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I have a Reading room is full of books and cards with prompts to help me do some personal creative work everyday. Thousands of individual prompts.
Today’s prompt is from Austin Kleon’s steal like an artist journal.
It made me think of myself as a child, with undiagnosed symptoms of ADHD, or too much sugar. My dad would draw a dot on a post it pad, and I had to stare at it for 15 minutes.
I love my dad for doing that, it was a custom solution. The idea was for me to learn to concentrate. I think it helped.
I came to this exercise after a long drawing day, and nothing came up, so I tried a few different positions and in the end decided that maybe it would work better in the morning.
Try it? Draw a dot and stare at it until you get an idea, share your idea in the comments?
How are ya doing? What are you doing today? Let me know in the comments too.
PS: Paid subscribers receive a Creative Spark every day in 2026, each spark contains an idea and a prompt that you can use with your artist diary to ignite your creative joy.






I immediately recognized that dot! And you're so lucky to have a dad who "got it." My ADHD diagnosis is recent, but I always knew what worked and didn't work for me. I was just telling stories about that this morning. We might want to consider a conversation about that sometime!
Glad it helped ❤️