It’s Martin Luther King Day—a national holiday here in the States—and many of you have the day off. Me, I’m playing catch-up with a pile of work correspondence. So while I do, I’m going to leave you with this interesting essay from writer April Line. When she responded to a post I wrote last summer (The Creative Spark), I asked to expand on those thoughts. Read on.
The Creative Spark Revisited
I’ve been thinking a lot about my creativity since I started the MFA program, lo, these fourteen months ago.*
For me, creativity is almost never a spark. It is a low, slow burn working from the inside out. The trick, I think, is feeding it enough. For me, that means plenty of writing and reading time, and a system for getting money that does not run my life. Teaching and good conversations fuel my creative mind, as do fulfilling friendships, so I try to do as much of those things as possible. Lucky for me, one can typically get paid a little something for teaching.
The idea is to channel my creativity—not let it eat so much out of me that I start to feel empty.
It is tempting to fill those emptinesses with drink and disaster and emotional upheaval. It is. And a certain amount of that is requisite. It’s why we watch television to allow our brains to go into neutral or take “beach reads” with us on vacation. The creative temperament yearns for something with more melodrama, more potential for disaster, so it’s helpful to focus on less destructive solutions.
I have spent safely the last eighteen years trying to figure out how to allow my creative parts to flourish without destroying my other parts, even if I didn’t always know that’s what I was doing. I love life and people and always err on the side of happiness and optimism. Were I wired differently, who knows? For me, misery takes much, much too much energy. For others, it’s easier to stay where it’s dark.
Still, it’s been a long, uphill battle. Because the social expectation for writers, especially writers between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, is to live in those dark places. Being around other creative people means getting drawn in sometimes.
Here are some things that have helped me. Maybe they will help you, too.
• I wake up early. Some people stay up late. I need a certain amount of time as often as possible to commit to writing. Lately, this looks like three to five days a week, but I’m in the process of revising now. When I’m writing fresh, it needs to be more like five to six. The time has to be just for creating. I get up between 5 and 6 a.m., and I normally get nearly two—sometimes closer to three—hours of writing in before I am needed. If I am stopped up or stuck, I use this time to read. Good books. Things that fill me with the itch to write. Just now, it’s Karen McElmurray’s Surrendered Child.
• I am choosy about the other artists I hang out with. Sometimes, other creatives are toxic to me. It took a long time to get enough strength of self to accept that I didn’t have to hang out with every person who “gets” me. I also try to hang out with people who complement my creativity. My boyfriend is very pragmatic and rooted, but he is also funny and well-read, so he is not boring. I find myself drawn to people who call themselves geeks these days. I have a couple fellow writers with whom I exchange long emails. This is helpful to try out my feelings—it seems like I have to write them down and look at them before I know whether to legitimize them—and to practice the craft.
• All writing is writing practice. Even writing emails and papers and things that aren’t specifically creative. It’s important to learn and practice lots of different kinds of writing. This is true for financial reasons. (Grant writing pays a lot better than journalism, for example. Cowriting and ghostwriting pay a lot better than writing literary short stories.)
• Teaching is part of mastery, and it helps me harness and learn to channel my creativity, which helps when I’m making strategy for finishing and revising work. I learn more about writing by teaching it. I learn from my students, probably as much as they learn from me.
• I’ve only recently (in the last three or so years) recognized that my creative bits are a worthwhile set to nourish, and that by doing so, I nourish the rest of me handily. The world is full of people shouting at creatives, that we won’t ever be _______________. I just read on Bitchtopia.com that people with fine arts degrees are scorned unless they’re successful. So part of my creativity is defining success for myself.
• I am living the dream. I cobble together a living that gives me plenty of time to nourish my creativity. Some of the things I do for money relate directly to my creativity. But that is a tricky balance to strike, too, because I can’t take too much creative freelance work.
Creativity changes too. It morphs and grows and refines. I expect to make adjustments to allow its flourishing the rest of my life. Even if that means not writing for a time or switching artistic pursuits. It is elusive: it is not something that I have a full grasp of or ability to quantify and then articulate at any given time.
* Line recently completed her master’s degree.
UPDATE: My friend Brad Blackman has also been writing movingly about this subject. Have a look.
Tweet: The creative spark revisited: how to feed the low, slow burn of creativity.
Tweet: How do you allow your creative side to flourish without wreaking havoc on daily life?
Tweet: Here’s how one writer nutures her creativity.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”