Sometimes It’s Good to Switch Creative Gears

Visual inspiration for and by writers!

Aimee’s Instagram Photopaintings

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Why would a writer Instagram?

It was my publicist who first told me to start using Instagram to build up my social media following in advance of my novel Glorious Boy’s 2020 release. That makes no sense, I whined. I write in words: stories, essays, novels. Books are published in print, and Instagram is a visual medium. Besides, didn’t we have our hands full with Facebook, Goodreads, Bookbub, and my Amazon page — not to mention our ongoing chase for blurbs, reviews, readings, and other book events?

Just try it, my publicist urged. Shoot images of your daily life to get your followers acquainted with you. Readers like to feel a certain sense of familiarity with their favorite authors, and Instagram can help create that connection.

Grudgingly, I set up an account, followed a few friends to get started, and posted a picture of my novel’s advance reader copy. It felt good to make the announcement. The photograph looked okay. But then what? I couldn’t keep posting about the book, or my friends would be sick of it — and me — long before it was published.

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I found other writers to follow. Sven Birkerts, Dinah Lenney, Elizabeth Rosner, Thomas Thomas, Gayle Brandeis, Janet Sternburg… to name just a few. Some were old friends from graduate school. Others were my students. Some took stunning portraits and landscape photos. A few posted abstractions that reminded me I’d been a painter long before I took up writing.

The images that spoke to me loudest were rich with texture, color, form, and structure. Many were unrecognizable yet evocative close-ups of pavement, bark, sky, or foliage. I took my cue from them and began looking for inspiration on daily walks around my neighborhood, in the shadows of early morning, reflections in glass.

Ventura, 2019. My first real Instagram post

I discovered Instagram’s filters and editing tools, which allowed me to play with cropping and focus, color and shading. It felt as if I’d reclaimed a lost limb and was exercising a forgotten muscle. Suddenly, each day became a treasure hunt with discoveries in the corner of a bed frame, the geometric roots of a tree, the pistil of a bird of paradise, headlights at dusk. Even so-so snapshots could be edited into beauty.

To my delight, I realized that I can make certain photographs look like paintings — #photopainting a process of reverse alchemy that feels to me like pure play. I caught planes of light like Hopper, flattened distance like Hokusai. #notapainting became a game, a system of goals for the creative process.

Alas, recent Instagram editing “upgrades” make it much more difficult to produce this flattened painterly quality now, but still, as with writing, the real creation is in the revision and transformation of the original idea. Each picture evolves into a story of scale and distance, color and shape, surprise and wonder. To add to the game, I challenge myself to come up with one-word captions that suggest some latent dynamic within the image, e.g. “Sisterly” for a photograph of twin dahlias.

I often advise my writing students to “turn the lens outward” and “use the outer world to suggest the inner world”; that’s what I found myself doing through these images. But this process of revision was new, exciting, and deliciously addictive.

What’s more, Instagram makes it communal. I’m a purpose-driven person. It’s not enough for me to enjoy what I do; I need to produce some effect on the world around me. I need to feel the splash of my efforts. And sharing these images produces that splash. Not in a big or remunerative way. I don’t have thousands of followers, but those other writers on Instagram have noticed. We now have an unspoken admiration society. I look forward to their next pictures, and they respond to mine. And sometimes we even collaborate!

I was thrilled when my dear friend

Judith Banker

asked to use one of my favorite images for the cover of her folk-country CD Bona Fide. An editor at the Coachella Review also reached out to invite me to contribute a photo essay, which led to “Near & Far” and was a total delight! And then the marvelous

Dinah Lenney

invited me to participate in her anthology of ekphrastic Snapshots, forthcoming from Bloomsbury next year.

Even when I’m not officially collaborating, though, every Instagram post feels like a group challenge and a source of inspiration. Not competitive, but joyfully cooperative. As it should be.

So…did Instagram boost sales of my novel? I’ve no idea. Glorious Boy’s release was doomed by the pandemic, which shuttered all bookstores and book review sections and canceled or delayed all Amazon book orders just in time for my “publication day.” But I will say that writing in pictures gave me profound solace and distraction from the larger COVID catastrophe, as well as from my own bad luck. I almost didn’t worry about the pictures working for my writing. And that is the beauty of it all.

This passion sideline reminds me to play— to delight in art for art’s sake, pure creative indulgence without a hint of shame or expectation. As it should be.

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