What the Intuitive Process of Writing a Novel Looks Like

If you keep going, you’ll make it through.

Now that I’m rounding the bend on revisions of my novel, The Gentle History, I’m able to see the whole process of writing it from the vantage point of finished (which is still some months in the future, but I feel it coming). Everyone’s process is different, but I thought I’d outline mine as a reference for intuitive writers starting their own novel-writing journey or who are struggling along the way.

Intuitive writers often fail to finish projects, because we need a different kind of process than the rational one that dominates most writing advice. Any kind of conceptual approach, such as outlining, coming up with plot points, doing extensive character sheets, etc. can stymie us. For intuitive writers, form is an emergent property of content. We have to write without much idea of where we’re headed, charting our own path through, and it can be frustrating and lonely. But if you keep working and trusting, you’ll get there. Here’s how it happened for me.

The Spark

It was 2018, and I was coming off a two-year period of burnout in which I couldn’t write at all. It was so bad I’d resigned myself to not being a writer anymore—in fact, I was beginning to doubt I’d ever been one. Then one day I was reading a book and a passage reminded me of an incident in my childhood where I passed out in a kiddie pool and almost drowned. I idly wondered if perhaps I had drowned, and my entire life after that has been a dream. It would certainly explain why I was so miserable all the time! Instantly, I knew this would be my next writing project: a novel about a woman who discovers she drowned as a child.

The Start

I knew at this point that I was an intuitive writer, so I didn’t waste much time planning. I opened up a Scrivener file and started writing. Along with the spark had come some basic ideas about story direction. My main character, Mara, was and American living in Australia with her husband, who was pursuing a master’s degree there (something I did in my own life). Mara, trying to find something for herself while her husband spends long hours on campus, becomes obsessed with finding the Australian lifeguard who saved her life at summer camp when she was a child.

Guess what my finished novel doesn’t include? Australia, the husband, a master’s degree. Yep, all that stuff ended up being trashed along the way as I continued to write and the story emerged along the way. The intuitive writing style is not efficient, but it’s inspired.

A New Character Makes Herself Known

One day I was writing and a new voice came through my fingers. Somewhere along the way Mara, now transposed to my own childhood neighborhood, switched her obsession to a woman who used to live in a nearby abandoned “haunted house,” where neighborhood kids went for secret trysts. As I wrote about Mara’s investigations into this woman’s life, that woman emerged as a character with a voice. Her name is Esme, and she lived in the haunted house decades before Mara was even born. Now my novel had two POVs in entirely different time periods. Yikes! But you’ve got to go where intuition leads you.

Things Start Filling Out

From this point forward, things began to get a little clearer. I knew that Mara and Esme meant something to each other, that their stories intertwined, but I wasn’t sure how. Was this a mystery, where Mara figures out what happened to Esme? Or was it more like the novel The Hours, where the connection between the different timelines is meaningful yet tenuous? I wrote it both ways, some scenes one way, some another, whatever felt right in the moment when I sat down to do my work.

This is what is called the murky middle, where you feel like you’re lost in a swamp. You go back and forth, find yourself where you started, try again, backtrack, get stuck, give it all up, sob uncontrollably, think horrible things about other writers who seem to know what they’re doing, recommit, get stuck again… This goes on for a while. All I can say is keep going, keep all your writing, and don’t try to fix everything by editing. Your goal here is to finish a draft.

The 60,000 Word Stall

I wrote two drafts of The Gentle History that I couldn’t take past 60,000 words (a novel is around 80,000 words). I just couldn’t see my way through to the end. The problem at this point was that the story wasn’t formed enough to create its own momentum toward a resolution. This is the most difficult challenge intuitive writers face. We won’t fully understand our story or characters, and thus the plot, until very late in the process, in the final stages of revision (this is where I am now on this project). Trust me, it’s worth the wait when you do finally experience things coming together, but getting to that point is an exercise in deep self-trust. Keep going.

What I finally did at this stage was force an ending, and I think this was the key moment of the project. I wanted a fully finished draft, and I intuitively understood that I wouldn’t be able to move forward if I didn’t make some kind of choice about how to resolve my story. So I settled on the ending that was most present in my mind—it also happened to be the craziest ending, but I chose once again to trust myself—and took an entire summer to get that final 1/4 written. Finally, in draft three, I had a completed novel. I’d been working on The Gentle History for three years.

From Editing to Revision

At this point I thought I’d done the hard part. Because it was hard! I was wrong. As I began the editing phase, which I thought was a simple matter of making what I had better, I realized that the hard work was still ahead. What I needed to do wasn’t editing, but revision: essentially a complete rewrite. I’d never been in this stage of novel writing before, so I learned as I went, putting full faith in myself and my intuition to guide me.

What this has looked like for me is multiple passes that deepen both character and story. It’s very much like the writing process but more focused and intentional. Sometimes I’m editing passages and rearranging scenes, and sometimes I’m substantially revising or writing whole new scenes. I delete a lot—killing my darlings, as they say. It feels a bit like peeling off layers of onion, going deeper each time. Along the way I’ve been adding details that anchor each character in their respective time periods, and with an eye toward selling the manuscript, I’ve been working on making their stories more topical. I’m working on honing the language during this stage, too, though I’m not yet at the point of refined line editing.

The result of revisions has been that the story continues to change, and I’ve gone back and forth on what I want for it. This is frustrating, but I do believe that the story’s final form will emerge as a result of revisions (I can feel this crystallization occurring as I go along). I am currently in draft six. I expect I’ll go through at least one more before I’m ready to start querying, though drafts are moving faster as I go and my timeline is now reckoned in months, not years!

Finishing

I’m entering the final stages of revision, and I’m expecting the next step to be line edits, where I go through each sentence and delete extraneous words, rephrase/rewrite for greater clarity and effect, and continue to deepen the meaning. Much of these more fine-tuned revisions involve what I see as making the novel more self-referential, increasing the links between sections so there is a feeling of resonance as the reader progresses. This is highly refined work that requires a deep understanding of the story and characters, which is something that only happens after you’ve spent much time with your manuscript. I have now been working on this novel for almost four years, and I feel myself nearing the end of the project (though it’s likely, depending on how my path to publication goes, that I still have a number of drafts ahead).

What’s Coming Next

There is more to all of this than what I write here; I wanted to provide a synopsis of the experience. I’m hoping to write an ebook guide that gets into the weeds of how to do revisions on a novel next year (2023). So stay tuned for that, and if you have any questions about any part of the process, contact me! It will help me understand what other people are struggling with, so that I can make sure to address that in my ebook.

In Which I Rage-Write About Writer’s Block Being a Real Thing

Please stop saying it doesn’t exist!

Special note: This was written after hearing a well-known and successful public creative say writer’s block doesn’t exist. I had an angry reaction to that opinion, and this essay was what came out. It’s full of strong feeling, and I’m publishing it as I wrote it because I think it makes an important statement. It is not meant to be some kind of hot take, nor is it meant to impugn on a personal level that specific person or other people who say stuff like this (that’s why I don’t name them). Ultimately I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are simply trying to help people when they say writer’s block isn’t real. And I’m sure that does help some people. But not me, and in this essay I tell you why. For an extended and more benevolent version of this essay, listen to my podcast episode on dealing with writer’s block.

Over the years I’ve heard a number of writers and other creatives deny the existence of writer’s block. I think it’s wild people would do this. It’s demonstrably false, or put another way, there’s a preponderance of evidence that it does exist: most writers have at one time or another experienced a block, even if it’s for a short period of time. So why do we still have people going on record saying shit like this? Let’s break it down.

First, a definition of writer’s block, because it’s widely misunderstood. A mistake people make is that it means you can’t write a word. More likely it manifests as a feeling of having to force the writing, feeling uninspired and finding no joy in it, and dreading having to do it. Eventually this will lead to being unable to write. I’ve experienced this in both short and longer bursts. If you learn to identify it early, you can manage your block so that its duration is shorter. The causes are usually our own fears and insecurities about our writing, but sometimes other factors are involved: mental or physical illness, exhaustion or burnout, time-management challenges. And sometimes it’s a sign that writing just isn’t your thing, or that you’re writing novels when you should be doing screenplays.

I’ve heard people say writer’s block isn’t real because its origins are often psychological: “Writer’s block doesn’t exist, it’s just your fears and insecurities getting in the way.” This is akin to saying mental health challenges don’t actually exist because they’re psychological. Writer’s block is often a mental health challenge (mine is of this type). And this kind of statement is also offensive to people who struggle with brain chemistry-related depression who are blocked. To the people saying this kind of thing: stop right now. Your mental health privilege needs to be checked.

