Let's get cozy!

Why the familiar helps me dare the unfamiliar.

Clover, Twiglet, and I are going to walk up to 40th Street and back. It’s a chilly morning, so I pull on my woolly cardigan, lace up my well-worn hiking shoes, and slip in my AirPods for a little Bird by Bird. And while the air has a bite, I feel cozy with my two companions and Annie Lamott murmuring in my ears.

I have listened to this audiobook innumerable times, and I own three copies of her book, sitting bird by bird on the shelf. I’ve gone beyond learning from her wisdom on the craft of writing to using this book as my comfort nook, as one of the places I like to curl up in when I need to feel grounded.

I have a single bookshelf in my bedroom, and on it are arranged the books I look to for comfort, and when I say look to, I mean that quite literally.Just looking at their spines, their jackets on the shelf now serve the same function as reading their well-thumbed pages. These are books I’ve had my whole life. My childhood friends who are still my pals — The Wind in the Willows, Billy Hunter and the Treasure Hunt, William the Conqueror. Books that contain no surprises because I’ve read them so often. I go to them when I don’t want surprises, just comfort and delight.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a homebody afraid to step out into the wild woods. I know I will go on a creative adventure of some kind today. I will hit the trail without a map or a companion or a weather report, but I will have my knapsack filled with a couple of comforting snacks, familiar foods.

When I was little, and my world was constantly changing, I would have minced meat and mashed potatoes for dinner every day. I would have a cup of milky tea with one sugar in it every morning. There are treats from those days that I still crave and go back to: Sherbet Fountains, Mars Bars, Ribena. Treats that make me feel rewarded, seen, comforted by their consistency

Perhaps I come off as an old man clinging to his childhood comforts, but without that base camp, I’m adrift. I need to listen to certain music or watch certain scenes in certain movies I’ve seen and heard before. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll be tossed on a wild ocean, an endless sea.

When I sit down to make, I need the comfort of my favorite pen and the feel of my Venezia sketchbook, the clickety-clack of my mechanical keyboard, and from there I can step into the wintry blankness. I can start writing. My footing is firm.

Writing these essays begins with me opening a familiar file packed with bits and bobs, my commonplace book, full of half-baked ideas and sketchy notions. Knowing that I have these bits of kindling lets me start to rub my sticks together. I know there are the rudiments of ideas. A little reassurance goes a long way.

And the funny thing is that most of the time I won’t actually write about any of the things I’ve stored in this file, but they provide me the comfort that I need to try a new idea out, to go somewhere knowing that I’m capable of coming up with ideas, that I do have an archive to back me up. It will be OK if I stray too far into the unknown. They offer me a beacon I can always come back to the safety of my pile of ideas.

Creating can be a lonely, slightly unnerving business. I’m trying to forge something out of nothing, shape it into something richer and more human, something that might make me — or you — feel a little less alone. And the moment I step toward an idea I’ve never tried before, the urge to back away is huge. A dozen perfectly reasonable excuses rush in, all whispering that it’s safer not to wander into the unknown.

Which is why the familiar matters so much. If you can start from a place of security and comfort, a place where you have inspiration and examples, where there are voices that say it’s OK, we’ve done this before, trust your instincts, you know where to go — then it all becomes much more possible. There’s value in knowing where home is — the thing you can return to, the thing that steadies you before you leap.

It takes a certain kind of courage, even a certain kind of stupidity, to do new things — to pour unknown elements into the familiar and wait for a reaction, to put it out there with your name on it. These are acts of bravery. I may not always have the nerve and stomach lining for such risks, but the reality is that comfort begins to chafe if it’s all you have. The same four cozy walls grow dull if they’re all I ever look at. Taking chances makes my ordinary life feel rich because it reflects the new and dangerous places I’ve gone to.

It’s a yin-and-yang business we’re in. I don’t want to be a wandering hermit nor a stuck-in-the-mud homebody.

So I start my day with a walk through familiar streets, dogs at my side and an old friend in my ears. And when I reach the studio and open the door, I’m ready to see where the path will lead.

What gives you comfort when you create?

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P.S. I am so grateful for everyone who bought my new book, Make it Anyway. We already made it to #1 on the Amazon best seller list among artists’ essays! And a special thanks to all those people who bought not one but many copies. Ginger wrote to tell me that she ordered an extra one for a friend, only to discover a few hours later that her friend had bought her a copy! If you’d like to get yours, click here. By the way, the book is printed by Amazon, so that’s currently the only way to buy a copy, but it is available globally. I hope you’ll make (it) yours anyway!

P.P.S. I have decided to teach six brand new workshops next year. The topics are still a surprise, but if you’d like to join me and are willing to trust me that they will be wonderful, grab our Black Friday special (three for the price of two). Click here for more.