This may sound counter intuitive when we’re talking about increasing creativity in our lives or establishing a consistent creative practice. I can only speak from my experience, and from that experience I have seen a significant decrease in motivation to engage with creativity when the goal of creating becomes a product, an outcome, rather than a process to move through and enjoy. By decreasing our focus on productivity we can switch gears to mentally to increase engagement in the process instead, making for more enjoyable creative time.
How do we do this?
Well, my best tip is to glorify the in-between activities instead of the quantity of output. This requires us to recognize all of the process pieces we naturally do that don’t directly contribute to the word count or the covering of a canvas or the stitches in a blanket. It’s completely ignoring the part we think of as creative work and instead reveling in the processes that get us to that work.
It has taken me a long time to appreciate the steps that lead up to creative work as being valuable and necessary. They are not a waste of time, or procrastination, or lacking in any way. They are the process - the very thing we are trying to build up. Not only are they valuable, but I have learned to let go of the guilt and shame that came with dedicating time to these areas instead of the words on the page part. Now that I recognize the importance of these in between activities as valuable and creative in their own right, I find more joy in the process and have seen an increase in integration of creativity in my life while giving myself the grace to follow that creative thread through life.
What do my In Between Activities look like?
In relation to my writing practice it’s not writing my novels or even the blog posts. Those things are the doing.
Making Playlists for my novels
This has been a guilty pleasure until very recently where grace has entered the frame to banish the guilt of spending so much time building these playlists instead of writing the scenes they evoke and the story thread they follow. These playlists are ever evolving as the ideas in my head and the story threads shift and change through daydream periods. I get the basic notes down in a few songs, and then allow the recommended songs based on that list play until one strikes a chord of truth in the narrative I’ve imagined. Listening to these compilations on my daily commute and during tasks that require less executive functioning in my brain allows me to connect to the work while still managing the activities of daily life that can’t be tackled when I am glued to my keyboard to write. Life goes on, things still need to get done. This method of, essentially outlining, has been very effective for me in terms of organizing story structure, planning scene order, and developing character all within the realm of day to day functioning.
Daydreaming novel structure and blog post topics
I love this one. It’s tried and true among creative communities - when your brain is free to roam and your hands are occupied in a simple task, ideas arrive and blocks crumble. Daydreaming is the work that allows us to have productive sessions when we actually get to the doing and the making part. I find it easiest to capture these ruminations and daydreams in my notebook which is always close to hand, but simply spending time with your thoughts and seeing what comes up and what sticks is your brain doing the ideation, transforming the world around you into a well of inspiration and enriching your inner world to better serve you in future creative aspirations. The beauty of this daydreaming time is that there is no pressure, there is no expectation, and yet it is the main driver of creativity. It is so necessary and as a bonus, can be done anywhere for any length of time. When I daydream for novels I imagine scenes in my head, talk through character motivations and try to imagine their life before the story. For blog posts I tend to come up with themes or questions about creativity that are relevant to me in the moment and then talk myself through the idea before jotting down or summarizing those ramblings into bullet points to organize my thoughts around later.
When I tried to structure creative writing time into my day on a set schedule, even on a more fluid one, it always feels like trying to shoehorn creativity into my life. The idea that creativity has to be in the pursuit of a product, a direct act of contributing to an outcome goal makes me resist doing it. Allowing myself to be creative in these unproductive, roundabout, fulfilling ways gives me a touchstone to my creative projects while enjoying the pure joy of imagination and inspiration without the pressure to make something of it. My playlists have changed so much over the past few months, and that means the story narrative has dramatically shifted. I am so glad that all of that time and creative energy didn’t go towards words on the page and instead stayed in my stereo and mind to be tweaked until I feel stable enough with the path to begin putting it into action.
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