You’ll also hear people who deny writer’s block say stuff like, “I don’t allow myself to get writer’s block.” Okay, good for you. Again, check your mental health (or other) privilege. Choose your words more wisely, have some compassion for those who struggle. Your personal reality doesn’t elide the truth of other people’s lived experiences.

I get it that many people who say writer’s block is a myth are trying to help. And it may help a minority. But mostly it sounds shockingly misguided and patronizing. And I think many people who say this kind of thing are actually getting a dopamine hit from it: it reminds them how well they’re doing with their own writing, how they’ve “conquered” their own fears and insecurities and “mastered” self-discipline. In a culture that sees hard work as a moral virtue (and writing regularly is hard work), they get to feel very good about themselves, even hold themselves up generously as an example of what “anyone” can do if they put their mind to it and simply refuse to allow writer’s block to happen.

If you are one of the majority of writers who struggles with blocks, please understand that it’s totally normal and it’s real. There’s no need to deny the existence of writer’s block in order to deal with it. In fact, accepting that it happens, that it isn’t an implication of moral weakness or inherent laziness, will help you move through these periods faster. It’s okay to feel insecure about your writing, to fear failure. If you are struggling with mental health issues that hold you back, you have my compassion and understanding: me too. Sometimes we just need a break, that’s the honest truth. I find that taking short periods away from writing every month or so helps me maintain my enthusiasm over time.

If you are experiencing a longer period of writer’s block, my deepest sympathies. After I finished my PhD, my burnout was so severe I couldn’t write much of anything for two years. I endeavored, I made strides, but I couldn’t write. To those of you who maintain writer’s block isn’t real or crow about how you don’t “allow” it to happen to you, here’s what that sounds like to me: an invalidation of those heartbreaking two years of my life, of the struggle I encountered finding my way back to writing, and of the challenges I still face in managing my mental health while pursuing my creative dreams. Do you really want to imply that I am delusional when I have writer’s block, that I’m experiencing some kind of hysteria, or that I am simply lazy, that I lack the character necessary to be a “real” writer? Please attempt some kindness and compassion. The world certainly needs more of it, and you sound like an asshole.

How to Judge the Value of Your Creative Work

How do you know if your work is any good?

This post is also a podcast episode!

When I was just starting up my blog and podcast, I’d have cold sweats and heart palpitations every time I hit the publish button. Okay, not gonna lie I still do sometimes. The question that looms large in your mind when you’re putting your work out in the world, regardless of whether you’re new at it or not, is, “How do I know if this is any good?” And while we’re asking, how do you know it’s good enough to dedicate time to producing it in the first place? Creative work requires a lot of time, time that in all likelihood you’ve taken away from something else. How do you justify that, unless you’re actually producing something of value?

Most creatives and artists cycle through extremes when it comes to their feelings about their work. One day they’re imagining all the accolades they’ll receive, the next they’re questioning all their life choices as they stare despondently at the crap they’ve just brought into the world. It’s notoriously difficult to accurately judge your own work. Nonetheless, it is possible to come to a stable assessment of it. I’m going to give you some realistic parameters of evaluation that are anchored in the nature of the creative process itself.

Why is it important to use the creative process as your basis of evaluation? Because if you try to judge your work based on either your own feelings about it or other people’s opinions, you will continue to be stuck in that cycle of extremes. While I do think it’s important to find value in your own work that’s rooted in your enjoyment of doing it, that’s not a good way to judge its value to the world. And relying on other people’s judgements is pure folly: a good review puts you on top of the world, a bad one sends you crashing down. It’s exhausting to live that way.

A much better way to judge your creative output is by your capacity to actually do the work. Producing creative work takes persistence and patience. That’s it. Your relative talent isn’t very important, because if you continue to do the work, your skills will increase as a byproduct of that process. You won’t even have to try that hard to improve: the human brain is wired to seek challenge and learning. As long as you continue to feel motivated by your work (learn how to maintain motivation in this post), improvement will happen.

The relative excellence of your work is a moving target. Because creative work is about process, the value of your output is found in its improvement over time, not how good it is in any given moment. You must have a long view when it comes to judging your work. It doesn’t matter how “good” any particular piece of it is; it’s in the regular accumulation of your work that its value is found.

Take for example Seth Godin, a well-known thought leader in matters of entrepreneurship and creativity. His work is of high value, at least based on traditional measures: he’s popular and he makes money. But Seth Godin isn’t saying anything other people couldn’t say. In fact, many other people are saying similar things. What Seth Godin does is put a lot of work out into the world without worrying too much about whether it’s “good”: currently he writes a blog post a day. He has ideas, and he writes about them and puts his words out there. He keeps doing (and shipping) his work.

I’m not saying that value equals fame and fortune. Most of us will never have either. Seth Godin is simply a well-known example of the value of process. In fact, on the very day I’m writing this his blog post is about the incremental improvement comprising process. I’m willing to bet that Seth Godin judges his own work primarily based on the fact that he did it yesterday, is doing it today, and will do it again tomorrow, and that it will evolve over time in accordance with what inspires him.

That’s creative process.

When you begin to see your work as an evolving body rather than discrete outputs, you’ll begin to find value in the creative process itself and your dedication to it. Your attachment to specific outcomes will lesson, and you’ll worry less about what other people think. Everything is experimentation, a work in progress. Don’t be too precious about your work. Just keep doing it.

Creative Success Really Does Come Down to Just These Two Things

The only things you need are persistence over time and patience.

Look, I get that we all define creative success in different ways. I define it almost exclusively on internal conditions: am I happy, satisfied, fulfilled by my creative activities? Do they feel meaningful not just to me but within the context of the wider world? If those conditions are met, I feel successful. Validation, money, etc. are just icing. Nice, but not necessary, and sometimes they even spoil the dessert (I don’t want brownies with icing, thanks very much).

Maybe you define it differently, and your way is totally valid if it’s working for you! But I bet regardless of your definition of success, one thing remains true: if you’re not actually doing your creative work and finishing projects, there is no success to be had.

This is where most people end up failing. Yes, most. For every person who finishes a novel and puts it out into the world, a hundred, and probably far more, have thought about writing a novel but didn’t, or made an outline but then never wrote it, or got through chapter four and abandoned the project, or even finished a rough first draft but then didn’t have the heart to dive into editing.

Sticking it out is the hardest part of creative success. And in fact it is the only truly necessary and sufficient ingredient. Talent is neither necessary nor sufficient, it’s really not. It helps, but what constitutes talent is relative and plenty of people of average talent succeed.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s involved in sticking it out. That “rule” about 10,000 hours of practice? The one that says you have to do something for that long to become an expert (whatever that means)? Toss that out the window. It can take a lifetime to amass that many hours, and not everyone has the capacity or desire to spend that much time on their art. Imagine spending 20 to 40 years getting your 10,000 hours (that’s spending between five to ten hours a week). Will you still want the same things at the end of that? Will you only then be ready to debut your precious art? That’s silly. Share your art now. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert, it doesn’t matter if you ever are.

There is one thing that the 10,000 hours rule does get right, though: if you dedicate yourself to achieving your 10,000 hours, you will most certainly manage to not only do your work (obviously), but probably finish lots of stuff.

The truth is that you only need two qualities to be creatively successful: persistence over time and patience. We tend to overvalue the first, undervalue the second. We know that we need to keep at it, this is ingrained in us through our cultural myths. Think The Little Engine That Could, or Slow and Steady Wins the Race. What we often don’t understand, the thing we trip up on, is the colossal, unbelievable, and frankly insane amount of patience that is needed to be a successful creative.

How long do you think it will take to finish your project? Double that and add six months. And it still may take longer. Not all projects are like this, but many are. And if you seek long-term success as a creative, you must essentially have never-ending patience, because the work never ends. And it’s always work, always effortful (though it’s also joyful if you accept that it’s always effortful work and learn persistence and patience). This is what the creative life is. It’s doing your work, continuing to do so, and practicing the patience of one who has deeply absorbed the lesson that it’s all process and journey, never arrival and destination.

Do you have what it takes? There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t. Maybe you prefer short-term gains, the feeling of progressive achievement, the world’s esteem. You may get those things from creative work, but if that is your aim, you will probably find yourself struggling to establish a creative practice that supports large projects. And that’s fine, because you should do what’s right for you. Just be clear on your own capacities and desires.

But if you do have what it takes, rest assured that truly the only things you need are persistence over time and patience. You can build these qualities into your creative practice, they can become what is sacred about it. You will find joy in your work, you will finish your projects, and you will see improvements in your skill over time. You will develop self-confidence and self-respect. And your success will take care of itself.

The Truth Is That the Creative Life Isn’t Very Exciting

It is a life defined by the act of fully inhabiting yourself.

