I’ve been following Austin Kleon’s excellent newsletter for a decade, and I get something out of it—both for my writing and my life—almost every week. His book recommendations are strong and he’s a total stationery nerd, but what I enjoy most are his thoughts on creativity.
A few years back, he wrote about how, in creative work, it can help to define your goals by negatives because, when you’re making stuff, “Sometimes it’s much easier to get started when you define what it is that you aren’t going to do.”
He goes on to talk about a story told by artist David Levine in the book Draw it with your eyes closed: the art of the art assignment, where Levine asked his students to give reports on an unknown artist they liked:
The assignment was a total failure: none of the students liked anything they saw.
So Levine told them to come back next week and give a report on an artist they hated. Bingo.
“The students performed totally engaged, specific, ten-minute critiques, followed by adrenalized argument… which inevitably led back to a positive discussion of each student’s own practice.”
What I found interesting about this turn of events was how much easier it is, as a first step, to define your own position negatively, and how the beginnings of articulating taste are almost always through discovering what you don’t like.
I was thinking about this yesterday while planning a closet clean-out. How could negative self-definition help me figure out what I want—or, in this case, don’t want—from my wardrobe, and maybe even my life?
So the first thing to go is a Banana Republic pantsuit I bought 10 years ago, when I assumed that owning a black pantsuit was a requirement of adult womanhood. (I mean, it is strongly implied by most women’s magazines.) I’m not sure where I imagined I’d wear it. To a job at the bank, I guess? Or funerals?
The only time I actually did wear it was on Election Day 2016, in the spirit of Pantsuit Nation. In retrospect, I guess I did wear it to a funeral.
Anyway, I know myself better now, and I will never put it on again. It’s a nice suit—classic tailoring, fully lined—but it’s also a bunch of things I don’t want to be: formal, sleek, plain, corporate. It is not me.
So I’ll release it into the world for someone else to find. A child accountant, maybe, or an articling student. Fly away, little pantsuit. Be freeeeee.
:) Teresa
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I learned this “what I don’t want” technique from a writing/life coach about ten years ago and have found it incredibly helpful in so many parts of my life. Vacation planning, the holidays, leadership roles in volunteer organizations, personal relationships. It’s so clarifying, both for myself and the people I’m relating to. I can totally see how it would help with a closet purge. Bye bye, little pantsuit!
Great post! Hilarious story about drawing students being so energized by art they did NOT like. I wore suits to a job in a big bank for 4 long years. I felt like I was masquerading the whole time. In fact a friend who made her living painting called my suits “your bank costume.” * Drawings that I begin by drawing the negative space usually turn out well.