Creative Bravery

A person who likes routine steps out of their comfort zone

Hi friends,

I want to exist loudly. I want to create things people enjoy. I want to express myself to the fullest.

This newsletter uncovered this well within me that is brimming with ideas. It appeared out of nowhere. I’ve always been someone who drew a blank when asked to do something even mildly creative. There has been something truly mindset-shifting about pushing myself to write a newsletter every week for over a year now.

Many of you read Wavy Thoughts weekly (thank you!). You might know that there isn’t really an overt theme to my posts, with the only consistent thread being my experience of being AuDHD. I have loved exploring all the different aspects of my own neurodivergent experience. It has led to so many comments and connections with people all over the world who have reached out to tell me “I do that too!”. There’s a special kind of wonder when you shout into the void and find that the void isn’t a void at all. You’re there. Thank you for that.

Recently however, I’ve felt the need to stretch my creative wings a bit. For me, things have started to teeter on the stale side. I know, my ADHD loves novelty and I have a tendency to be a bit fickle, but this feeling has been lingering, and I’ve been listening to it. It started when I really got into reading the newsletters of Austin Kleon. Austin has this fantastic, positive attitude when it comes to creating stuff - I can’t articulate how inspiring I find it. He also makes zines and a few months ago I saw a post of his where he explained how to make a zine out of one page of A4 paper.

Now, I’ve always loved to write. Ever since being a kid all I have ever wanted to be is an author. Bizarrely, I’ve always had this black and white view that art and writing are polar opposites and you simply could only do one or another. I made a decision early in my life that as I was wordy, I couldn’t also be arty. I would love to know where I got this idea from.

Probs the last time I thought I could do art, about 30 years ago.

Perhaps it was the comparison to other members of my family. My late grandad was an amateur painter (and a pretty good one to boot). Grandad was a Bob Ross devotee years before the memes. I have one of his paintings at my mum’s house, in my old room. It’s of a mountain (of course it is, it’s Bob Ross).

My mum is also brilliant at art. She often tells me the tale of turning up at art college on day one, realising how much all the materials would cost, then coming home and not telling her parents the reason why she wouldn’t be going back. My grandparents were not very well off, and she didn’t want to burden them with the cost of art supplies. This fateful decision led her down a series of awful-sounding Youth Training Scheme jobs in the 80s. She still has plenty of examples of her drawings from high school - Led Zeppelin album covers for example, and they’re wonderful.

Then there was me. It’s not that I can’t draw (I’m learning that I have my own janky looking style). It’s more that I didn’t practice visual art and I wasn’t very interested in it when I was younger. Sensory-wise, paint felt gross, and frankly, colouring-in was always a boring, wasted time I could have been spending with Jacqueline Wilson. As you can guess, I am one of those insufferable people who, if they try something and aren’t immediately amazing at it, they write it off as rubbish and not worth their time.

Until recently!

I am very proud that my little burst of inspiration produced two zines out of two sheets of A4 paper, made in quick succession. One is about that story I told myself for years about not being arty, and the other is a fun little zine about my cat. Nothing groundbreaking, but I sat down, started a project at my desk, and finished it, twice in a row. And it wasn’t a newsletter, it was something I had to draw, cut out and glue together. I feel very proud of these tiny booklets.

The zines scratched an arty itch, but I realised that my need to create other stuff extends to this newsletter. So in the New Year, I’m going to start broadening my horizons with the types of things I write and publish on Wavy Thoughts. It’s a bit scary, but if I don’t, I’m just going to bore myself silly, and it’ll make me less likely to post. You’ll also sense that I am bored, and you’ll be less likely to read.

The first new thing I’m going to write and publish will be a series of travelogue-type posts (think Bill Bryson but queer, British and oblivious to social cues). I’m going to travel by bus around the local region, Greater Manchester in the UK, and I’m going to visit all ten of its boroughs. I know that to some of you that seems about as exciting as watching a goldfish in a bowl, but I promise I will make it silly and interesting.

For the rest of this month, I’ll stick with the vaguely neurodivergence-related posts (and a post on my top five favourite biscuits, because some of you asked for it - perhaps that is also neurodivergence-related in its own way, who else gives this much thought to the pros and cons of various baked goods?). I’ll take a week off at Christmas and the week after I’ll probably write a year in review for the newsletter. There’s a lot of posts to look back on!

Then, in 2026, I’ll start posting more stuff about life generally, observations, places I’ve been, people I’ve met, situations I’ve been in. Not with a neurodivergent twist. Or I guess, there will be an in-built neurodivergent twist. Hi, it’s me, the neurodivergent twist. Wherever I go, there I am.

I have ideas scribbled in notebooks, on my Notes app, in my Substack drafts, and in my busy brain. I have one book of essays I have nearly finished drafting and one novel that I am over 10,000 words in. There are over 70 Wavy Thoughts newsletters, including the Book Diaries. Two zines. Oh, and I’ve nearly finished compiling ten poems into a digital download, despite the last time I ever wrote a poem I was about 8 years old. Not bad for someone who, a year ago, was recovering from autistic burnout and hadn’t created anything for the longest time.

Thank you so, so much for reading my words, leaving insightful comments, clicking ‘like’ on posts, sending me unhinged DMs, writing me hilarious email replies and even, for some of you, supporting me as a paid member.

I hope you stick around. I can’t wait to create more stuff.

Take it easy,

Ren

PS. All of my work is available on my Patreon

PPS. My zines are available to buy here (and they are included as part of the Wavy Thinker Patreon membership tier). I’ll write a newsletter in the New Year explaining more about the different membership tiers.