It only took 20 years of adult life to work it out, but I can now say that I am living the creative life. What do I mean by that? I think it’s probably different for everyone, but for me, this is what that looks like: I dedicate a portion of each day to my creative work, and I try to the extent that I’m able to pass the rest of my time in ways that are conducive to fostering creative flow.

I didn’t always know there was such a thing as the creative life. As a writer, I saw life in terms of the dichotomy between successful writer vs. still trying to be one. And I was very much on the side of still trying, because I visualized success as having achieved publication. The life of a writer, I imagined, would feel more real and alive than my sad life as a wannabe. There would be events, inspiring friends, possibly travel and interviews involved! 

And possibly there would be, and certainly are for some writers. But I’ve jettisoned my old ideas of what success looks like; I now think being happy and creatively fulfilled is success. And now that I’ve found my happiness and fulfillment in the creative life, I have to laugh at such imaginings. Because the truth of the creative life is that at its heart it really is rather boring, at least viewed from the outside.

Here’s the main of it: I sit down and write today, then I do that same thing tomorrow, then I do that same thing the next day after, then I do that same thing the day after that…. And that’s it. That’s what it’s all about. Some days I come away from writing feeling awesome, but most days I just feel satisfied, not particularly excited. For every day I do feel on top of the world about my project(s), there are more days that I do not.

The creative life is about doing the same thing day after day with patience and persistence. It’s about iterated effort over time, and about understanding and accepting that that’s the sum total of the foundation of a creative life. Regardless of any successes you experience or don’t experience along the way, the creative life is constituted by the quiet act of dedicating yourself once again today to your work. 

There is absolutely no glamour about it.  

That, in fact, is what I love about it. The creative life is a humble thing, and therein lies its beauty. It is a life defined by the act of fully inhabiting yourself. It is what happens when your focus shifts from trying to fulfill external expectations, real or imagined, to the task of expressing your internal, lived experiences into the world in the way that suits your nature. This is what creative practice is about. Not the goals or singular achievements, but the iterated act of being yourself in the best way you know how.  

Why I’ve Committed to Making Self-Published Novels a Sizable Proportion of What I Read

Simply put, I just really love reading them, and here’s why.

As a writer with a finished novel, I’ve been thinking about my consumption of self-published novels and what that means in terms of my impending decision around what kind of publication to go for. For the time being I’m pursuing traditional publication, but realistically my chances are slim (as they are for most novelists for a variety of reasons). Self-publishing may very well be in my future. The problem? Until recently I wasn’t reading many self-published books.

I’d read a few over the years, usually friends’ novels. I’m the type of friend who really will read your novel, the whole thing. I’ll even give you kind and constructive feedback if you ask for it (but only if you ask). I’ve helped edit friends’ manuscripts for self-publication: I’m a professional editor as well as a writer, so I’m the person to ask. But I’m also someone who grew up in the era prior to ubiquitous self-publishing. Back then, we only had what were called “vanity” presses, and the implication was that if you used one it was because you weren’t good enough to get published.

These days this is no longer true, and I’m not sure it ever was. If you take a random sample of self-published novels, you’ll find that they run the gamut in terms of writing skill and polish, with many on par with or better than (some) traditionally published novels. But I’m happy to read all skill and polish levels. Often the only difference is that self-published novels haven’t had the benefit of the multiple rounds of professional workshopping and editing traditionally published novels do. And I’ve realized that this is exactly what I love about self-published novels.

Traditionally published books have been through the hands of many middlemen who work to turn it into a salable product. Often a very good one, but still, it’s a product meant for the transactional marketplace. While self-published books are also products, most have not been shaped in the same way. The product you are getting often feels more authentically immediate in comparison to those slick traditionally published books. And I like that. I like the feeling of reading a piece of creative work that has come relatively unmediated straight from the creator’s imagination.

As a writer I have mixed feelings about traditional publication. Like any institution, it represents and maintains certain types of privilege. And I don’t want it to be the sole arbiter of what I read (I recognize I’m not addressing independent presses in this piece; it’s an area I have yet to explore). But there’s another reason I am committed to putting more self-published novels on my TBR list.

Writing a novel is hard. It takes vision and persistence. It takes being able to advocate for yourself to carve out the time and space to write and an almost insane level of self-belief in the face of continual small and large failures to accomplish. And then to put your work out into the world yourself, without the backing of a publishing house? Phenomenal. That is effing brave. Traditionally published authors at least have that buoying esteem of the publishing industry behind them, whether they feel like they’ve made it or not (even traditionally published authors struggle with imposter syndrome!).

And here’s one final reason I’m committed to reading more self-published novels: I like supporting fellow writers not just by reading their stuff but by buying it. I am also a creative trying to make some money from my creative work, and it can be a disheartening struggle. Our society doesn’t value independent creative work as much as it does creative products that have been taken up by institutions and packaged for the transactional marketplace. And that’s kind of messed up when you think about it.

I get most of the traditionally published novels I read from the public library, and I’m happy to spend some of that money I’m saving on self-published books, knowing most of it is going directly to the author (don’t feel guilty about borrowing rather than buying traditionally published books: authors make good money from library purchases). It feels like a win-win situation.

If you are a writer who hasn’t explored self-published works, I’d recommend doing so. You’ll enjoy them, you’ll learn from them, and you’ll be supporting fellow writers.

No Time for Creative Practice? Learn to Listen to Your Energy Cues

Most of us have an energy problem, not a time problem

The major reason we don’t get around to our creative projects isn’t that we’re too busy. Most of us have the time somewhere in the day, even if it’s just twenty minutes. And that is absolutely enough daily time for a solid and rewarding creative practice. The problem is that when that twenty minutes shows up in our schedule, we either don’t notice, are too revved up to sit down and be creative on cue, or are too exhausted to do anything but collapse on the sofa and catch an episode of 30 Rock on Netflix. But by doing a little energy magic, we can open up more energetic space in our lives that we can fill with creative practice – and other stuff!

We need a framework to understand energy before we can start to work our magic, and this article in the Harvard Business Review provides a good one. It divides energy into four categories: physical, emotional, mental, and spirit-sustaining. The trick is to figure out what activities in these four categories give you energy rather than drain you. The best way to do this is to simply pay attention to the activities you are already doing throughout the day. Chances are you’re already working some energy magic without realizing it.

Physical energy is the one we tend to be most cognizant of in our health-obsessed culture. Often just that act of moving through the day is physically draining for most of us. Getting out of bed, going to work, doing chores…these activities are usually not generative in terms of physical energy. But exercise often is. Many people use exercise as a way of counterintuitively generating more energy. It may tire them out, but it also releases endorphins, which are both calming and energizing. Now, I don’t like exercise. But I do like talking walks. That counts! Maybe for you it’s gardening, yoga, jumping rope, or wiggling. Move your body in a way that renews you.

Emotional renewal usually comes in the form of interactions with others. For sensitive creative types, interactions can often be draining, but if you pay attention, you’ll find that there are certain types that give you a burst of energy. For me it’s often a simple, low-pressure exchange with a check-out person in a store. It’s brief, usually friendly, just a perfect type of interaction for me. The HBR article suggests practicing expressing appreciation for others, which I think is brilliant. It also points out that we often feel emotionally drained when we feel like victims of circumstance. Learning how to examine our assumptions objectively can help us move past that mindset and reconnect with our personal power.

Mental exhaustion is perhaps the most common type we deal with in our productivity-centered culture. The truth is we just don’t have as much capacity to focus and get stuff done as we think we do. In the course of the day we have one, maybe two 90-minute windows to concentrate on challenging tasks before we’re drained. This is called our ultradian rhythm, and understanding it can be life-changing. I’ll be writing a separate post on this in the near future, but to start working with this rhythm the first thing to understand is that pushing yourself past it results in rapidly depleting energy and quality of work. You can learn to recognize your own ultradian time period by paying attention to when you reach that point where you are having to really force yourself to concentrate. You may hit it sooner or later on any given day. That’s your natural stopping point. Give the task a rest and come back to it later, preferably the next day.

Spirit-sustaining energy is the one we often stumble on the most, and it’s the one most important to creative practice or any activity that’s closely connected to what we would call our heart or soul. When we feel our lives lack purpose and meaning (an extremely common affliction in our culture), we lack this energy and everything else gets harder. But here’s where us creative folks have a leg up: for us, creative practice can give our lives a feeling of purpose and meaning. It really can be that simple. We have a magical energy-generating engine inside of us: our urge to create. Uncovering it and keeping it running through creative practice can permeate all other areas of our lives with clarity and vitality.

If you learn to recognize your energy cues throughout each day, you can gradually make changes that will open up that energetic space you need for your creative work.

You Can Learn to Fiercely Protect Your Creative Practice

Even us timid people can be bold when it comes to defending our creative space.

