This artist shows you how to create and share with authenticity

A simple method to fill your life with with craft

If you are like many writers and artists I speak with, you may feel it is difficult to share your work. You are unsure of how to fit more purely creative time into your life, and even more concerned with using up that time to share about your work. Likewise, again and again over the past 15 years, writers will tell me they don’t have enough to share. That, at best, maybe they could post on social media once a week, or a newsletter once a month.

Today I want to share a clear method for how you can create more, and share with authenticity. Everything below is taken from or inspired by

Samantha Dion Baker

’s new book: Draw Your Adventures: Making Art to Celebrate Everyday Experience and Travels Near and Far. I highly recommend you purchase a copy from the retailer of your choice.

No, you do not have to be an artist to appreciate her wisdom, which is why I will be translating the incredible strategies and tactics she shares in the book specifically to how writers can develop the craft of sharing.

Let’s dig in…

Your Daily Lived Experience is Expertise

So many writers and creators I speak with feel they have no authority to talk about their creative work. They tell me that they don’t have an MFA, haven’t yet published a book, don’t have any notable bylines, or have few followers. All of this is given as a reason why they can’t share about their creative vision — what they write and why.

Sometimes they explain this as a logical progression, “My book isn’t even done yet and I don’t have an agent. Who am I to talk about my ideas and inspiration?” Or they want validation from a trusted source before they share, "Sure, I’m writing a book about grief, but I’m not a grief expert. I want to wait until I have an agent and publisher, and then I’ll start a newsletter.”

But your daily lived experience is your expertise. Your curiosity, your caring, and the moments that fill your days.

The premise of Samantha’s book is that one can create every single day (if you like), and that this has a clear value. She focuses on what you see in the world around you, even your days are filled with what you may feel are ordinary places and mundane moments.

This extends to what you write and how you share. Writing can become a small but important part of your days. And sharing about what inspires you and why can be an extension of who you are as a human being, not a “brand” that you are building.

Develop Your Voice

You have a unique creative voice, and the world is a better place when you share it. In some ways, the idea of developing one’s voice can feel overwhelming to a writer. They may feel pressure for it to stand out, to be utterly unique, to speak to the big themes. Yet, I find that zooming into specifics — small moments and ideas and situations — can be much more accessible to help you create and share.

Samantha illustrates this in an incredible way in the book, encouraging you to focus on small things within a larger whole. This is how she describes the idea of finding a reasonable way in to drawing a scene:

“If the whole scene before you is intimidating, look for a small part that catches your eye. Within the bigger experience, what excites you, tells a story, and provides interesting content?”

She actually shows a small tool called a viewfinder, that allows you to hold it in front of you, and create a small composition from a larger scene:

Your unique creative voice is already inside you. Capturing and sharing it is the work of publishing and moving readers. Don’t always feel that what you share has to be big or trendy. Samantha shares a wonderful story in the book of going to visit her son’s first apartment.

Instead of drawing the obvious thing to remember the trip — the actual apartment, building, front door, she instead chose to draw scenes from her trip there, including an unfamiliar bus ride. She says, “Instead I chose the unexpected, secondary parts of the experience… As I have so often discovered, depicting the smaller moments of a much larger story make the resulting drawings more interesting and unique.”

Look for the uncommon narrative that is unique and special. It would be so easy to share an expected narrative about being a proud parent, or showing off her son’s sense of style in how he decorated the apartment, or talking about the passage of time. And those are all fine things to share. But instead, she looked for something that illustrated the texture of the day and experience. Her trip to the apartment was uniquely her own, and she found details that celebrate her unique creative voice. It’s all around you, if you just take the time to see it.

Samantha encourages drawing to honor good times and bad, exciting and mundane, because: “One benefit of drawing your adventure is that you will have something other than photographs to look back on to help you remember special moments. Making art forces you to take the time to really look at your subjects and think about the moments you decide to record. Invariably, you will remember the moments on a deeper level.”

In 2017, I encouraged in my book Be the Gateway to ignore best practices. To not think of how you can share as a copy of a copy of a copy of something that worked for someone else years ago. To not worry about aligning to trends. What Sam shares here is that idea, supercharged. She says: “There are no rules. Great artwork doesn’t require technical skill. Gaining confidence in your own unique art style takes time and patience, and is not always linear.”

All of this applies to your unique creative voice as a writer. One of the reasons I encourage you to share often is because this is a practice that develops over time. When you withhold, when you only create when conditions are just perfect, when you only share when you feel it is something momentous and “important,” an unexpected outcome is that you may not develop your own unique voice. You miss opportunities to experiment, to play, and to realize that you have so much more the share than you might think. That your writing is not just four bylines over the course of as many years, each published by noted literary journals. That publishing one essay per week can develop your voice in ways you never expected, and bring incredible satisfaction. Likewise, the more you share, the more it may bring you connection to others who appreciate your writing.

Samantha puts it this way, “Keep an open mind and be prepared for mistakes and surprises. If we are open to making unexpected marks and lines that don’t turn out exactly as we anticipated, we are naturally more pen to the possibilities of unique creative expression. This is how you find your own personal style.”

