A “retrograde rocket” is a rocket engine on a spacecraft that helps slow the craft down enough that you can bring it out of orbit or land it safely. I’d like one for my spacecraft, please! (Collage from the newsletter.)
Holiday practice
From my (de-paywalled) letter on making time and space for your art this season:
Around the holidays, I often have to rely on the advice I give creative people who have new babies: “Find the one-armed, half-brained, miniature version of what you do.”
Put another way: What is the bare minimum amount of creative work you can do in any one day and still feel like a whole person?
The answer will be different for everybody. For me, the bare minimum is pretty bare. If I go for a walk, write at least two pages in my diary, and read a few pages of something decent, I can be pretty functional. For somebody else, the bare minimum will be much more.
Take a little time to figure this out for yourself. Once you know your bare minimum, then you can figure out what you have to do to make it happen.
Read the rest here.
Pizza night blockbusters 2021-2023
Because our programming is all Christmas favorites for the rest of 2023, I consulted the family pizza and a movie night logbooks and compiled a list of our favorite movies from the past 3 years.
One star = hit with everybody in our gang
Two stars = total classic
For (mostly) all ages:
- Kiki’s Delivery Service **
- Paddington 2 **
- Robin Hood (Disney, 1973) **
- Lilo and Stitch **
- The Wizard of Oz **
- Toy Story, Toy Story 2 **
- Mary Poppins
- The LEGO Movie
- The LEGO Batman Movie
- Ratatouille
- Turning Red
- Luca
- Angry Birds
- Wreck-It Ralph
- Coco
- Up
- The Shaun the Sheep Movie
- The Mitchells Vs. The Machines
- A Charlie Brown Christmas
- It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
- Elf
(Overall, it’s hard to go wrong with classic Pixar, Aardman, and Studio Ghibli.)
For older kiddos:
- Frankenstein (1931)
- King Kong (1933) **
- Jurassic Park **
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle
- School of Rock
- Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
- Into the Spider-Verse
- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
- Home Alone
- Matilda
- Honey, I Shrunk The Kids
- Creature from the Black Lagoon
If you’d like Meg’s pizza recipe, that’s here.
Signed books for the holidays
I signed a bunch of orders at Bookpeople yesterday. They told me their cutoff for holiday shipping orders is this Wednesday, Dec. 13. If you want to pick up a book in-person, the cutoff is Friday, Dec. 15. (While supplies last! They might sell out of books before then.)
You can order my books signed and personalized here. (Be sure to put how you’d like the personalization made out in the comments!)
Here’s how I described my books in The 2023 Kleon Studios Gift Guide:
The hardcover of my million-seller Steal Like an Artist and the matching journalare great all-around gifts, especially for younger people.
Show Your Work! is for people struggling to get their work noticed or their business going.
Keep Going is for people trying to stay creative in tough times.
If you know an audiobook lover, you can get the whole trilogy for the cost of one book.
If you want a “deep cut” for the true weirdo on your list, gift a copy of my CIA-does-haiku poetry collection, Newspaper Blackout.
Happy gifting!
Remembering what you want out of books
Yesterday’s newsletter about the discipline of reading begins:
I drew this diagram last week when I found myself reading a writer who seems to be interested in all the things I seem to be interested in, but they write about them in ways that drive me absolutely nuts. This kind of writer is frustrating because they are both annoying and valuable — I can’t ignore them completely because they have things that I want! These are the writers I skim. I skate over their text with a razor blade, scanning for good quotes and sources and links I can steal, scraping their footnotes and bibliographies. (A writer in this category can become a creative nemesis who motivates me to outdo them.)
You can read the rest here.
Filed under: reading
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