There is an ideal for writers. Most of us have fallen victim to it. It’s the burning desire to be left alone, to our own devices to create. Ideally, we’d like to get locked away in a cabin where we can have endless amounts of time and cups of tea to write the Next Great Novel.
I’ve tried it on a micro-level. I think we all have. It generally goes like this: If I have all of Sunday free, I’ll spend it writing/painting/practicing music/going to the dance studio/working on my presentation. Inevitably the gremlin of discipline comes through. Somebody calls or you’ve somehow managed to do everything but the thing you set out to do. And so begins the process of berating yourself for wasting the one precious day when you could have finally, finally mastered Italian, if only you hadn’t washed all the pillows.
I’m this person. I think on some level, anyone who likes to create - and not just in the purview of arts - is this person. Flow is such a good and lovely thing when it happens. If it happens. The stage gate is getting past the big “if” that often makes us feel inadequately prepared to add meaning to our creative lives.
Over time though, I’ve come to realize that we’ve had the process of creating hopefully wrong. To say nothing terrible of the people with the discipline and - perhaps dependence on the paycheque - to create at a moment’s notice. Unless you’ve got a patron (whether you’re coupled or not), creating doesn’t seem to happen when we’ve got a vast vista of time and space to do it. Rather, that open space becomes suffocating. It’s a lot like singing in a concrete room. You expect an echo but the sound simply drops to the ground with a gross thud.
Creativity - the desire and urge of it - needs constraints. We need to be, as human beings, bound to some commitment, in order to make it happen. It’s part of the reason that the slash exists. Many creators are many things all at once, breaking their titles up with slashes. Artist/chemist; Musician/Manager; Chef/Writer. Some of these might be out of necessity, but some of them are simply because we must create conditions for ourselves where creating becomes a need, rather than a desire or whim. Whims tend to be fanciful, needs, much more forceful.
In an interview, Tania Katan (theatre trained evangelist who has made some very creative leaps in her career), mentions that she used to write in the mornings before she went to her 9-5 job. One day, in an effort to complete a play, she quit that job and took on writing full time. What she discovered that her plays virtually relied on her day job for source material. That is, the characters were based in real life situations that occurred while she was busy working. Essentially, her creativity relied on constraint, which in turned fuelled it. She’s not the only one who has done it. Lots of creative people, have used time as their own personal constraint. Knowing there is not much of it in a day, it becomes necessary to rearrange it to meet your creative purpose.
In the real world, creativity relies on it just the same. Whether you’re creating a product or working within the parameters of a physical space, you’re faced by constraints, which necessitate you make connections or turn ideas on their heads. What we use then can sometimes become secondary to how we use it.
And it’s utterly thrilling.
Immersion and boredom have their place and are really important for ideas to form and coagulate. But vast amounts of time to stare at a blank page is frankly horrifying.
I recently started carrying a notebook again. Something that I used to do in high school and stopped doing when my purse became heavy, and so did life. These days, I can only find snatches of time to read and write. As life changes, and priorities shift, my sprawling Sunday afternoons have given way to a noisy chaos of living more fully. So those precious moments are even more so. The practice of capitalizing on them is still something that I’m working on.
If necessity is the mother of invention, then creativity is its long-lost sister. The creative impulse is a funny thing. It’s often a blip of an idea or a quick “I wonder” and then it fades away. Capturing it within a constraint seems all but necessary to realizing whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. In the end, where you put the slash is up to you, where it’s on your own person/ in what you do.
In creating, give yourself the time. But not too much.
Things to think about and read:
Tania Katan’s interview on the Good Life Project
Anne Lammott on Creativity - Brainpickings