Hey y’all,

T.S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month, but the cruelest month in Austin, Texas is September. It’s still hot and sunny here and it probably will be until Halloween. The kids are back in school, so I’m getting up two hours earlier than I’d like to. Meanwhile, the world has gone back to work and my inbox is flooded. (Let’s not even mention the news.) How is anybody supposed to get art made in times like these?

I’ve gone back to basics. “First principles, Clarice,” as Hannibal Lecter said. “Simplicity.”

Here’s what I’ve been doing — I call it the one-hour studio.

At some point in the day, I go into the studio. I don’t touch my computer. I set a timer for one hour. I try to make some art. When the timer goes off, I either stop or keep going, depending on what’s on my calendar.

That’s it! If I do this enough days in a row, a body of work shows up.

Sounds so simple, right? Simple, but not easy.

The hardest part, I’ve found, is giving myself that one hour to spend. I have the enormous privilege of being my own boss and setting my own schedule, but there’s always a bunch of “admin” work to do. In fact, like many people, I could spend all day, every day, “jumping on a call” or answering freaking email.

I make the majority of my living writing books and writing this newsletter — but I wouldn’t have anything to write about if I didn’t, you know, actually make stuff! It makes it a little easier to budget playtime in the studio if I think of it as “research and development.”

I also try not to look at social media or the news before I go into the studio. This is probably more difficult than blocking off the time, honestly. What I’m trying to do is set up what Joseph Campbell called a “bliss station.” I write about it in Keep Going:

I sometimes go to ridiculous and/or expensive lengths to try to maintain this bliss station. I love listening to records, CDs, and tapes while I work, but I also like to stream stuff, too. In order to stay off my computer, I bought a fancy high-end Bluetooth receiver so I could stream/control music from my phone right to my stereo.