A friend recently commented on how fiercely I protect my creative practice. The amusing image that popped into my head of myself armor-clad with sword drawn is at odds with how I see myself usually. I lack self-confidence, and I’ll avoid conflict at almost any cost. And yet she’s right. I defend my creative practice against anything that threatens to encroach on it. Somehow I’m bold and audacious within that space.

Part of my defense involves prioritizing my creative work over other things, but much of it is the mental and emotional labor that defending the inherent value of my creative work requires. When the main work of your life is something that doesn’t earn any money and doesn’t involve caring for others (e.g. being a wife/mother), you inevitably find yourself in a position of having to protect and defend against judgement (much of which is self-judgement due to conditioned cultural beliefs), incomprehension, or just plain indifference.

How is it that someone like me, so unassuming and even timid in general, is able to so fiercely advocate for her own creative practice? Moreover, how am I able to continue to do my creative work in the face of the often inhospitable world? I’m not a warrior, I don’t believe my creative work is all that important in the grander scheme of things. I’m not out to change the world with it. I just want to be happy, and my creative practice is how I ensure that on the day to day. Creative practice is my antidepressant, you could say. That alone is reason enough to protect it, but that’s not what enables me to do so. Likewise, I believe in the inherent value of my practice, but that’s not enough to engender my fierce protective instincts.   

What enables me is the space I’ve created around my creative practice, like a buffer zone between my work and the rough edges of the world. While I created that space out of necessity, I’ve come to find that I’m a different person there. Whatever boldness and audacity doing creative work requires in the first place becomes what I use to defend my creative practice against anything that threatens it. This could be something as small as an overbooked schedule. It could be something as big as a relationship that is using up the emotional energy I need to put into my creative work. In the creative entrepreneurship spaces I have recently found myself in, it often looks like explaining that for me creativity is a way of life, a way of being in the world. It’s not part of something else, not part of a business, for example (although business could be a part of creativity…perhaps). Creative practice is the thing around which all other things revolve. It is my center.

I think a creative practice requires this kind of fierce protection. Creativity and the time and space to do creative work are so easily encroached upon. Even robust practice can erode like sand from the repeated insistence of the gentlest waves. It can happen without us noticing. Life takes over, things come up, creativity can wait. If you don’t insist on that time and space and on the importance of your creative work (at least to you, if to no one else), it will inevitably languish.

You’ll feel strident, like you’re repeating yourself endlessly (I have to do my work. No, really, I have to do my work). You’ll feel selfish (I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I have to do my work). You’ll feel weird (I know everyone is doing [the thing everyone is supposed to want to do], but I need to do my work). All this is what following your passion and purpose feels like, I think. This is what it requires from you.

I didn’t develop my fierceness overnight. It grew as my practice did, in pace with it, organically over years. So don’t worry if you don’t feel fierce about your practice. I advise clients to find one way they can prioritize their creative work, big or small. Take one vacation day a month to do your work. Cancel one activity – better one that drains you than brings you joy, but either will do – and do your work. Once you begin to experience yourself prioritizing your creative work, you’ll grow in confidence that you can find your boldness, and that your work is important enough to protect and defend. You’ll begin to want to don your armor and draw your sword in defense of it. If I can do it, you can do it.

The Protagonist Bias and Creative Rejection

The truth is, almost nothing is personal.

Dealing with rejection is part of being creative. If you’re putting your work out there in the world, inevitably you’ll experience rejection of some kind. Our protagonist bias can make dealing with it more difficult. This is a bias that emerges from seeing ourselves as the protagonist of our own life story. It can make us take things personally when the truth is, almost nothing is personal.

Humans are meaning-makers. That’s what we do all day long. We interpret what we see and experience by creating a story from it. The story is how we understand the sequence of events, and anchors us in linear time. It’s causal by nature: something happens that has effects, which then have more effects. Even if we’re not consciously aware of the story we’re creating, our brain is constantly doing this for us in the background.

Understanding our lives through stories has its benefits, but there is one major drawback. It positions us as protagonist, and gives rise to an illusion that everything that happens to us is somehow about us. This is reinforced by the stories we see and read for entertainment. The basic plot of a novel or TV show centers on the experiences of a protagonist, and all events are connected to them either in that the protagonist makes them happen or is impacted by them.

As the star of our own story, we suffer from the bias that what we experience is personal. When we hear people laughing in our vicinity, many of us have a knee-jerk reaction that they’re somehow laughing at us, even when we know it’s extremely unlikely. We’re interpreting everything from our own perspective, and it’s a natural and adaptive trait to assess things in terms of what they have to do with us. But it also leads to many faulty assumptions.

The truth is that almost nothing outside of ourselves has to do with us. That is to say, our own reactions belong to us, but the outer circumstances that elicit them do not. Knowing this can help immensely when it comes to dealing with how people receive our creative work. We may feel that people’s reactions to our work have to do with us, but they don’t. Not at all. Two different people can see entirely different things in our work. Their reactions are 100% to do with them and their own internal mindscapes.

Not taking people’s reactions personally is difficult, though, even when we know they aren’t. That’s because we identify with our own work. We see it as an extension of ourselves. This is where we need to detach. We need to make a hard break between our work as it belongs to us during creation, and our work out in the world where it belongs to consumers. Once we put it out there, it’s not ours any longer. It has a life of its own. Many writers I know don’t read reviews, either negative or positive, to help them make this break. What people think about their books doesn’t have anything to do with them.

The one sticky area is when you have work out specifically for critique, which is often part of the creative process whether it occurs within the confines of a critique group or when you have your work on submission. I’m not going to lie, critical feedback can suck, because you can’t make that hard break. You have to listen to and parse feedback in these cases. But the same rule applies: any feedback is ultimately 100% about the person giving it. It’s not the truth, it’s just an opinion. But it can be very difficult to deal with critical feedback and I advise choosing critique partners and other feedback opportunties with extreme care. Remember: ultimately your creative process is yours. You get to decide what it looks like and what kind of feedback you let into your life.

Don’t feel bad about being cautious about or even rejecting feedback. Protecting yourself is necessary, particularly if you are an HSP and very sensitive to feedback, critical or otherwise. Your creative practice is sacrosanct, and anything that interferes with the joy you feel in creative process needs strong boundaries around it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to get feedback, or that you have to listen to it. You don’t. Feedback does not necessarily make work better. Listening to the wrong kind of feedback can make your work worse. Pay attention to your feelings in these matters. Feedback only helps if you are open to it, and it’s the right kind. Trust yourself. What matters is how you feel about your work, not what other people think about it.

Doubling Down on Creativity in Difficult Times

Make your creative practice sacred.

When life gets busy and we’re stressed out and exhausted, what are some of the first things we jettison? You’d think it would be what’s causing us so much anxiety, but no, we double down on those things. If we just work harder, faster, more, we’ll get things right and life will feel good again. It’s the pleasurable activities we jettison: our hobbies, our leisure time. Let me just get through this busy period, we think, and then I’ll have time for the fun stuff.

I’ll have time this weekend to write. I’ll have the energy then. Maybe.

I want to wait until I have the space to really focus on my music. Next month after all these deadlines, then I’ll be able to really dedicate myself to it. Maybe.

My new year’s resolution is going to be to spend more time painting. Next year is going to be my year. Maybe.

How many weeks, months, and years have gone by like this? Life always gets in the way somehow, doesn’t it? And meanwhile we still don’t feel creatively fulfilled or like we’re fulfilling our potential. I’ll get to it when life doesn’t feel so hard, we promise ourselves. Except life always feels hard.

I spent years of my life making promises to myself that I’d finally finish a novel, and I never did. Until I realized something about creativity that changed everything for me. Creativity isn’t a luxury. It’s not something we have to wait until we are free and clear of life difficulties so we have the space and time to do it. Creativity is the way through difficulties. We have evolved the capacity for creativity because it’s how we move through challenge.

Think about it. Which of our ancestors were more likely to survive existential threats? Often it was probably the ones who were willing to get creative. Creative thinking has been selected for throughout the evolution of human beings. Creativity isn’t something that is gifted on some and not others. It’s a type of cognition and energy we can all tap into that can lead us through difficult times in life if we trust it.

Instead of waiting for the space and time for creativity, we can use creativity to make time and space for ourselves. The key is to find a creative practice that is generative for you (energy-producing rather than energy-draining), and use it as a way to heal and regenerate from the daily traumas of life. When you hear people talking about creative practice as sacred or spiritual, this is what they mean. It is a way to step away from ordinary, stressful life and reestablish your connection to your inner peace and joy. This is creative practice as sabbath, or as a meditation or mindfulness practice. It is creativity as refuge.

