Light candle, make art.
Spending 10 minutes a day with my Big Project
The book I referenced by Robert Olen Butler, From Where You Dream, has shaped how I think about the role of the unconscious in creating stories, from “dreamstorming” to drafting to revising. The book is about writing fiction, but the principles can apply to memoir and graphic narratives (which is what I’m working on).
Speaking of Big Projects, the next zoom hangout for paid subscribers is next Saturday, April 11, 2026 at 11am ET. Info and links to register are under the Paid Subscribers tab. We’ll be talking about identifying your key scenes and how to draft them with Scene Magic.
Here are a few photos from Davidson College in North Carolina where I got to spend a full day with athletes talking about Title IX and women’s sports, and another full day with writers and English majors talking about books and storytelling. And I got to celebrate the student writing award winners and give a talk under a billboard-sized screen! Thanks to Alan Michael Parker and everyone at Davidson for making it such a special visit.
Thanks for reading The Habit of Art by Kelcey Ervick, a Substack Featured Publication (twice!). I love writing and drawing these posts and am grateful to everyone who follows along. I’m the author of four award-winning books, including the graphic memoir The Keeper, which Alison Bechdel called “a triumph!” (her exclamation point). I’m a professor of creative writing in Indiana, and I live on the banks of the St. Joseph River, which has just washed away some goose eggs. :(
-Kelcey
Here are some bonus photos from the AWP Writers’ Conference in Baltimore. Feels like forever ago!
Top left: me with Henriette Lazaridis of Galiot Press Substack (holding Robyn Ryle’s book!) Top right: Our comics panel with Sharon Lee De La Cruz, Aubrey Hirsch, and Robert James Russell.
Bottom left: Comics panel with Jesse Lee Kercheval, Amy Kurzweil, Ebony Flowers, and me!
Bottom right: Selfie with my pal Grant Faulkner of Memoir Nation!
Love all the visuals. So happy, put me in a good mood. Now I’m going back to read everything.
Oh, I also have a candle lid full of matches! Sometimes it overflows in a messy sort of way, but I'm okay with that, because each match is a morning I sat down in my chair to work. The candles are oddly essential. When I think, "Ugh, I don't want to work on the thing today," I remind myself, "Yes, but you get to light your yummy-smelling (espresso-scented actually) candle," which only gets lit when I'm doing creative writing. Not for grading or course prep or answering emails. The candle is special. The candle is both a signal and a reward.
Thanks for the pic and the shout-out!