It certainly feels, as we embark on the last few days of the first month of the year, like real life, waking reality seems utterly determined to throw curve-ball after curve-ball.
Even if you are lucky enough to have been minimally impacted on a personal level by current events, the constant barrage of information is head-spinning. The concept of “regime uncertainty” has left the realm of academic economics and political science, and has become the normal state of life for everyone, to one degree or another.
In light of the upheaval, change, and uncertainty, it can understandably be difficult to muster creative energy. Goodness knows, it has been for me. The news alone has enough distractions for a lifetime. So, how exactly does a writer create when truth is literally stranger than fiction? How does a fiction writer hang on to some semblance of productive creativity in times of change?
Acknowledge the Change and Transition
I’ve come to the conclusion that, no matter what, change is a good thing, even if it is painful or rocks my world. If the change you’re experiencing is in your favor on the surface, then, great! It can still be a lot to absorb and adapt to, but the positive outcomes are more obvious. If the change is more negative, the ‘good part’ can take some digging to get to. Negative changes are good things in that they teach us something. A job loss can teach you how to bring more value, or negotiate better. A health scare can shed light on positive lifestyle adjustments to make. Mourning the passing of a loved one can, in time, be a reminder of the priceless value of life and your own limited and unguaranteed time. Other negative changes can provide opportunities for soul searching, reflection, and humility.
No matter what kind or degree of change you might be absorbing, it is vitally important that you acknowledge that it is happening. Your creative work will not benefit from your attempts to ignore changes, or shove them aside and power through as you would in less turbulent times of life.
Processing change requires mental bandwidth, and you as a human don’t have much of a choice. It isn’t voluntary. Acknowledging that a transition is coming and giving your mind the grace and space that it needs to deal with it is healthy, and necessary if you want to preserve some creativity in times of change.
Wisdom to Know The Difference
Some changes are due to things within our control. Our actions and behavior have outcomes, good or bad, that change our world, or the world around us.
Other changes are beyond our control, but still have a profound impact on our lives.
While the difference doesn’t matter to the need to process these changes, it can be helpful to recognize it. A change within your control? Either celebrate, or mitigate. A change beyond your control? Try to recognize the line between healthy processing and harmful wallowing. Doomscrolling is a real thing, and social media is designed to reward it.
Minimize the Disruption to Your Creative Routine
The most important thing to maintaining your creativity in times of change is to minimize the disruption to your creative routine. As much as you are able, try to keep creating, even if its just a few words, a character sketch, some brainstorming. This is crucial to keep the creative muscle from falling into atrophy. When things settle, you’ll have a bit more to work with than if you had taken a total hiatus from your craft.
“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it’s only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”
Jane Yolen
Schedule some point in each day that is devoted to your creativity. Even just fifteen minutes. Set yourself up for success; block social media, close the door with your phone on the wrong side, and allow your creativity a few minutes to itself, to have its voice heard in the cacophony. The fifteen minutes might just extend a little longer than you thought.
Find what triggers your creativity in more stable times. A hot drink at hand? Soft background music? Total silence? A scented candle? Setting the right mood can have an invaluable impact on settling your mind away from the changes that you are weathering and into creating. Make space for your creativity, and defend it.
Make Creative Promises that You Can Keep
It is easy to set ourselves up for failure as creatives. We see the bright and shiny posts from authors and artists sharing the best of themselves on social media. We see polished and finished works on shelves and websites, but not the sausage making that can get all of us down from time to time. We see the perfection of others, demand it of ourselves, and beat ourselves up when we fail to attain it. 10k words a day, no adverbs, perfectly balanced plots, strong characters. When we manage a couple of hundred words before discovering that our protagonist has had three different eye colors mentioned so far, it’s easy to find excuses to let our minds dwell on “more pressing matters” than our creative dreams. And then we feel guilty for not pursuing them. We think thoughts like “maybe I’m not a writer.”
One powerful way to combat this is to make promises to yourself that you can keep, and then keep them. This helps build trust with yourself, and confidence in your ability to follow through with some of the most basic commitments you can make; those you make to yourself. Maintaining a habit of at least some creativity in times of change takes this kind of practice.
500 Word Promise To Me
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with what I call the 500 Word Promise to Me. Every morning, before anything else happens, I pound out another 500 words. Sometimes I’m still wiping sleep from my eyes when I do it. It happens before I open my web browser or my email. At most I use a neutral ambient noise, not a Ted Talk or podcast, as background. And it happens. And I’m 500 words closer to my goals.
Sometimes I end up with more than 500 more words. But never less. The more days I can keep that promise, the more confident I get that I can do this. No matter what else is going on, no matter what my day job or my family or the world might have on its agenda, I can put down 500 more words. I can make good on my commitment to me and to my creativity. Lately, I’ve been posting screenshots of my own kept-promises to Instagram, and thoughts on the subject on Twitter. These kept words might seem small, but over time they build into a finished story. Something that I can submit, something that I can share with the world. And those are worth celebrating.
Recognize the Different Muscles of Self-Accountability
Most people have a lot of learning to do when it comes to keeping promises to yourself. These aren’t skills that are taught through the usual channels. Indeed, for most of us, we are conditioned to the opposite. In schools, we have externally imposed deadlines and the threat of a bad grade to keep us progressing. As employees, the situation is much the same, with the raised stakes of financial stability to keep us on track. Even in times of dramatic and traumatic change, we still tend to slog to work or to school. We are conditioned to keep promises to others.
For most of us, we non-professional writers and would-be published authors, our creativity is an optional bonus in the day. If there is any bandwidth left after it’s been eaten by the demands of household operations, satisfying a demanding boss, and basic hygiene, then we create. Or, you know, chill out scrolling social media… Creativity, in times of change especially, takes a lot of self discipline. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re learning this skill, too.
There are myriad articles, podcasts, and other information on treating your creativity like a business, on giving time to yourself, and so forth. I simply want to reassure you here that this is something that everyone struggles with. But it is something worth working on.
In a Changing World, Create!
In cases where the change you’re experiencing is so tectonic that you cannot divert your mind from it, you might use your creativity to help process it.
Journal about the change you’re going through, your thoughts and perspectives. Fictionalize it; write a story about someone going through something similar. Explore the change through your medium. Push it to its farthest implication. Let the change you’re experiencing impact what you create. You might end up writing the next great work.
One of the most powerful things that we can do during times of change, especially change that seems to be far beyond our control, is to create and to share. To be a builder, to be a light. To make others think and question, to see through other eyes, and maybe smile through the changes in their own world.
What will you create today?
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