It sounds good, but perhaps isn’t easy to put into practice, right? Like any habit, in the beginning it requires a little pushing, but not in the form of a grand plan or schedule. Not in the form that has failed in the past: I’ll carve out some time this weekend, next month, next year. I’ll put in fifteen minutes a day, starting Monday. The problem with plans is that they always start in the future. Plans are thoughts, not action. And when you make a plan for something that is in actuality quite a tricky thing to establish as a habit, there is going to be a high failure rate.

The secret to having a creative practice is to do it now. That’s right. Why not now? But you have all this stuff you have to get done…. Do you, though? Right now, this instant? Do you have five minutes? That’s enough to start. Make a doodle. Write three sentences. Sing something. Then go do those things you feel you have to do, and let the knowledge that you just experienced something creative, sacred, all your own go with you as you continue through your day.

That’s your start. Do it again the next time you think about being creative. How about now? Be creative now. Let that part of yourself lead you through a few minutes of special space and time that is your secret little sabbath-in-the-middle-of-the-day.    

Are You Afraid to Put Your Work Out There? This Will Help

Eight guidelines to help you get brave about putting your work out into the world.

Time and again the number one thing my coaching clients say holds them back from fulfilling their creative dreams is fear of putting their work out there in front of other people’s eyes. Fear of negative judgement, or worse, being totally ignored (this is a far more common outcome) can become a real creative block, and keep people from even starting a creative project. It can hold others back from finishing, because the thought of putting their work out into the world for consumption steals the joy from their private creative practice. The chasm between the subjective experience of creative practice and the objectification of your creative work in the public sphere can feel vast and terrifying.

I understand this fear because it held me back for many years. I experienced a lot of rejection in the early part of my writing career and it eventually wore me down until I was unable to write at all. When I started up again, I knew I would need to develop some better mental skills to help me deal with this fear of being seen and judged. I still struggle with putting my work out into the world, but I’ve come up with some guidelines that have helped me, that I share with clients and now am sharing with you.

1. In the beginning, it’s just hard. There’s really no getting around the fear and anxiety of taking those first steps of putting your work out there. But I promise, it gets easier, and the rest of the tips are meant to help with that.

2. Volume. When I started my blog, each post felt so precious because I felt like I had to make each perfect. This made me feel extra vulnerable. But after I had a bunch up, I stopped worrying so much that each one was excellent. If you are working on larger projects, like a book, consider joining a critique group where you can get feedback on small bits.

3. Consistency. What doing your creative work regularly helps with is realizing that not all your stuff has to be brilliant. I write a weekly blog post. Some weeks I’m on fire, others definitely not. I post regardless (mostly). Some of my blog posts are just “eh.” That’s okay. Same goes for my fiction.

4. Nothing is personal. The way people receive your work and what they think about it is 100% about them, and you have 0% control over it. Repeat this to yourself as much as necessary.

5. Be specific about the feedback you want! Asking for and receiving feedback deserves its own separate post, but in the beginning when you are putting your work out and need some encouragement and practice with hearing people’s responses to it, tell your friends exactly that! Ask them to tell you one thing about your work that they liked, that inspired them, that stood out, that made them think. Tell them you do not want any critiques or advice! Just positive, loving, encouraging words. And choose which friends you ask carefully. You know which friends are great at positive support, and which aren’t. Then, believe what they tell you.

6. Make sure you enjoy doing your creative work. If you enjoy your process and feel good about your work, that will go a long way toward insulating you against difficult feedback.

7. Take all feedback with a grain of salt. Again, people’s opinions on your work are 100% about them. Pick and choose what you listen to depending on context, the type of creative work you are doing, and ultimate goals. Be your own advocate, believe in yourself and your own judgement, and stand strong in your own truth.

It’s always hard to put yourself out there. But you can get better at it with practice. Don’t feel bad if you struggle with it! Us creatives are all in the same boat with this, and believe me when I say that we all feel similar fears, insecurities, and self-judgment. So here’s my final guideline:

8. Reach out to other creatives! Find people who aren’t afraid to talk about their struggles and difficult feelings, and share their journey with you. Knowing you’re not alone is one of the best ways find strength on your own journey. And you’re not alone, I promise.

Movement as Part of Creative Practice

Physical activity is the flip side of the coin to creative work.

I’ve noticed that the most creative people I know have a physical activity that they regularly practice. I know musicians who run, writers who do yoga, visual artists who hike. I personally love to take walks. When I ask my coaching clients to describe how their creative practice fits into their life, many talk about their physical exercise as something that is at odds with their creative practice. Exercise is often a priority for them because of its physical and mental health benefits, but they don’t generally see it as directly related to their creative practice. I encourage them to see physical activity as a part of their creative practice, the flip side of the coin to doing dedicated creative work.

The reason so many creative people have a physical practice is that movement actually makes you more creative. Most people don’t consciously understand this connection. They may think that the elevated mood generated by exercise is conducive to getting their creative work done, because it’s easier to do stuff when you’re feeling good. But actually, this isn’t the reason exercise enhances your creativity. That endorphin high from exercise is a parallel benefit to enhanced creativity but is not causally related to it. The exercise itself is what makes you more creative.

Creatives through the ages have used physical activity as a component of their creative practice, even if they do not explicitly frame it as such. The American Transcendentalist writers Emerson and Thoreau were well-known for their lengthy nature walks. Thoreau walked, or “sauntered,” as he called it, for at least four hours a day. He identified it as a spiritual practice, but the way he saw spirituality is very much how we see creativity today: as an understanding of life that arises as we gaze through the lens of our inner selves at the outside world. The Transcendentalist perspective emerged in part as a reaction to the development of empirical science that posited that the world can only be known through our observations of the material realm.

The Transcendentalists understood that an intuitive experience of the world is essential to the flourishing of the creative soul. Thoreau intentionally used his sauntering habit as a way to harmonize his body and mind and thus elicit creative thinking. In fact, he did not believe that a mind could be properly inspired unless the body was, too*, making physical activity both advantageous for and integral to creative thought.

Ironically, empirical science now backs that up. Numerous studies have shown the benefits exercise has on creative thinking (this NYT article has a good summation of them). However, some types of physical activity do serve creativity better than others. It is not a coincidence that creatives generally prefer solitary or semi-solitary types of exercise: running, yoga, hiking. Team sports, where your mind is engaged with the other players around you and the strategy of the game, are not conducive to creative thought because they focus your mind too much on the outward circumstances of the game. The goal with a physical activity as part of your creativity practice is to soothe your mind into a state where its subconscious cognitive processes switch on. These are where creativity is born and develops. Thoreau saw this method of unfocused yet guided cognition as thinking with “carelessness.”†

I encourage you to see your physical activities as part of your creative practice. Even activities like gardening count. The only requirement is that they be the type of activity that doesn’t require too much active focus on your part, so that you can give your brain the space to activate its subconscious, intuitive thought processes. Creativity thrives when we expand our perception of what counts as creative work. It’s not just the moments we sit down and start doing our creative work. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes in our brains to make those moments of “performance” possible, and you will reap the benefits if you give your brain the space and time it needs to fully access its creative potential. Integrating your physical activities into your perception of what comprises creative practice is one way to do this.

*This and other insights related to Thoreau were inspired by David C. Smith, 1991, “Walking as Spiritual Discipline: Henry Thoreau and the Inward Journey” in Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 74:1/2, 129-140. You can find the article here. It is not open access, but you can sign up to the database (JSTOR) using your personal email and read up to 100 articles a month for free.

† Ibid., 134.

Interlude: What I Do When I'm Just Not Feeling It

Instead of pushing through, pivot.

You know those weeks that are an almost-comical series of awful and exhausting things? I’ve just had one of them. The blog post I was trying to write, well, it’s just not done. I could push through, put it up, but I wouldn’t feel good about it. I haven’t said all the things I want to say in it yet. It needs more time to develop.

This desire to give it more time clashes with my equally strong desire to be consistent about putting up a new blog post here every Friday. And for all the time I’ve been writing this blog, this is the first week I’ve ever felt this conflict. I’m sure it won’t be the last, though!

The usual response to this type of thing is to push through, right? I’ve made a commitment to putting up a weekly blog post. And while there will undoubtedly be weeks when I do have a good excuse for not following through, this doesn’t feel like one of them. But I’m equally committed to not forcing myself when I feel resistance turn into that particular brand of anxiety known as dread. And I’ve been feeling that this week.

I’ve written about how I believe creativity should be enjoyable. Not all the time, but most of the time. There are two reasons for this. One, if it’s not enjoyable, eventually you’ll be forcing yourself through it every time, and that’s neither sustainable nor conducive to doing your best work. Two, if it’s not enjoyable, what’s the point? Creativity is what makes my life feel like it’s worth living. It’s what gets me out of bed every morning. For me, it has to be enjoyable.

