One of the reasons why I like being a teacher is because every once and a while I will say something, passing it along as a piece of advice for a student, and once it’s out of my mouth, I realize, Oh … I need to follow that advice.
I talk to my students face to face when I can, as opposed to addressing to them as a group. I ask them to walk into my office and while I have a few questions on my notepad, mostly, I let them talk. For my creative writers, I asked them about their creative goals this semester. One of my students told me an interesting story. They said they used to write a lot – they were a creative person. But they transitioned out of a phase of their life: living in a new apartment, taking different classes, working one job instead of three. And now they were not writing as much and it was bringing them down. They also just got an official diagnosis for bipolar disorder and learned they were pushing through their low times to match their higher energy times. And now that things had settled, they didn’t have the same drive as before. They didn’t know how to get back to their creative self.
“It sounds like you were creating from a place of survival mode. Maybe you need a creative goal where you allow yourself to thrive in your own creativity … light some candles, put on the flowy robe, channel your inner Stevie Nicks, and lean into the most pretentious writer self that you can muster, whatever they looks like for you.”
I don’t know if they took that advice. It might not be for them.
But it definitely might be for me.
I have also just found myself on the other side of an incredibly busy time – student conferences, travel, doctor’s appointments, multiple trips to the dentist for my kid’s shark teeth – and then all those obligations dried right up. All of a sudden, I have no idea what to do with myself. I’m edgy and weird. I start things and then start new things. I’d been pushing through my days and putting the creative work to the side and now it was time for the creative time and suddenly I could be creative, and it was like I was scared to do it because I was worried it might be taken away from me.
So I followed my own advice. I put on my flowy robe. I lit a candle. I sat down with my journal and let it rip.
How else can someone thrive in their creativity?
I often listen to people tell me they want to do something creative more often but don’t feel like they can. They want to sing, draw, paint, write, cook, among other things. But the world will pull at a persons sleeves and push them to do other things instead. It’s that nagging feeling that creative efforts that are not immediately gratified with praise, demand, or money, is frivolous.
One of my favorite books is Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir about when she lived in New York with Robert Mapplethorpe. They were “just kids” who lived every second of their days thinking about and making art. She worked at bookstores and sometimes shoplifted art supplies to help them get by, but the primary focus every day was to make art. They laid around in their shared room, played records, and sketched. They took photos. They made jewelry. They made headdresses. She wrote poems. She stood for his photos.
And the reason why I always return to this memoir is because it was a space and time where two people understood their number one priority – to make things.
They were thriving in their creativity.
Lately I have been trying to decide what my next move will be when it comes to my next creative project. For years I have rolled from one project to the next, already working on the next while the first one is being wrapped up, and sometimes writing things in between. Writing is not a chore, I literally write weekly on this website. But I was wondering why I wouldn’t allow myself to rest between projects other than this underlying feeling that the hustle will ensure that I will be a success as a writer. I have been wondering if the next project is the right one or if rushing into it will create a good book.
But mostly, I just think I have a compulsion to stay busy.
Once Joyce Carol Oates was quoted as saying that when she reaches the end of writing a manuscript, she flips it over and starts writing the next one on the back. And the second I read that, I thought, “This is what I want to do.” But I don’t.
I have friends who do work at a breakneck speed, churning out novels that sell really well in six months at a time. I work a little slower, a manuscript in a year, and then another year for revisions, and that’s if I am really focused.
I wonder if I can write a novel in six months, but is it from a desire to write an awesome book or to know whether I can.
This was not Patti Smith’s problem. Often she was bargaining for day old donuts. Instead of neurotically overthinking like me.
For the next few weeks I am going to try hard to allow myself to thrive in my creativity. To read poems. To listen to inspiring music. To wear my best perfume just to lay around the house. To cook something complicated from the Julia Child cookbook just for myself.
I’m already excited.
XOXO,
B.
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