A handful of creative gems
+ the TV show I desperately hope survives the SAG strike
Image by Aline Ponce from Pixabay
“Creative gems”
Several years into my creative journey, I’m finding that lightning bolt moments of creative change are rare.
Sure, sometimes a turning point in my creativity is a lightning bolt. I read a book that overnight stops my procrastination and starts me on a novel-writing path. I complete The Artist’s Way and I’m never the same again. But lately, I’ve been noticing that instead of hitting me all in one moment, a truth about creativity might slowly surface over time, a gold nugget that emerges after many hours or days of sifting through silt.
And sometimes, continuing in the creative life is simply about tweaks, revisiting the habits and approaches and mantras that work for you to see if they’re still working. It’s about letting yourself check in and adjust, rinse and repeat, over and over.
In today’s newsletter, I want to share five gems of creative thought that I’ve stumbled upon recently. They’re not exactly brand new, but they’ve given me new angles on my creativity. I hope they help you think about what is or isn’t working for you right now.
Follow the excitement
I love to plan. I love to dream up a new framework for my reading life, or map out what the next month or season or year will look like for my writing. I love my book and watch lists and my novel outlines. But I’ve been trying to keep my two-word New Year’s resolution this year, and the facet about excitement has been illuminating:
The final part of my Do Less resolution is the most fun. I want to follow the excitement. Too often, I want to go down a rabbit hole of research or watch a specific movie or try a new TV series or go on an artist date or write a fun exploratory newsletter draft that I’m not sure will work or not and then instead of actually doing it, I make a plan. I put it on a list, and I tell myself it will happen “when I have time,” and then I never actually get around to it. By the time I think I “have time” for the fun thing because I’ve checked an arbitrary number of items off my list(s), I’m not excited in the same way anymore.
I still plan and daydream and set goals with specific time frames, but I’ve also learned to toss out my list(s) and follow the excitement when it’s the best thing for my creativity.
Treat yourself like an athlete
We assume that professional athletes need to go to bed early, eat healthy, and avoid substances that damage their physical and mental abilities because they’re in training. But why shouldn’t you get to live in a way that means you’re firing at all cylinders, too?
This creative nugget is just another way to say that taking care of yourself physically and mentally is vital for your creativity, but there’s something about having an athlete mindset that has really been helping me to follow through on what I know works for my wellbeing — and my writing.
Know what fuels you (and what doesn’t)
What are the things that give you energy (physical and mental), and what are the things that deplete you? What outside creative inspiration, in the form of movies or books or TV shows or music, will refill your creative well and what leaves you feeling drained? The more specific you can get with your answers to these two key questions on a daily basis, the better.
Sometimes I think about energy (creative and otherwise) as a numbers game. Staying up late will subtract energy for me; sometimes it’s completely worth it, but it’s not something I can do all the time. Reading a book I’m excited about will add to my creative energy, but forcing myself to finish something I’m not enjoying simply for the sake of marking another book “read” on Goodreads will deplete me. In the big picture, I need my “addition” habits to outpace any “subtraction” habits that creep up on me.
Let go of “should”
There is no “should” in creativity. Sure, maybe you need to hit a deadline or stick to a specific kind of story, and you’ll have to do your best to stay inside that guideline. But any contractual obligations aside, the pressure from other people in your life, from a potential larger audience, from society in general, and from your own brain will only derail your creativity. Here are some “should’s/shouldn’t’s” I’ve been letting go of:
You shouldn’t write that because it might offend people / hurt someone’s feelings.
You should be able to do X by now.
You should finish reading that book so many other people loved.
You should “prove” you’re a writer by doing X.
Accept that being happy (in your creativity or in anything) is a lot of work
That tweaking and rinsing and repeating that we just talked about — it’s a lot of work! It never stops!
I’m sorry I reach for my reading life so often for examples, but it’s such a concrete way to explain this creative mindset. To give you one example: I love to read, but I frequently discover that I’m unhappy in my reading life. Sometimes it feels like that relationship in a TV show or movie where the couple is secretly going to therapy every week to make it work. I feel obligated to finish a book, I feel pressure from my unread brand-new library books with a 3-week hard deadline, I’m reading too much nonfiction or starting too many novels I don’t love, or I’m just meh about everything I’ve picked up lately.
This happens over and over and over, and every time, I have to check in with myself and figure out what’s going on. I ask myself what I want and need from books right now. I do an audit of what I’m reading and/or what’s waiting on my nightstand and take away anything I’m not excited about. I let go of that reading list that seemed fun but isn’t working for me anymore.
Yes, it’s a lot of work, but your creativity and your sources of creative inspiration are worth it.
Quick Recs
“skinny dipping” by Sabrina Carpenter — We don’t really have a “song of the summer” as a society anymore, but this was one of mine.
Class of '07 on Prime — Every day that the SAG strike continues gets me a little more worried that my favorite new show will not get a season 2. If Yellowjackets meets Mean Girls sounds like your jam, please enjoy season 1 of Class of '07 while we wait to see what happens to basically the entire TV industry. Can I say that I loved being stranded in the apocalypse with these characters? Because I did.