You can see my conundrum. Do I fail at my deeply held belief that creativity should not be forced, and finish that blog post even if it feels awful? Or should I fail at following through on my commitment to my readers to have a weekly blog post up on Friday?

I finally realized that this perspective was too either/or. It was so constrictive and uninspiring that it was depressing me. What was the third option here? I thought about what is exciting me right now. My fiction. This summer I’m trying to finish the third draft of my novel, The Gentle History. This is a big deal, because it will be the first finished draft of a novel I’ve been able to complete in 15 years. And I’m loving the process, which is itself also a big deal (my attempts to finish novels in the past only led to misery because I was - you guessed it - forcing things).

So I decided that this week in lieu of my typical blog post, I would post some excerpts of my novel. Will people want to read them? Maybe, maybe not. That’s not the point. The point is, I feel excited about it, and it has allowed me to continue to be in touch with my creative flow of inspiration even in an impossible week. It gives me a way of honoring my goal of putting up a weekly post, and it’s a way of sharing my process, which is also something I’m committed to. So many boxes ticked!

Sharing excerpts from a novel is challenging, because novels are longform, and excerpts are short. So these are really more vignettes, in no particular order, that give a feel for the novel.

The Gentle History a novel about a woman who discovers she drowned as a child. It best fits into the genres of literary slipstream, dark psychological, and mystery/thriller.

Draft 3; excerpts.

Sometimes I get flashes in my mind of geometric shapes sliding together, gone so fast that what I sense are afterglows, more a feeling of something visual; apparition. I wonder if they are brief revelations of the inner workings of my mind. Not its organic workings, but the way it perceives how the world fits together. Angles and planes, points and ledges, moving across and over each other, merging, folding, subsuming.

The way yesterday slides under today. Then today bends and buckles at its own horizon, and yesterday emerges again. Yesterday contracts, lengthening into a line that arrows forward in a loop that comes back around to pierce the center of a disc that is another day.

I am a single point that sometimes becomes a line and sometimes a spiral. I spin under the water, a whirlpool, I come up as a wave. I can’t remember what I remember. So I start back at the beginning.

It was dark, and I was alone.

*

When I struggle up through layers of hangover-laced sleep and open my eyes to the pitch black of my basement apartment, I can believe that this is some strange afterlife or purgatory. The house phone’s ringing upstairs. It rings and rings, stops, then begins again and seemingly again and again. Or maybe this happened over the space of days. Or all at once, just one everlasting ringing. I close my eyes on it all.

Later, I pad to the bathroom, the glow of my laptop on my bed my guiding light, keeping the door open so I can pee without turning on the overhead bulb. Then I turn on my coffee maker, which I miraculously stocked at some point so it’s ready. Coffee, a bit of milk from a fridge with the inside bulb screwed out - I find the milk by feel - and I’m back on my bed, leaning on a stack of pillows propped up against the wall, laptop on my thighs. I go straight to the Bandits & Bureaucrats webpage to see if there are any new pictures from the weekend gig.

Paige has a kickass life, she somehow made it and I didn’t. The thing is, I was always ok with that, or I think I was. She was the one who couldn’t handle things. She acted like I was jealous of her success with music and all her cool music friends, but I wasn’t. Things just started getting dark for me. I was less and less of a real person, and she took it personally. At least I think that’s what happened. But I’m not sure, sometimes I’m so utterly confused by it all.

Bandits & Bureaucrats have gotten pretty big in Philadelphia. Paige plays the cello, which makes the band stand out. I’ve never been much into music, but I liked going to Paige’s gigs. Cello is definitely my favorite instrument. I can’t stand violin, it’s too high-pitched, but cello is in the right vibrational zone for me.

Tonight there are some new pictures of their Saturday night gig. Paige sits in a purple-pink haze at the left of the stage, wrapped around her cello. Her expression is what it always is when she’s playing, serious and lost-in-it, eyes gazing at things the rest of us can’t see. In one photo she holds her bow at the ready, head cocked to one side. Her brown hair is pulled back, her face sheened with rose from the lights. She’s beautiful. I mean, really.

No, I was never jealous of her when we were still friends. I’m jealous of her now, though. All the photos of her and the band, her husband, other friends who show up here and there, all people I know but not on my own, outside of Paige…it makes me feel sick. But still I look. I want to see.

*

Minutes pass, or don’t pass. The river moves. A light in an apartment across the way comes on and is extinguished almost immediately. Another light, this time left on for an indeterminate time. I don’t notice when it goes off, only that it is no longer on. The river moves some more. I have another mini vodka, and then one more. It’s the hour of nothing, the empty hour between three and four in the morning. The space between the end and the beginning. My time. It just feels so good to sit here alone in the dark office, drinking, watching the river and the apartments across the way.

Then, there’s something in the water. It floats along near to the shore and catches in some debris. It’s large and lengthy, and it takes my brain some time to catch up with what my eyes are telling it. It looks like a person, possibly face down, what seems like its head bobbing against the debris it’s caught up in. The leg end floats wide, circles, dislodges the head, and it continues its slow float past the office. I stand, peering at it until it disappears under the bridge a few hundred feet down the river.

In this empty hour, I’m not sure I’ve seen what I think I have. Across the way, the condos are all dark now except for one, where there’s a blue flickering from a tv. I stare at it, idly trying to discern a pattern to its intermittent flash, and wondering what I should do. Was it really a body? It could have been a log, it could have been a long cushion or piece of foam – hell, it could have been just a bunch of trash traveling en masse down the watery avenue. Why had I assumed it was a person, a dead person? Now, in retrospect, it seems quite obvious that it wasn’t. I sit again and scoot the chair up to the desk, eyeing the phone. I could call it in, but if it was a dead body, does it matter if I do? There’s no one to save here. I quail at the thought of speaking to a 911 dispatcher. I’ve never called 911 before, and assume they will want me to stay here to speak with the police about what I saw. I clearly can’t do that, they might smell alcohol on me. I really can’t be sure, after all, that I really saw a dead body. It was dark, the lights along the river are not strong enough to illuminate details. More and more I am convinced what I saw was nothing more than trash, an illusion of a body.

“Dammit,” I whisper. I turn on the computer and log on. Can I send an email about it? I do a quick online search. Doesn’t look like it. There is a phone tip line. I could probably call it in anonymously.

But even doing that, for something that is increasingly vague in my mind, feels like too much. I’d be wasting their time, calling. Now I don’t even know if I saw anything at all. I could just be having flashbacks of a dream from last night, or something that came from my subconscious. It’s already gone, a phantom, another lost memory.

Should Creativity Be Enjoyable (or Easy)?

The best thing I did for my creative practice was stop forcing it.

I’m going to answer that question straight off. I think creativity should be enjoyable, and while I won’t go so far as to say I think it should be easy, I don’t think it has to be hard. Not only that, I want creativity to be fun. Not all the time, not every single minute, but for the most part.

I didn’t used to think this way. I believed I was compelled to do creative work – in my case, writing – whether I enjoyed it or not because I’m a born writer. For years I didn’t actually enjoy writing very much. What I enjoyed was the idea of myself as a writer. But not the actual writing. Sometimes, on rare occasions, it would all come together and the writing would flow, but mostly I just felt relieved when a writing session was over. I’d been a “good” writer and done my work.

Things couldn’t be more different for me now. I enjoy writing – well, most of the time anyway! – I’m producing more than ever before, and most importantly, being creative brings me joy on a daily basis. I love the work of being creative now, not just the idea of it. I no longer have to rely on the concept of myself-as-writer to feel good about my writing. I feel good about it because I feel good doing it. So what changed for me?

I stopped trying so hard. I gave up the struggle. I realized that forcing things was working against me because it made writing joyless. Which made me not want to write. Which made me try to force things. And through all of this my writing became increasingly lifeless. It wasn’t creative work anymore, it was just work.

We live in a culture that glorifies struggle. If it’s not hard, it’s not worth it. Relationships, jobs, success…we expect everything to be really hard, and often it is. But I made an important discovery about myself. I don’t want things to be hard. I got tired, y’all. Burned out. I was ready for some easy. And if that meant I had to give up on trying to be a writer, so be it. Except something amazing happened. The less I forced myself, the more I felt drawn to writing. And the more I insisted it start to be easier, the easier it got. I realized that the thing that was making it so hard all the time was me. I had all these expectations and insecurities bound up in my creative process. Once I decided that writing wasn’t worth it anymore if it was going to feel bad, and became willing to give it up if I couldn’t find a way to enjoy it, that’s when it all changed for me. I realized it didn’t have to be hard. Challenging, sure, but challenges are fun. That’s different from hard.

