A case for Inktober

And the downward spiral looks more like a cowboy hat.

During Pandemia, while everyone else was waltzing with their muse (be it sourdough or otherwise), my muse abandoned me.

Nearly two years prior to this, I reveled in an intoxicating creative streak born from a Big Idea. I worked on my New Idea Obsession™ during all my waking hours, spun up a website, wrote a weekly newsletter, launched an online shop, and even crafted a handmade kit so others could try out my Big Idea for themselves. My Big Idea and I? We were ready to take on the entire universe.

It was all fun and games until I dared myself to do Inktober in 2019. For the uninitiated, Inktober (or its less controversially embroiled moniker, Promptober), is a 31-day challenge to draw every day in October based on prompts doled out by either the official Inktober dude – or anyone else who wants to emcee the global phenomenon. 

For those who don’t know me, when fed a challenge, I’m a hungry beast, a glutton for punishment. I see your Challenge and raise you More Challenge. By the end of October, I was exhausted. But, oddly enough, not by the daily, heavy grind part.

Turns out, the daily shouting into a void is the exhausting part. 

I had a handful of die-hards (hi mom!) who followed along, but the high production-to-audience ratio we creators dream about just wouldn’t arrive. Once all my friends and family bought a piece (thanks guys), tumbleweeds barreled through my online shop. As fear gripped my psyche, I laced my social posts and newsletters with anxious desperation disguised as self-help jargon. Then the final blow. The oncoming train of failure made full impact as Covid swept the world. Irony Alert: my Big Idea was supposed to be an art therapy tool for anxiety. The very tool I had developed over the past 18 months was tailor-made for daunting times like this. Yet I was paralyzed by my own self-induced pressure. Or maybe I willfully tied myself to the tracks. This was my way out.

I struggled to stay in love with my Big Idea after that. Drawing felt pained and pointless. Irony Alert Part Two: I named my project “Resistance Rebels” after Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art concept, yet here I was infected by a raging case of Resistance. No inoculation on earth could possibly fend off the infection. The whole project felt silly and strange like I’d been high for two years and finally sobered up. I illustrated all of six times throughout 2020. I officially abandoned my Rebels post at the start of 2021.

As I review the notes, turns out my creative guides hadn’t left me. I’m the one who did the leaving. It was a big ol’ dusty hat I’ve donned repeatedly over my lifespan, a classic pattern as indicated in this very official diagram, invented by the Raffel Brothers.

In early 2022, after a short bout of therapy, a year dedicated to falling back in love with myself (it really isn’t as cringy as it sounds!), and copious amounts of journaling (self-help in its purest form), I found my creative self again and at maximum volume. Here we are.

But those old days still haunt me. I’ve already written about it again and again. In fact, I have to stare down my crippling fear of failing every single time my sweaty monkey finger hovers over Substack’s “send to everyone now” button. In fact, the sole reason I decided to write Bonesick under a pen name was to hide from this monster who tracks my every move—as if changing my name could hide the stench of imposter syndrome. This year, I had managed to evade this clever creature, but when the crickets descended upon my last Substack post two weeks ago, the monster returned in full regalia, gnashing his sharp pearly whites.

“It’s staaarting,” the monster cooed in my ear as his putrid drool dripped down my neck. 

So now we’ve arrived in the present moment, September 15, 2023. If you follow artists anywhere, Ink/Promptober is everywhere. Never in a billion years would I have even considered putting myself through it again. But never in a billion years did I want to wax poetic to you, dear reader, about my creative fears because I find the grip of validation to be gross, embarrassing, and terribly dull. (Obvs we ALL have this wound, why do we keep poking and picking at it?!) But as the scent of autumn returns, I’ve arrived back in the echo of my broken record. Nostalgia convinced me to revisit the only living evidence of my defunct Big Idea: the old Instagram account.* As I scrolled, I felt profound sadness. Grief over its death laid itself down cold and heavy upon my entire body. Somewhere, in the distance, a voice from a funeral attendee who departed the gravestone: “So young! So much potential!” 

If you’ve been reading Bonesick for a while now (especially if you read my last post) it should be crystal clear that Abandonment–Acceptance is the two-sided token that permanently resides in my pocket, my fingers fidgeting its grooves and indentations incessantly. Every time I send my creative younglings out into the world, I flip that token: Will they accept my weird baby today or not? Will I stay in love with it—without a single condition—or will I abandon it once again? If I leave before everyone leaves me, it’s not failure, right?†

Not-so-twist ending: something deep inside—maybe my muse, maybe my monster, maybe one and the same—has challenged me to use this October as a do-over. Double down on the promise I made to embrace Bonesick for as long as I can, conditions be damned. I had an ah-ha moment as I read fellow Substacker D.J. Coffman’s Draw or Die post about the perils of Promptober. It occurred to me that if we artists use it to fulfill some arbitrary externally-driven metric (e.g.: get more likes, find a bigger audience, etc.), we’re pretty doomed. But if an internal spark drives the engine (e.g.: practice drawing to improve, learn a new skill, or -GASP- just have fun), failure isn’t even an option. Metrics are all your own. You win no matter what.

So, yes, muse and monster, I see you and raise you an upgraded version of myself this go-round. See you in October. Or maybe I don’t. Win-win.

* To end the ridiculous pursuit to elude my monster, I’m going to pull the curtain back and disclose a little more about the wizard who writes these words. For example, hi, my real name is Katie. Pleased to meet you and, if you made it this far, thanks again for reading and accepting me and my weird babies.

And on behalf of creators everywhere, a universal thank you for your continued support when there is so…much…content, and noise, and the void is actually not blank and black at all, but one giant writhing pile of human like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. You found us in all that mess. We are eternally grateful.

† Welcome to Bonesick.

Oh and if you missed The Candidate two weeks ago because you were:
a. inundated by Labor Day marketing emails and missed it,
b. moving,
c. prepping for school,
d. outside during the final summer daze, or
e. not in the mood then, but maybe now you could get there…
You can read it here.