Over the last decade I have been neuroqueering my creative practice. Setting aside neurotypical, able bodied, and capitalist expectations for consistency, branding, and profit like the ill fitting shoes they are.*
Looking back, the times in my life I was rigidly consistent I was run deeply outside my own capacity, which over time took a toll on my health (both mental and physical.)
Allowing my creative projects to fluctuate with my capacity, as a chronically ill autistic caregiver means that they ebb & flow. Seasons when my time and energetic capacity expand so does my creative practice. When I am experiencing a pain flare or focusing on caregiving challenges my projects shift into dormancy or ideation.
Having many different mediums means there is always something to fit my capacity.
I NEED ART TO LIVE.
Art is how I self regulate, how I co-regulate with my child, and how I process lived experience and the world around me.
Without art I go to a dark place.
For years, I had inflexible routines and self imposed deadlines that did not serve me. But the newly discovered fluidity of my creative ecosystem has allowed me to flourish in unexpected ways.
This meander map is based on my 2025 Artist’s Log which tracked the time spent on each creative project over the course of the year.
These undulating ribbons represent the four main streams of creativity I pursued in 2025.
Yellow: visual art
Green: self publishing and writing
Blue: redesigning website & blogging
Purple: zines
The process of crafting these prints took several months. Calculating stats, making a graph, drafting the meanders, testing printmaking techniques, paper & inks, creating collagraph plates with unraveling cotton twine, and printing each plate onto wet paper using the Provisional Press.
The prints were digitally combined for the zine cover and overlaid with a key on transparent vellum. This layer can be removed to display the zine as a diptych. The zine was hand typed on my 1950s Smith-Corona typewriter.
The concept and color palette were inspired by the meander maps of geologist and cartographer Harold Fisk.
The above text is from February’s zine. If you’d like a copy you can subscribe for $5 a month or buy a single zine in my shop.
Here’s a peek at how the layers work together with the transparency.
Here’s a peek at how the prints are coming out (ignore the buckled untrimmed paper). They will all be flattened, signed, and numbered. Each print is unique. Remaining prints will be added to my shop, and will be priced at $65.
Collagraph is a printmaking process I learned in university. It feels good to return to it after so much time. I shared more about the process (along with a few other test prints) on the blog a few weeks ago.
Thank You
To everyone who sent kind messages and preordered books after last week’s post about illustrating neurodivergence. Gracie & I really appreciate you and very excited to get this picture book into your hands.
If you’d like to preorder a limited edition hardcover you can do so here.
(Paperbacks will be coming soon at a lower price point.)
In Case You Missed It
If you’re having a hard time with the state of the world I wrote this for you a couple weeks ago.
* Neuroqueering is used here as the verb meaning, “the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously” as coined by Nick Walker Ph. D.
I’m back this week with an update on the picture book How it Feels to Me. This is a book about neurodivergence and sensory processing I’m co-creating with illustrator Gracie Klumpp.
It’s fully crowdfunded and coming out later this year!
Last year we ran into some challenges due to substandard quality of our first proof. Ultimately we had to explore alternatives and change printers. Every printer offered slightly different “trim” sizes which meant this process delayed finalizing the illustrations.
Now that we’ve chosen a printer we’re back on track and the illustrations are nearly complete. Later this month we’ll order the next proof and send the text to our copy editor and beta readers!
Here’s a peek to share how it’s coming along…
It’s completely magical to see my words come to life in this way!
Gracie’s using a cool combination of illustrated and photographed elements to visualize the concepts in this book.
We both see this as the book we wish we’d had as kids and hope it will help autistic and neurodivergent folks of all ages!
We’re running a little over budget (because of rising costs and changing printers).
If you’d like to help us bridge the financial deficit you can do so here.
While the neurotypical world is chanting “new year, new you” many autistic and otherwise neurodivergent folks are just struggling to get the train back on the tracks in January.
Our family finds the holiday season quite difficult. Even with our best intentions to slow down and do Christmas in our own ways the change of routine and excitement always seems to tip us into dysregulation. Add to that distressing news, weather related pain flares, and chronic illness* and I have been having a particularly hard time.
Yesterday I spent most of the day in acute pain laying on a heating pad and wondering why my body had suddenly turned against me. I’m hurting today, but less intensely and trying to type this up while I can manage to do so.
I think it’s important to show the struggle and not just the highlights reel we’re all encouraged to curate nowadays.
If you’re not fine I made this for you a few months back.
Another regulating tool I can recommend Marina Gross-Hoy’s gentle workshop The Art of Beginnings. (Coming this weekend!) I love Marina’s work and although I can’t attend live I’m planning to brew a nice cup of tea before I watch the recording.
I’m am looking forward to Marina’s gentle presence as we begin piecing together our daily rhythm this January.