When I started feeling that urge to start writing again, I knew I’d have to be careful or I’d be right back where I started. I’d burn out again. I decided that never again would I allow things to get that hard. If I am struggling to the point of having to force it, that’s a sign that I need to back off, take a new direction or take a break. I have relied on that rule since then to guide me. I never force things. Sometimes there’s resistance, and I usually work through that, but if I start to feel significant anxiety or despair, I stop right there. A hard stop. Even if it means I don’t write. Even if it means I get really lazy about it for a while.

The reason this works is because creativity originates in our intuitive, subconscious mind. And when you are forcing things, you are using your rational, conscious mind. The rational mind likes to take control of your process and keep control, and you forcing things is like its fuel. The more you force, the harder it gleefully grips the reins. Your intuitive mind is a bit of a wallflower and will gladly let your rational mind hog all the space and all your attention. Eventually your intuitive mind fades so far into the background that you cease to interact with it in any creatively constructive way. That’s creative burnout.

It’s okay to want things to not be so hard, even to want them to be easy, and to be more fun! That doesn’t mean you’re not a serious artist or serious about your craft. It actually means you understand how your brain works. It’s pretty simple. When you enjoy an activity, that activates the dopamine connection, which motivates you to continue doing it even when you encounter resistance. Think of an exercise routine. You don’t always want to do it, but when you do, you feel great. If that ceases to be true, if you have to force it, drag yourself through it, if it becomes too hard, eventually you’ll quit because human beings only possess so much willpower. Much less than we think.

Sometimes the answer really is to stop pushing ourselves so hard. Sometimes the answer is to take some time to do nothing. Sometimes it’s even learning how to waste time on purpose. Counterintuitive practices such as these can have the effect of freeing your intuitive, creative mind and setting you back on track to be more productive than ever before.

At a Creative Impasse? Here's How to Use It to Move You Forward

A creative impasse just means it’s time to regroup.

I need to come clean about something. I’ve really been struggling with my fiction lately. I’m working on a novel, and am nearing the end of draft #2. Lately I’ve been feeling more and more resistance to sitting down to write. Some resistance is normal, and I’m good at working through it. But this is reaching a level where I feel like I’m forcing things. And as I’m always saying, I don’t force things. To me, forcing it is a signal that I need to consider not doing the thing. And so I’ve slowed down on my fiction writing. And that makes me feel bad, and even resentful toward my writing. And then I want to write even less. Vicious cycle, am I right?

I’m used to this cycle, sadly. It happens every time I try to finish a novel draft. I just can’t seem to get it done. I peter out somewhere around the middle or a little past. I start to struggle more with writing, and feel less and less enthused, until I’m forcing things to the degree that I kind of just give up in despair. I haven’t been able to finish a novel since I finished my first, some fifteen years ago. Yikes.

What am I doing wrong? Why do I always find myself at this impasse? Maybe you’ve experienced something like this in your own creative practice.

Last night, after I decided yet again that I wasn’t going to force myself to write, and was feeling guilty about being a bad writer who can’t stay committed to her craft, I’d finally had enough of feeling terrible about all this. Feeling terrible sucks. I don’t want to do it anymore. What if I stubbornly and willfully refuse to see this impasse as a bad thing, and pretend it’s marvelous instead? Like, eff you, impasse, but wait, come back, because I’m going to embrace you whether you like it or not! That’s more like it.

Here’s what the impasse tells you:

• It’s time to take a break and let things percolate.

• It’s time to find a new direction, and it’s gotta be an enjoyable one.

An impasse just means it’s time to regroup. That’s all. Creative work needs to be enjoyable for the most part – using that dopamine connection is how you can create motivation for consistent practice – and if it stops being (mostly) fun, that’s your sign that something needs to change. For me, it seems to be a sign that I’ve taken the story as far as I can in the current iteration of my novel. In each draft I get a little further, so it makes sense that my impasse signals the need to start a new one. Draft #3, here I come! First I’ll do some percolation activities, like assessing my story and analyzing its themes and character arcs, but then I’ll start in with the writing again. And hopefully draft #3 will take me a bit further.

The most important thing to remember when you are at an impasse is to not give up. It’s not a sign that something’s wrong, or you’ve lost your passion, or the project is a failure! Sleep on it. Go do something else for awhile. And then sit down and think a bit about it. If you start feeling stuck or anxious again, repeat all this until space opens up in front of you for whatever the next step in the project is. It will happen! Trust that it will, and enjoy your impasse while it lasts, because soon enough you’ll be back in the saddle.

Did You Know That Flow Can Be Active OR Passive? Both Are Necessary For Creativity

Learning how to cultivate passive flow can help you enter an active flow state.

This blog post is now a podcast episode!

(This is a follow-on to last week’s post about using flow for discovery writing.)

If you are any kind of creative, chances are you’ve come across the concept of flow, and you may even actively cultivate flow for your creative work. Flow is a state where you become so immersed in an activity that you lose track of time, and your actions seem to emerge naturally and without extreme effort. Artists often describe this experience as the work doing itself: the words are writing themselves, the music is playing itself…. Athletes also experience flow states. When I enter the zone while skiing, for example, I feel like the mountain is skiing me, not the other way around. I liken it to the feeling of swimming with the current.

But creative work can often feel the other way around, like you’re swimming against the current. It can feel like pulling teeth. The flow state is coveted by creatives but it’s difficult to get into. It requires us to enter an intuitive space, and our rational mind has us in a stranglehold. It doesn’t relinquish control gladly. So how can you make it easier to get into that zone? You can start by cultivating what I call passive flow. This is a more low-key state of flow that can be maintained at all times. You may dip in and out of it, but it’s always there, and when you stray too far from it you can easily reestablish the connection. I liken the feeling of being in a passive flow state to floating with the current – or going with the flow.

Passive flow is a way of living. It’s a state of being and a feeling you get when you are able to stop struggling so much against the way things are and surrender to the flow of life. In the Chinese philosophy of Daoism, this is called wu wei. The characters that make up this word represent the concepts “without” or “lack” and “action.” Together they are best translated as “effortless action.” This is when you are living in harmony with the natural flow of things, and you encounter little resistance to your actions. You don’t waste energy trying to change or control things you can’t, and you accept the way things are and work with what you have already available to you. It’s an easy and pleasant way of living, one that keeps you largely immersed in the moment. It is a type of flow state, but one that is always there, because you’re living it.

Some people use meditation and mindfulness to cultivate passive flow, but that stuff has never worked for me. After years of failure, I made a discovery: passive flow is something we all naturally have, but the way we live our lives has taken us so far from it that we believe we’ve lost it. We haven’t, though. It’s like a stream that has so much junk thrown in that the water no longer seems to flow. But it still flows! It’s just gone underground. We need to clean out the streambed to encourage the water to flow there again.

We can do that by eliminating some of the stuff from our lives that clutter our streambed. We can’t get rid of all of it, but we can still do a decent cleanup job! The stuff that blocks our access to passive flow is anything that causes us to tighten up, feel debilitating anxiety, that makes our lives smaller, that creates trauma – you get the picture. It’s the stuff that makes you feel bad, that you have to force, that doing is like wading through a tar pit. It’s the stuff that causes you harm, that makes you hide, that makes you fearful. All of that takes you away from your flow. And if you have too much of that kind of stuff in your life, you’ll become totally blocked.

It can take time to eject that junk from your life. Some of it feels inescapable, some of it feels like stuff we have to do or put up with. And sometimes we hang on to the junk because we don’t know anything different, or it gives us a sense of identity. Sometimes we don’t want to deal with the grief of letting go. There are all kinds of reasons we hold tight. So start small. Is there something small in your life that drains your joy? Can you get rid of it or stop doing it, even if there are consequences? Try it. Stand strong in your decision, even if people complain or judge you, or you judge yourself. Tell yourself that you’re doing this for your mental health. Your mental health has to come first! Without that, you have nothing. You’ll start to see that things are still okay in your life without that thing - in fact, they’re probably better. Over time you’ll gain confidence and be able to tackle bigger and bigger things. Your sense of empowerment will grow. And who knows what will happen then! Your world will start to open up once you are living in the flow.

Of course most of us won’t ever reach a state of being in that passive flow state all the time – and honestly I’m not sure that should be the goal. I use it as a reference point for myself. I can tell when I’m straying too far from it, or filling it up with junk, because I get that tight, anxious, small feeling. That’s a signal that I need to pause, take a look at what’s causing that feeling, and work to ameliorate or eliminate it from my life. By cultivating passive flow like this, you’ll be better positioned to access an active flow state when you need to. For more on that, see this post. Even though it’s about writing, you can apply it to other creative endeavors. You can do this!

