Real magic lives in sketchbooks

The taming of the creator mind

When’s the last time you updated your Substack About page? ...Me too. I’m hosting a chill co-working session next week to fix that (it's about time): https://lu.ma/oqlstd07 and https://lu.ma/8zan97sz

I zoomed past the dozens of vibrant oil paintings, my eyes locking instead onto something quieter but infinitely more intriguing: the sketchbooks. Nestled under glass at the centre of the room, these unassuming pages felt like they were holding the secrets I was looking for.

Helen McNicoll, though her life was cut short in 1915, left a legacy in the Impressionist movement. The Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition not only highlighted the Canadian painter’s finished masterpieces but something far more intimate: the raw, untamed pages she filled during her travels to Europe. Sketches of fellow passengers aboard transatlantic steamships. Entire books dedicated to figure studies and landscapes. Thirteen sketchbooks revealing her creative process—her experiments, her learnings, her victories etched in paper.

When I started learning how to draw, I carried a sketchbook everywhere I went. A sketch isn't just a practice. It's a fleeting thought made tangible, often created in one sitting. Each page captures a challenge worked through: the curve of a woman’s shoulder, movement suggested with a few strokes. These aren't just drawings. They’re glimpses of creativity in progress, showing the artist in their most vulnerable form.

I feel the same thrill with other great works. Hamilton: The Revolution gave me a peek behind the curtain (pun intended) of one of my favourite musicals. I learned that some lyrics were more intentional than others. There’s emails, texts, notes of which parts were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s genius brain and which lyrics were ad-libbed by his equally genius cast. Tick, Tick… Boom! showed how lyricist Jonathan Larson’s orphaned stanzas written in his notebook appeared in the final track, Louder Than Words. Like McNicoll’s sketches, the processes hold a raw energy that polished works can’t. I could witness these creatives building on their art, one step at a time. It's like catching creativity in its wild state before it's been tamed into a final form.

Creation is a mysterious process. When muddling in my own work, I’m often left pondering what the next step would be. Which anecdote best delivers an idea? What’s the payoff to the tension introduced in the opening number? By looking at artists’ notebooks and sketchbooks, I could have a much better guess on how they solved their own respective problems. Like how Lin-Manuel Miranda came up with so many rhymes for Burr (he has a list for that). These scribbles are a porthole into solving the puzzles that drive the creative process.

I see myself in notebooks, sketches, behind-the-scenes videos. I geek out over personal knowledge management tools, compare my note-taking systems to those of my idols, and trade tips with fellow creator friends on how to make better work. I binge creators’ second brain tours. I imported a bunch of my notes into Obsidian only to ditch it for Roam.

Oh, the glorious mess of it all! Inspiration gathered onto one plane sprawling with ideas, sifted and reshaped into something cohesive. The crescendo of creation is loud: the quick succession of keystrokes, the crystallization of melted metal, the final moment where the shutter button is pressed!

And then it’s over.

The final artwork is… static. Just like those oil paintings hanging in the AGO, finished pieces feel distant, static. Beautiful but sealed behind varnish. The real magic lives in those sketchbooks I was drawn to: the messy pages where possibilities still breathe, where problems still itch to be solved.

I never reread my essays after they’re published. A finished piece just marks the end of a project. Nothing more than a period. But in my drafts folder, in my notebooks, in the margins of my thoughts?

That's where the creative problem awaits.

That's when it gets real fun.

Thank you to folks who were involved in the process of this essay:

Josh Ponelat

,

Eva Juretic (Thumb)

,

Tahsin Khan

, and

Rik

.

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Update log:

• ✏️ I’m hosting Substack housekeeping session for writers next Tuesday. Because when’s the last time you updated your About page? ...Me too. I’m hosting a chill co-working session next week to fix that (it's about time): https://lu.ma/oqlstd07 and https://lu.ma/8zan97sz

• 📕 I finished reading Steal Like an Artist by

  Austin Kleon
  . I never read this book before because it was not until yesterday (yep) that I thought, “you know what, I am an artist”.

• 📖 I’m continuing with The Gene (p95/p495). I think I’ll keep reading some books in paperback and write on the margins.

• 🧭 Only now going thru Ali Abdaal's recordings of Productivity Spark. Holy wow they're so good. I'm gonna host a few visioning sessions with my friends on the week of lunar new year.

• 💙 Had a Big Thing on Saturday that I’ve been nervous about but Michelle Elisabeth Varghese calmed me down and made me feel a lot more confident. Please go find her whenever you need coaching or a pep talk or anything, really. She’s great. The ultimate hype woman with heft.

• 🕔 Woke up at 5:45AM on Monday to do my morning pages, something I usually skip because I do pilates at 7:30 on Mondays. I'm glad I did it.

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