I'm a garden, not a machine
Hi,
I keep thinking that it must feel weird for you to read me writing about gardening all of a sudden. Like, what does it have to do with photography?
Probably nothing.
Probably everything.
I’m still figuring it out.
My brain doesn’t work in a linear way. It swirls and shoots to random places, making unexpected connections and space-time jumps that even I sometimes have trouble keeping track of.
I remember as I kid I noticed that tendency of mine, and for a while enjoyed re-tracing my steps, figuring out how could I have gotten from fried eggs to… I don’t know, Tutankhamun in less than a second straight? Sometimes I could find the logical connections, the breadcrumbs that lead me from point A to point B. Sometimes the trail map the inner workings of my brain remained a mystery even to me.
* * *
I’m not a one trick pony. I enjoy many things, and follow many rabbit holes. That’s what make me who I am, and it’s at the core of my creativity.
Sometimes I truly wish I could just do the one thing, stick with the one message that I repeat in different words over and over, until it sticks, and I’m seen as an expert in that one thing. Sometimes I envy people who can do that, for years or even decades.
But frankly I’d bore myself stupid if I tried (and I did try for a while).
The thrill for me is in FINDING OUT and writing about it, THINKING THROUGH, and writing about it, HAVING AN IMAGINARY ARGUMENT and writing about it - not regurgitating what I already know well. This all is probably to my detriment (and why I don’t think I can ever be a brand, even if I wanted to).
I noticed a flurry of unsubscriptions when I wrote about planting a garden (and fair enough, I’m not here to make anyone read stuff they don’t want to read) and I paused to think how weird it must be for someone to subscribe to photographer’s email list and then get newsletters about apple trees.
I mean I get it. I’d probably walk away as well.
Substack was always meant to be a place for me to write what I want, to go beyond photography, and to expand my writing practice specifically. A place to write about half-finished projects, the creative process, random ideas to chew on, let my auDHD brain do its thing, and see what comes of it. It was meant to be a space where I don’t care about the algorithm, or search engine optimisation, or brand expectations (or whatever is left of it at this point, ha), or “staying on topic”.
It’s about writing seemingly unconnected stories and bringing them together - like Seth Godin, Malcom Gladwell and Naomi Klein whose ability to do just that I admire.
I want people to read what I write, of course I do, but I cannot contort myself to perform something I’m not. I can only hope there are people out there who enjoy the random explorations, the following your nose, the improvisation of it all, as much as I do.
* * *
“I don’t write in a straight line and I don’t write with an outline”. These simple words from an interview with Diana Gabaldon (the author of the Outlander series) changed my relationship with writing (and creativity at large). They gave me permission to write the way I write, not the way we are told we ought to write.
Because I used to think the way I wrote was wrong. That the way my brain worked was wrong.
As a teenager, I would sometimes write down a scene (in a historical novel about a time-travelling teenager which I never did write - and destroyed all evidence of it - because I was so embarrassed by my own imagination) but I wouldn’t know how it connected with anything else, what came before or after. The words would just pop into my head or I dream it up and write it down.
But everything that got drilled into me at school told me that this wasn’t the correct way. That I had to have an outline, a synopsis, an end goal. That I had to know my character’s arc, and the lessons she’d learn in the process. That I had to know the beginning, the middle and an end of the story.
I never did. I would just see something in my mind’s eye and I would write it down. I didn’t realise I could work out the connection between the pieces later on. That I could treat them as a collage, a kaleidoscope, that I could turn them over and move them around until a picture appeared, and things made sense.
No one ever told me that the way my creativity worked was perfectly valid.
I grieve that boundless imagination I had as a young woman, and I grieve that I so willingly betrayed it and given up, moulding myself to conform to the narrow confines of what I was told a writer should be.
Thirty years later, I’m reclaiming it.
And if it means I’m going to write about gardening because it helps me figure out something about my creative process, or put the pieces together, or let me mind wander until it arrives at an answer, and no one really gets it, so be it.
Things you might be interested in:
Book a mentoring session with me;
If you’re in London or Surrey (or nearby), book a family or a business photoshoot with me.
Buy Fuck AI, Make Your Own Terrible Art print on Etsy
Buy Beauty Hunting, my photography book about walking, mindfulness, healing and finding beauty in the most unlikely places;
Become a paid subscriber to this newsletter to unlock the full archive and support all the writing I do for free.