Toward a Methodology of Discovery Writing: What Does Discovery Writing Look Like?

Envisioning a methodological structure to discovery writing can help us feel more confident about process.

One of my 2021 projects is to develop a methodology of discovery writing, as there’s not much out there about how to do it. Discovery writing has the potential to be a powerful technique for intuitive writers, and it was only after I started working on intentionally developing my discovery writing skills that I felt like I came into my own as a writer. As I work toward understanding discovery writing through doing it, I’m simultaneously conducting a survey of the research literature on it, and I’m sharing what I learn here on this blog. In my last post in this series I discussed the difference between “classical” and “romantic” writers, and which is more likely to find value in discovery writing (you can find all my posts on discovery writing here). Today I will be discussing what discovery writing actually looks like in a broad sense, as having a picture in your mind of what discovery writing “looks” like can help you feel more confident in the process.

The act of doing discovery writing can feel unstructured, and the result of it can also seem to lack structure – for example, intuitive writers who use the technique often struggle with conceptual aspects of writing projects, like plot. Discovery writers often struggle to trust their process because it feels so…undisciplined and unbounded. It requires a relinquishing of control over process that is very difficult for people socialized into rational/analytical approaches to, well, everything (as we all are in modern societies). Having a mental picture of the discovery writing process, a view-from-above of how it’s done, can give the writer a sense of methodological structure. This may not be necessary for some discovery writers, but speaking for myself, I have historically lacked confidence in my writing method because it doesn’t look like the “preferred” rational approach to writing: the linear, conceptual style espoused by most writing advice resources. Most resources out there on discovery writing present it simply as a technique, rather than its own methodology on par with rational methodologies.

Discovery writing is more than just the writing part of it. It is actually a mediation between writing and mental processing. Picture it as a spiral. Neither writing nor processing comes first, or rather, either can, but for the sake of this visioning, let’s say you write first. You create a scene. Then you mentally process what you’ve written. This can happen consciously, but is usually unconscious. Then you write again, then you process, and so on. You are constantly going in and out of a flow state in which the writing occurs (I will be exploring both processing and the flow state in future posts). This processing isn’t an intentional thing – it happens at any time throughout the day and generally can’t be forced. It can happen while we’re sleeping or in the shower. Processing results in a better understanding of your characters and story, and whether or not you are consciously aware of that better understanding, it is what comes out the next time you sit down to write. So the two main parts of discovery writing are writing and processing, which are iterative and mutually constituting.

The challenging part is the mediation between the two. While some writers may be able to sit down and let their processed stuff come out just like that, I’ve always struggled with a feeling of resistance. It’s difficult to enter the flow state of discovery writing, when you lose conscious awareness of your surroundings and the passage of time. This is the state in which writers feel that the words are writing themselves, and it is the very essence of discovery writing. It feels great to be in that flow state, but getting there is deeply challenging for anyone who has difficultly relinquishing control and feels distrustful of letting the subconscious take over. Which is probably most of us. What is needed is a buffer zone between regular life and discovery writing time. This is where “writingrealm” and “fictionworld” come in.

I came across these terms in an article* by the Dr. Charlotte Doyle, a scholar of psychology and the creative writing process. She interviewed five fiction writers on process, and noticed striking similarities between them. All described entering a kind of cognitive mode prior to writing. So they would leave regular life and enter this cognitive space, the writingrealm, before entering writing time, i.e. fictionworld. Doyle calls writingrealm a “distinctive sphere of experience.” It is defined by three very specific feelings. They are: solitariness and singularity; a self-conscious sense of self-as-writer; and a purposeful, yet receptive, will-to-write. Note that these are feelings. While some writers may only be able to feel solitary in a space where they are alone, other writers feel that sense of singularity, of being-alone, in a coffee shop. The sense of the self-as-writer is that deep-seated feeling of inhabiting the identity of writer, of you and writer being one and the same. The will-to-write must be both purposeful and receptive, because the purposefulness is only meant to take you to the moment of beginning to write. From there, you must enter a zone of receptivity.

I find that when I am feeling resistance toward entering fictionworld, the discovery writing flow state, it helps immensely to first enter writingrealm. For me, this is both a physical space and time - my office at night, with just one dim bulb on over my chair - and a mental space and time - the feeling of solitariness, singularity, being-alone and intention+receptivity. Envisioning this as a buffer zone, a sort of green room to the main stage of discovery writing, mentally prepares me for that stepping-off-the-cliff feeling of letting go and merging into the stream of discovery writing flow. Give it a try, and see how it works for you! In the next installment of this series, I’ll be taking a look at fictionworld, so stay tuned!

*Doyle, Charlotte L, 1998. “The Writer Tells: The Creative Process in the Writing of Literary Fiction.” Creativity Research Journal 11 (1): 29-37. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326934crj1101_4 (I unfortunately haven’t been able to find an open access version of this article).

Sometimes Doing Nothing Gets the Best Result

If you’re feeling unmotivated, fear not! Sometimes what you need to do is nothing at all.

Some years ago, a friend sent me a children’s book called What Do You Do With An Idea? I was excited to read it, because I’m an idea person. I have lots of them, all the time. But at the time this book appeared in my life, I was feeling deeply unmotivated about everything. I had burnout and wasn’t able to act on my ideas. My life was stagnant; I was stuck. I was filled with an urgency to do something – anything! – to effect change in my life. And here was a book that was going to tell me how. I read it with eager anticipation. What was the secret it would reveal?

Here’s what it said I should do with my ideas. Nothing.

Yep. It’s about a kid who hangs out with an idea he has and that’s about it. He feeds it and they play together. The idea grows, and he builds a new home for it. It teaches him how to walk on his hands, because that will help him see things in new ways. Then one day the idea takes wing and the kid discovers what you do with an idea: “You change the world.” Okay, except he didn’t really do anything with the idea except spend time with it! How does that change the world? Notably missing from this narrative are the step-by-step plans of how to use the idea to change in the world. Where is the goal setting, the list of pros and cons, the projected costs? Where is the struggle, the arduous journey, the courageous crusade? How can an idea change the world when you don’t do anything with it?!

Okay, let’s calm down for a minute. Take a breath. Children’s books are supposed to be full of timeless wisdom, right? So I sat with this little fable for a while, letting it percolate. When that failed to enlighten me, I decided to do an experiment. I’d try doing nothing and see what happened. It wouldn’t be hard – I was feeling so unmotivated about everything that doing nothing was basically what I was already doing. Except I would do it intentionally now. Instead of doing nothing because everything just felt so hard, I’d try doing nothing because maybe it was the inspired choice, a way to make magic happen.

And guess what happened? Nothing. Shocking, right? Except that’s not entirely true. Nothing big happened, sure. My life didn’t change, I didn’t feel more motivated, I was still stuck. But I noticed that my ideas started getting more…well, sparkly. Now that I wasn’t expending energy forcing myself to do something, anything, or on feeling bad about not getting anything done, I had a lot more to put into my ideas. The new attention I gave them made them feel more present, rounder, real. Like things that maybe could manifest in the world, if I gave them a chance.  

There was this one little idea I’d pushed away because it seemed too big for its britches, and I started thinking about it more. It was about starting my own creative business, hanging out my signpost as a creativity coach, starting a podcast. Yeah right, I thought. Who would want to listen to me? But I decided I’d give the idea a chance, and we hung out together. I’ll admit it, we had fun dreaming about life together. But that was all it was. An idea. I still didn’t know how doing nothing about it was supposed to change the world.

But the idea grew, just like it said in the book. And then one day the idea was so big I decided to make a webpage for it. A new home, just like it said in the book. And then it taught me how to walk on my hands – just kidding. But I did start to see things in new ways. Like, maybe this could be a real thing, my creative business. Maybe this idea was worth it. Maybe I’m worth it. So I continued hanging out with the idea, doing whatever felt like the next right thing. I’m still doing that now, even when the next right thing is doing nothing.

It feels magical how much this approach has changed my life. It did change the world – my world. Sure, sometimes I’m busy and getting a lot accomplished, but by maintaining my focus on only doing what feels like it’s the next right thing, I end up not doing a lot, too. Because I’m not doing things because I should or just to get them done, I’m free to do what emerges organically from the situation. And what I’ve discovered is that life doesn’t require us to do all that much. Our sociocultural beliefs are what require us to do all the things. And those are just beliefs. We can challenge and change them if we want to.

So try hanging out with your ideas rather than seeing them in terms of actionable steps, efficient practices, and productivity goals. Maybe they’ll have something to teach you. Maybe they need space to grow some more. They’ll speak to you if you listen, and they may even be able to point you in directions you wouldn’t have considered. Be patient, open-minded, and kind to your ideas, let them know they can trust you, and they’ll show you the way.