What’s in your “creative vault”?

Wisdom from Jenna Fischer

Jenna Fischer, best known as Pam on The Office, calls the downtime that happens before success an unexpected gift. That open space gives you time to complete projects. Each project, whether or not it breaks through, whether or not it’s any good, moves you forward on your creative journey.

“Every project you finish has value,” Fischer writes in her handbook for working actors, The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide. “Putting things in the vault is important.”

Along with many other gems for both struggling actors and creatives of all stripes, Fischer shares the importance of keeping a creative vault before you’re successful. Once you’re a busy working actor – or writer or photographer or whatever your creative pursuit is – you won’t have time to fill your creative vault.

It’s probably not surprising for me to tell you that Fischer is a proponent of The Artist’s Way. I’m not planning to become a working actor, but I still enjoyed and learned from her handbook for actors dreaming of (and persevering toward) getting their big break. Fischer put in eight years of work before she was on The Office, surviving countless auditions and years of rejection and failure before she was in the right time at the right place with the right gifts to take on the iconic role of Pam.

When was the last time you took stock of your creative vault, the unpublished and/or not yet polished projects that you’ve completed not for a job, but simply for the joy of creating?

Explore the ideas that call to you and start filling the vault. Finish projects, and be OK with letting them be bad. Keep creating, and let each idea take you to the next one. You’ll gain experience with each project, and when you’re successful – whatever that looks like – you’ll have a trove of ideas to take out, polish, and present to the world.

Recommendation: Nine Perfect Strangers (on audio)

I love to read, but I struggle to connect with audiobooks. It’s hard to find listening time, and my hearing comprehension is a lot slower than my reading comprehension, so I can’t do the listening-on-fast-forward trick that a lot of audiobook readers use. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty in this specific format. Caroline Lee is an engaging narrator with a unique voice for each character, and the pacing was just right for a listening experience – fast enough that I was excited to see what happened next, but also slow enough to get a feel for each character without having to reread. If you’d also like to get into audiobooks on your commute and need a fun listen, this suspenseful, entertaining read is a good place to start.

Recommendation: Novel Pairings podcast

This is the bookish podcast I’ve been searching for. I love What Should I Read Next? but there’s something missing in the host/guest format for me. My ideal podcast is two friends talking together about something they love, and that’s exactly how I’d describe Novel Pairings, a podcast that aims to make the classics relevant and readable with accessible, engaging conversation + recommendations for new books that follow similar themes. A couple of my favorite episodes include “84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and charming books for devoted bibliophiles” and “Grounded and inventive speculative fiction recommendations for your TBR.”