When I have the capacity I’ve been working on prototypes for a series of collagraph prints to represent my creative process (based on the data from my 2025 creative ecosystem pie charts.) †
I’m playing around with the form of a meandering river bed, and used the data to create four different paths for visual art, self publishing, blogging, and zines. Here are some mock ups in Procreate.
Then I’ve been testing different printmaking techniques. I’ve decided on collagraph (a process where you collage a plate to print from) with an unraveling cord.
The final print will be four different meanders overlapping each other printed on the same page. These will go out to my print subscribers at the end of January and will also be reproduced on the cover of January’s zine.
I’m keen to get this project done, but my body has been forcing me to pace myself and I am trying to listen.
Here’s a clip of me pulling a test print.
The inspiration behind the shape of overlapping meanders is from last year’s mood board and the meander maps of Harold Fisk. I’ve learned that my process ebbs and flows and will be writing more about this for January’s zine.
I also wanted to share a tip for anyone who’s interested in tracking your time.
After last week’s newsletter one of you kindly sent me the EARLY time tracker app which does almost the same thing with much less friction. I’ve been playing with it for January and honestly it will save a ton of time that I spent tinkering with spreadsheets. (Thanks Katie!)
Over the past few months I’ve also been working on the Alchemy (Trade & Barter) portal on my website. It’s framed as an immserive choose your adventure story and you can read it here.
It’s a whimsical invitation to exchange energy and art outside of the framework of money. Art for art. Book for book. Zines for zines.
Last January I opened a 26 year old time capsule and made a zine about it.
According to my timer app it’s been over an hour of typing (HOW does this take so long??) and my back is warning me to wrap things up. I’m going to queue this up without proofreading again. Thanks for your generosity and understanding.
I’ll be back next week to announce a new project.
Take care.
P.S. Yes, the title is a quote from Daniel Howell. If you know you know. 😉
FOOTNOTES
* I’ve recently been diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses, but have not had the spoons to sit down and write about the experience. Soon. Maybe next month.
† This is for the ILSSA open call to diagram your creative process.
My neurodivergent experience includes time blindness, which is magnified when working on a creative project and reaching flow state. This has some benefits, but one downside is that I have no idea how much time I’m sinking into individual projects.
UPDATE: After writing this one of you kindly sent me the EARLY time tracker app which does almost the same thing with much less friction. I’ve been playing with it for January and honestly it will save a ton of time that I spent tinkering with spreadsheets. (Thanks Katie!)
Spoiler alert, my pie chart has become a north star for my creative process.
My January spreadsheet started out by tracking writing and self publishing time like I do during NaNoWriMo. (Which is why zines don’t show up below.) When I reached days that I didn’t write because I was making visual art I added more columns.
I can guarantee this pie would be almost all admin if I had not seen how big those wedges were and made the choice to dedicate more time to personal projects. Like my Artist’s Residency in Motherhood (ARIM) and my fantasy novel which I made a mood board for.
When I saw how powerful this was I realized I wanted to track all of my creative projects this way. So you’ll see more categories moving forward including Mawd which is a working title for my novel.
At the same I time I decided to migrate and completely redesign my website. Needless to say these were not the most balanced months, but I feel strongly about using this data to course correct and not to judge myself.
With that in mind, I fully believe this awareness did keep the web design wedge from completely taking over the circle. And I managed to carve out nearly a quarter of my time to zine making.
I was still deep in the weeds of web design during March, but I knew I couldn’t continue the pace. I was noticing screen induced migraines and trying to spent more time on other projects. I also added a column for gardening.
By April I realized my dream of republishing all of my blog posts within a single year was not healthy. I’ve archived everything, but I use so many images and videos that simply importing them didn’t work and everything has to be reformatted by hand. I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever move everything. So I decided to focus on any blog posts I wanted to link to and have been moving those.
This freed up a lot of time for various projects. The big pink wedge is work on my gleeman’s cloak to prepare for meeting Sharon Gilham, the costume designer for the Wheel of Time.
May was incredibly balanced looking back. The weather was nice so we spent plenty of time outside. I made a zine about Chaos Gardening. Chipped away at my website. And kept working on my cloak.
You can see the wedge for self publishing where I was ordering proofs from various printers (the very definition of “hurry up and wait.”)
This wedge is even more well balanced than May!
Almost a full color wheel which is funny considering June’s zine was Spectrum.
I’m now in a place where I see these kind of projects as essential to both my creative process and my mental health.
This reset over the summer (when my energy is the lowest) was key to being able to self publish Entwined & Ember without burning out.
Moving into August I was designing a lot of visual schedules and modular calendar elements for home education. I also started sinking some serious time into Entwined & Ember working alongside our copy editor. But I still reserved over 25% of the pie for other projects including zine making and gardening.
