Step 1: Show up

Creativity in 2020: Part 3 of 5

A creative period I remember fondly is the summer I wrote one short story after another, fueled by a very specific inspiration cocktail of books about old Hollywood and black-and-white Twilight Zone episodes, with no real goal except capturing the visions in my mind as quickly as they came to me.

I didn’t question this outflowing of creativity, and it didn’t need to be questioned. The stories were asking to exist, and I obliged.

But here’s the problem: For a very long time, I thought that kind of outpouring with almost zero effort was one of two ways that creativity was supposed to work. I believed that creativity …

1)    happens as either part of your paying job or as something you do to complement your paying job

or

2)     magically strikes you like lightning

That’s it. I thought creativity was either tied to the way you pay for housing and food, or I thought an idea came along and you wrote it down verbatim with very little work involved. Our society encourages us to think this way because it protects the toxic parts of capitalism. Creativity is not valuable unless it is funneled into a traditional job, preferably a 9-to-5 affair, in an office, at a desk … or if it becomes a runaway hit that means tons of money.

The big stories of creativity that we’re fed are the ones that make easy pop culture journalism: J.K. Rowling has a vision while on a train of all seven Harry Potter books, Stephenie Meyer has a dream about a boy and a girl in a meadow, Susan Cain bursts onto the New York Times bestseller list with Quiet.

All of these creative success stories are more complicated and involve more work and preparation than the fast, flashy headlines about them suggest, but it’s not in our culture’s interest to let people think they can create and explore without any pressure to make money from it.

(Note: I recently started growing this newsletter to add a paid tier. That was a big, conflicted decision, and I plan to address it in a future newsletter that gets back into this enormous topic of art; income; and if, when and how the two should be linked.)  

Culture tells us that creativity and passion are meaningless unless they’re tied to money, and I think that makes creating simply because you want to an act of rebellion. In a year when we’re reexamining our society’s shaky structure and where all the normal schedules and expectations have been thrown out the window, it’s been strange and magical to realize that there is one thing I can control when everything seems to be out of our hands: whether or not I show up for myself creatively.

During the past two years, I’ve been slowly developing my own concept of a “creative schedule,” a phrase that sounds like an oxymoron. Isn’t creativity all about an idea bowling you over out of nowhere? How do we pin the delicate threads of inspiration onto something as mundane as a schedule?

It started with the revelation that I could pursue my creative endeavor (writing) without tying it to a job. I can’t overstate what a lightbulb moment it was for me to realize that I can write whatever I want in my own time without anyone else ever seeing it and with zero pressure to make money from it. I spent about a year noodling around with writing, trying to find my feet again after years of burnout from being a working writer, before I even started this newsletter in its first iteration on tinyletter. I wrote tens of thousands of words that nobody will ever see because they were for me, not for anyone else, and because I needed to give myself permission to explore without any strings attached.

As I gave free rein to my first idea, another idea came, then another and another. Eventually, one idea became this newsletter, and another evolved into my year of fiction project and my Reading Like an Adult podcast. I’ve carved out an idea of everyday creativity that works for me: the paradox of a creative schedule.

To me, a creative schedule means showing up for yourself and always having something you’re working toward … while also knowing that a Something could come along that completely up-ends your plans and it’s OK to change (or throw out!) your schedule if that happens.

A creative schedule is about not waiting for that big magical idea, and yet it’s also about adapting whenever a promising new idea does hit you out of the blue. I have a project that feels far too delicate to handle in here yet, so I won’t get specific, but suffice to say that it has undone plans I had for what the rest of this year would look like. I have a couple of ideas that are at the stage where they occasionally force me to grab a notebook and write frantically, but it feels right for them to be on the back burner for now, waiting in the wings until they make it onto the creative schedule. A creative schedule is about penciling in what you would like to work on, while knowing the timeline will change.

As my view of creativity evolves, I’ve found more and more examples of people who firmly believe in showing up and becoming better artists through trial and error instead of waiting for that One Big Idea.

-  Author Neil Gaiman has a writing routine that involves simply showing up and forcing himself to sit still and either look out the window or write; when those are the only two things you’re allowed to do, writing happens.

-   Singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen is best known for her one-summer hit, “Call Me Maybe,” but she is quietly recognized as one of the most prolific artists in the music industry, writing hundreds of songs in preparation for each album. Jepsen even made an entire record called Disco Sweat that was ultimately thrown out in the process of creating her fourth full-length album, Dedicated. She wrote an entire album to prepare to write an album and then cheerfully scrapped it because that’s how her creative process works.

-  And of course, every successful standup comedian is an example of showing up whether or not you feel inspired because delivering jokes well takes years of practice. As comedian Sam Jay recently told GQ, one of her first jokes that “killed” was a tough sell. Jay’s hilarious bit about white men and Don Draper seems effortless now, but like any great comedic material, it took a lot of work to get there.

When I look back at notebook pages from earlier this year, the creative schedule I laid out in January is different from a version written in March, which has changed a lot compared with one I typed in Evernote a few days ago.

Sometimes an idea feels Big and Important and I put it on the schedule and then something else comes along. Sometimes I put weeks or months of work into a project and then need to set it aside for a while even though the creative schedule originally said something different. But the common thread is always there: I have a plan to show up for myself and my creativity. I love a good lightning strike of inspiration, but I know I’ll be in a much better place to record it if I’m sitting in front of a notebook already.  

This is Part 3 in a 5-part series about creativity in 2020. Go here to read the first installment, which lays out one practical framework for turning big ideas into small, doable, fun goals. Part 2 is about preparing vs. “feeling ready” for creativity, and you can read it here.