up your phone. So that's a really isolated space to practice and make mistakes. And you did such a cool version of that.

51:00And I actually realized, oh, I did that in a different way on accident where podcasts don't have this virality. They don't, they really don't like, especially if you're not doing video with it. So, you know, doing that for 10 years was really comfortable. Now that we're putting them on YouTube, I'm noticing like, oh, I'm more aware of like, if this, this could take off in a way that, you know, used to in theory sound really exciting, but now it's like, oh man, that's a totally different thing. So I love this thing that you had where you have this way where you can have a more confined space to try things and put things out regularly and then have also the delayed thing of a couple of days later, if you're like, you know what, actually that one is, I like that one.

51:46Then you can put it on the next level. Well, on a place where it can maybe have a little bit of traction organically. That's really cool. I'm like, I'm very, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. I think, I mean, that's also when I was doing the contradictions, I didn't mention this, but I, I also, I had a Patreon and I was, and I, and I put it up as a web comic eventually, but at first I was just putting it on the Patreon and it was paywalled. And so it was also this nice place where it was like, I mean, that was great. Cause I was like, these people are paying me to have a deadline. I thought about doing that and I've never, cause I, I have some bigger projects that I haven't really been able to figure out how to get myself to finish or do.

52:29And I've explored that, but I didn't. Yeah. I would. So you like that process. It seems like a great yeah i mean i don't know if patreon itself is necessarily the place there's alternatives that i've looked into and are like like a ghost you could do it through ghost that's a cool open source blog sub stack alternative that lets you take people's money or lets people give you their money um uh but it was really it was really nice yeah to be like oh yeah these people are paying me to have a deadline, but also it's this, it just does, did feel like a very intimate space of like, I can post, you know, there's stuff that I, that's on my Patreon that, I mean, it's public, but I'm glad it's not like being crawled by search engines.

53:17That's a great, I love that. I also just think so much of this show is about how to hack your brain to get yourself to do stuff. How do you find a way? And that, that's a great method for longer term stuff. And I don't, you know, as on the consuming end, like I have people that I support through these various mediums that, you know, writing music and they're releasing demos and all that. And I'm like, I'm happy to be supporting that. And I like the early access and the people that don't like, just don't sign up. That's just the deal. That's awesome. Well, okay. I, I loved your blog post. Where can people go find that?

53:57Because a lot of this stuff is kind of bullet pointed in there. Yeah. So my website is sophieyano.com, which is Sophie with a P-H, S-O-P-H-I-E. And then my last name is Y-A-N-O-W.com. The URL is just sophieyano.com slash a gentle comics habit, but it's a bunch of dashes in between. So if you go to the website and go to the blog, you kind of have to go back. a few, like a page right now, well, a few pages, I guess. I don't know. I'll put it in the show notes too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, it's on the blog and that's, that's really the spot to read it. Cool. You know, I later, you know, I don't know what you have in the works, but I'd love to have you back and just chat through some of the creative side, the story side.

54:45Um, I have so many more questions now about your thinking around showing, not telling and how you who are wanting to work that stuff out, but also future projects. So when you have the next stuff come out, let's talk. One more thing about the blog though. Yeah, go ahead. I put a little hashtag in there, the like gentle comics habit. And people have been posting, like lots of people have been doing it. It's amazing. It's really fun to watch. And they're still doing it. It's been about a month now since I posted that. And there are people who have been doing it for the whole month. you know there are people who started fell off but there are also people who are starting now and it just keep like i'm just sort of looking at it and i'm like this is this is very charming and really cool to see it actually working for people and people are people are posting and saying like wow this this is working

55:55All right, as promised, I'm back with the creative call to adventure. This is your CTA this week. It's called the Gentle Comic Habit, and it comes straight from Sophie You Know's blog. These are the rules. You spend one minute drawing slash writing your first comic. That's number one. Number two is try to draw a comic every day. It's okay to miss a day, but don't miss two days in a row. Number three, spend an additional minute each time you draw a comic. So day two, you're doing two minutes. Day three, you're doing three minutes. Day four, you're doing four minutes. So on and so forth. You're building that habit over time.

56:40And then number four is to post it. Sophie posts hers to her blog. You can post it to Instagram. You can post it to Substack. but there's an element of accountability there. And so when you post it, use the hashtag gentle comic habit or tag, Sophie, you know, and tag me on that first one. I'd love to see these get started. I think this is just such a brilliant way to get that visual brain, the symbol brain, and the writing brain going and working up over time. Even if you're a musician, I can see how this would fit into your practice or a filmmaker. I think it's kind of like a visual journal of some kind.

57:22I think it's really powerful, really interesting in a way to not just be creative whenever you want, but make it a practice and a habit. So I'm super glad that Sophie started this and came on the show to share it. And I think there's just a lot of rich material here. thank you Sophie you know for showing up on this episode with such brilliant things to talk about it was great to connect with you hopefully we get to speak again sometime massive thanks to another Sophie Sophie Miller who is an editor and producer on this show massive thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for audio and video edits and sound and video design and animation for us on YouTube massive thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme music and soundtrack.

58:12And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, stay pepped up.

58:38okay the podcast is over so i don't know why you're still listening uh but i am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our newsletter at andyjpizza.substack.com and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our Creative Career Path hand booklet, and the whole process is in there. And you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up.

59:21But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up, y 'all. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante and Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath, and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature podcast wherever you get your podcasts.