I spent a huge amount of time making zines I did not sell at NWA Maker’s Faire (which I blogged about here.) It was mostly a great experience, but also exhausting. I pretty much crashed directly after even though it was only half a day.
I keep wanting to attend more events, but when I do I’m reminded how hard they are on my autistic nervous system and chronically ill body. I don’t think I could manage a full day event – much less a whole weekend.
Suddenly Entwined & Ember were in final edits. Past years this would have been all encompassing, but you can still see 40% of my time put into other things: zines, gardening, blogging, even a bit of ideation for my novel (which was definitely a back burner project this year.)
Launch month! Some of this was final proofing and the rest was fulfilling orders. I balanced the admin with zine making and two Wheel of Time related projects.
When I started this anthology and art journal I had no idea how much energy they would take. I truly wish I’d tracked my hours since the beginning.
If you somehow missed book launch Entwined & Ember are now available worldwide in hardcover and paperback. As well as free community copies to anyone experiencing financial hardship.
I’m typing this on December 29, but I’ve estimated the time I’ll put in the next couple of days. (I’m getting much better at realizing how long things take.) The biggest wedge this month is actually visual art! Which is something I haven’t had much capacity for this year.
I’m actually working on diagram of my creative process based on this data for ILSSA’s open call. It’s inspired by a meander map showing the ebb and flow of various projects through the year. I’m still in the experimental phases, but if all goes well this will be the next art print for subscribers.
What’s next?
We recently decided on a printer for the limited edition hardcovers of How it Feels to Me – a picture book about neurodivergence and sensory processing I’m creating with illustrator Gracie Klumpp.
We’re a little behind schedule (due to the print quality issues), but are aiming to release the book next Spring!
Here’s a peek.
I’m not a spreadsheet wizard, but if you’d like to take a look at my Artist Log template and copy it for yourself you can see it here. If you’re fiddling around with it I recommend typing in numbers to make sure everything is adding up correctly. I changed mine every month so this isn’t really a template as much as a working model you can make your own.
If your creative process was a pie chart (or another shape) what would it be?
Cheers,
P.S. I “should” proofread this, but it’s nearly 1 am and I’m nearing migraine trigger territory. I may come back or I may not. Honestly, there are more important ways to spend my time this week. 💫
A few years ago I wrote a post about neurodivergent boundaries. I had the idea to type it up into a zine and ended up completely re-writing it. I’m making this one available as a digital download. Feel free to print copies and give them away (just don’t charge for them.)
Instagram (at least the current iteration) is dangerous to my mental health. What used to be a light hearted photo sharing app has now turned into another algorithmic dumpster fire.
I tried everything.
I blocked accounts, “curated” my feed, and did my best to train the algorithm. Near the end I even downloaded a social media blocking app to limit my usage to midday.
I was already struggling.
Then the autism news hit.
Nope. I can’t be here. I’m out.
I naively imagined that the next generation of autistics could grow up with less stigma. To know who they are and unabashedly ask for support.
To see that progress purposefully eroded is gutting.
My nervous system simply cannot handle the horrors and catastrophizing on endless algorithmic remix.
And it’s not just autistics under attack. Every marginalized group is in real crisis right now. Science and education have been defunded.
There is a new fresh horror every day.
Read I’m Fine – a digitized zine about self regulation & advocacy
It’s easy to feel helpless when the world is on fire.
Contact your representatives. Tell them autism is not a disease to be cured.
Preorder How it Feels to Me (a picture book about sensory processing.) This is a crowdfunded project I am creating with autistic illustrator Gracie Klumpp.
We just got a new set of proofs and are feeling very excited about next steps. After changing book binders we are a bit over budget – so if you preorder now it will be a big help.
If you don’t need a book yourself you can also choose to donate your copy and we’ll be sure it gets to someone who needs it.
When we talk about autism or neurodivergence we often mention a spectrum. Sometimes this is misunderstood as a range of intensity from “more” to “less.”
But you cannot be “more” or “less” autistic or neurodivergent.
The spectrum is better represented by a color wheel.*
The spectrum is a reminder that every neurodivergent person is unique. Each color represents a neurodivergent trait: differences in sensory processing, language, socializing, focus, etc.
But even the color wheel is too static.
This is my attempt to illustrate the complexity and nuance of the spectrum of autism and neurodivergence.
For example, sometimes a person is described as sensory seeking or sensory avoidant.
Opposites on the color wheel.
But most of us are both.
Here is an example from my own spectrum. I experience water in my face as overstimulation… a sensation that, for me, is worse than physical pain. My nervous system completely floods with sensory input and enters a state of distress.
On the other hand, in the context of a warm bath I am “sensory seeking”. The feeling of being (almost) submerged in warm water calms my nervous system and helps me self regulate.
This is the same element.
Water.
But my internal experience is vastly different depending on the context. Supporting this sensitivity includes baths over showers, no sprinklers, pool splashing, or going underwater. When I interact with water on my own terms I find it deeply regulating and soothing.