Years ago I remember author Dani Shapiro talking about how some of her best writing comes on days where she is completely uninspired, where there is no muse. And that when she looked back on writing she did on days where she felt totally inspired, in the end, it wasn’t usable material.

Challenge your own expectations about what is required for creative work. You may find that you have more access to creating and sharing than you think.

How to Find More Time to Create

Samantha shares so many accessible ideas for how to create more easily in a day —from the materials you use to how to find the time. For her own process, she tends to keep it simple, always having a pencil and paper handy. She makes her own sketch books, and encourages you to just have the basic supplies you need with you, to not overcomplicate the process.

I remember when I interviewed artist Marc Johns, he showed me how he makes these tiny little sketchbooks and always keeps one in his pocket. Do you worry that you can’t carry one more thing in a day? Well, it’s fascinating to hear what he doesn’t carry: a mobile phone. I’m not sure if he got one recently, but the last I spoke with him, he still did have a smart phone. So that opens up not only space in your pocket, but also a lot of your attention to create instead of checking a device.

While the book is called “Draw Your Adventures,” Samantha defines “adventures” in such a wonderfully counterintuitive way. She posits that everyday moments are filled with unique opportunities — small adventures.

For finding the time to draw, she says this:

“When traveling, I squeeze in moments to sketch and draw here and there, especially when I am with my family. I almost never have the time to sit and paint for an hour, because I am always moving around. I bring only my sketchbook or loose pieces of paper, a pencil, an eraser, and one or two pens. When I return home, that’s when the paints and brushes tend to come out.”

That paragraph blew my mind. That she integrates sketching into her time with family. That it is not some separate activity. That it can happen on scraps of paper.

She also encourages you to develop “a few go-to styles and techniques.” To me, this is very permission-giving. You don’t always have to write a long deep literary essay. Instead, you can develop easy and accessible styles that act as a scaffolding when you don’t have much time, or need a guide.

Samantha suggests giving yourself prompts to create, or doing quick sketches that you would later come back to develop, or taking photos of a scene to come back to later to do sketches of.

Throughout the book, it was so cool to see how a sketch can turn into a fully developed work of art. I think this can apply to loads of small ideas you have in your writing, and the value of developing a process to create more frequently, and sharing it with readers:

It's funny, each chapter addresses opportunities to create that I think people otherwise uses as excuses NOT to create:

• "I can't create today, I have a doctor's appointment."

• "I can't create today, I'm visiting my in-laws."

• "I can't create today, I have a long day at the office."

For each one, she carefully addresses why these are wonderful opportunities to create, with tips on how to do so. I’m not kidding — think you can’t create because you will be on a boat? She literally has a section on that!

Living Your Days as a Writer

What if writing wasn’t just an output, but a way of living. To live your days with writing as a constant; not an obligation, but an opportunity. Filling your life with creativity extends to sharing as well. To me, sharing is a craft, and the creative process can feel complete when your work truly moves someone.

I love how Samantha describes this: “It is possible to bring an abundance of creative energy to even the most boring daily activities. Sometimes a week will go by without anything super exciting or interesting happening. But these days are worth exploring so you can breathe new life and meaning into them. The everyday provides an abundance of subject matter that you can pick part and emphasize.”

When I spoke with author Michael La Ronn a few years ago, he talked about how he would sit in a chair and type out paragraphs for his book on his phone while waiting for his wife at Target. So much of what we see in life that may not feel creative, can be.

I love this page of the book that encourages you to look at household chores as an opportunity to be creative:

Creativity is All Around You, If You Look For It

There is a place in the book where Samantha suggests that if you are traveling by airplane somewhere, to sketch the seatback in front of you. This was a powerful reminder to me that creativity is all around you, if you make the intentional choice to access it.

In this specific instance, I can easily see someone say, “Ugh, I didn’t create today at all. I was stuck on a plane, we had a 1.5 hour delay. Luggage took forever to get, as did my car to the hotel. I collapsed at the end of the day, no time to write or draw.” I mean, this feels logical, right? Because they didn’t see or experience anything special. They didn’t have a magical moment of inspiration. And they had no time that would be dedicated to just creating because they were surrounded by strangers all day in very ordinary settings.

Yet, here is Samantha suggesting you sketch the pocket on the back of the seat in front of you. The one that looks similar to the 100 others on that same plane. The one you may reasonably dismiss as the last thing that could represent creativity. But that is the point: we can write or create wherever we are, it is a choice.

We are surrounded by possibility to develop and share your unique creative voice. Thank you to Samantha for this incredible resource!

You can buy her book here, and subscribe to her Substack here:

Draw Your World

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For my paid subscribers this week, I explore the question: Is "good enough" enough to reach your ideal readers? Access it here.

Reminder: if you want to explore working with me, there are two ways I collaborate with writers and creators:

1. One-on-one consulting

2. My Creative Shift Mastermind

As always, thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

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