Then we have a trait like focus. ADHD is often perceived as a deficit in the ability to focus (it’s right there in the name), but both people with autism and ADHD can experience hyperfocus.
This circle represents my hyperfocus.
I often enter hyperfocus when I am in creative flow or engaged with topics I am passionate about. Yet, I cannot reach hyperfocus without the necessary environment or supports.
This circle represents my difficulty focusing.
My ideal environment for focus is quiet and solitude. (For others it could be music and company… or body doubling.)
When I don’t have that I need supports like: a swivel chair for stimming, noise cancelling headphones, and more time. Because without access to hyperfocus I have to accept that tasks take more time. I can also become dysregulated by working in an overstimulating environment.
The spectrum becomes infinitely more complex when different traits overlap and intersect.
Not only is every neurodivergent human unique, but our spectrums may present differently from day to day and moment to moment, based on a variety of internal and external factors.
Some spectrums of neurodivergence may not fit the criteria for a diagnosis, but that does not make them any less valid.
Our world is technicolor.
Let’s stop imagining it as black and white.
Grab some art supplies and reflect on neurodiversity as you play with color. If you are neurodivergent what colors would you assign each of your traits? If you’re neurotypical how can you use this framework to support the spectrums in your life?
Love snail mail?
These watercolor washes were originally created for the Spectrum zine for my monthly subscribers. If you’d like a printed copy you can:
This resource library focuses on autism, ADHD, and hypersensitivity as these are my lived experience.* This area of research has been a passion of mine for nearly a decade. I’ll do my best to organize things so you can find what is helpful to you.
Hi, I’m Sarah Shotts. A late diagnosed autistic adult, author, artist, home educator, and erstwhile academic. Over the last several years I’ve been doing self directed research and collecting resources to better understand myself and my neurodivergent family. To learn more about me and my work click here.
Choose your adventure.
resources FOR PARENTSresources for autistic adults
What is Overstimulation?
I made this video to share my experience of overstimulation.
I also find that my autistic traits are almost always rooted in sensory differences. So this a helpful place to start when discussing autism. Overstimulation can also be experienced by ADHDers.
When we talk about autism or neurodivergence we often mention a spectrum. Sometimes this is misunderstood as a range of intensity from “more” to “less.” But you cannot be “more” or “less” autistic or neurodivergent.
I made a zine to illustrate the complexity and nuance of being “on the spectrum.” You can read it here.
How it Feels to Me
You may also enjoy the picture book I’m co-creating with an autistic illustrator Gracie Klumpp. How it Feels to Me is an introduction to sensory processing for readers of all ages.
FOOTNOTES
* I have been professionally diagnosed with autism, but also have traits of ADHD such as time blindness and difficulties with object constancy. Having knowledge of these traits and functional coping strategies I have no interest in pursuing an ADHD diagnosis at this time.
Unfortunately, this book is needed more than ever.
Harmful information is being spread by the US government categorizing autism and ADHD as epidemics. Neurodiversity is not a broken brain! It is a brain that experiences the world differently and this picture book shows how.
If you’d like to support the project you can preorder or donate a copy to a school, library, or a neurodivergent family in financial hardship.**
If you missed my last email I wrote a post called What is Autism? that breaks down sensory processing and autistic differences.
The brain on the left is autistic. we process a lot more information in any given moment.
I end the post with this footnote,
“Being neurotypical just means that your brain is processing the world like most others. This means the dominant culture has been made to support the way your brain processes the world around you. You are surrounded by supports for your neurotype every single day.”
This is a concept I’d like to explore further. It really turns the idea of supports on it’s head.
I’ve come to the conclusion I need to free up some mental capacity to really delve into this world in the way that’s needed. Turns out proofing three separate books for self publishing is kind of a lot. I’m being patient with myself. There’s no rush on this.
Here’s a peek at my writing workspace.
I set this up in the living room when it was too cold to be in the studio (and soon it will be too hot.) It turns out that extreme heat and cold trigger migraines so I’m afraid I am a fair weather studio artist. Accepting that my body needs what it needs means making spaces that work for me.
If you’re reading this in your email inbox you can just hit reply to message me directly. I’d love to hear what you think. It makes it worth the time I put in.
Thanks for being here.
I appreciate you.
FOOTNOTES
* I’m no longer digitizing zines. Due to chronic migraines I’m attempting to cut down on screentime. I wrote a bit about that here.
† What is a microblog? Basically a social media style blog feed that I archive on my own site. I’m working on setting this up to autopost to Bluesky. I call my microblog scraps – evoking both a scrapbook or commonplace book and also the bits of kitchen scrap that end up in the compost heap.
** If you donate a book we are happy to find the book a home or to send it to the school or library of your choice.
