Busting Our Creativity Myths
On getting over ourselves and getting back to work
Dear ones,
I’m laughing at myself today, because after forty-two damn years on this planet, I still regularly go to war with The Way I Am.
Here’s what happened this week and how I ultimately made peace with my own nerdy truth.
It happens that I’m in the early stages of writing a new novel. This involves adding to a game of Life Tetris that already includes a family, a day job, a podcast, a Substack newsletter, and 50% more spouses than the national average.
Yes, I’m busy. But I’m also a storymaker by vocation, and I’ve been aware for a while that I have to figure this puzzle out.
So what did I do, to set up this bold new system where I write my book? Well, I did what any smart, experienced, grown-ass writer does: I tried to copy what my friends do.
I’m lucky enough to know some shit-hot writer folk, and so instead of going back to my own tried and tested methods, I decided to SIMPLY WRITE! Oh, the freedom! The creative rush of the words flowing forth effortlessly. I’m not the writer, I’m just the channel, darlings! The story will just unravel under my happy little typey fingers. Clickaclickaclickaclick, ding!
It turns out, however, that deciding to do something is not in fact an ironclad guarantee that I will do it. Instead, I procrastinated and prevaricated and went to stupid lengths to avoid writing my book. AND I DIDN’T KNOW WHY!
On my way to pick up my daughter yesterday, I had a blinding flash of the obvious.
As much as I want to sit down at the keyboard and just channel the story straight to the page, that is not how I work. And I know how I work, for Chrissake. I’ve developed ways of getting writing done over decades of doing it for a living.
Here’s the thing. How I get writing done… well, it’s embarrassing. It’s not sexy. I’ve taught myself over time to chunk out the work and fill it with all sorts of different parameters that add up to a fairly detailed “brief”—a guide for the chapter or scene or essay I’m working on. It’s a system that lets me confront the scary scary cursor.
But building myself a little guide is exactly what I didn’t want to do. I just wanted to magically be different and to write in a way that I consider more cinematically creative. (Plus, in fairness, I was desperate to just start writing the damn book and not faff around!)
I struggled against reality this way for a couple of weeks.
Then yesterday, I remembered who I am and what I do. I put away the romantic image of writing like an inspired ingenue in a garret and I went to work. Which, for me, looks like:
I pulled out my books about story structure and made notes about what the early chapters need to contain.
I organized ALL my notes by theme, character, plot and setting.
I mapped out a way to achieve everything within the plan that I had for those early chapters.
Then, God help me, I entered everything into my nerdy writing program, Scrivener. I created a gloriously complex web of interlinked research, notes, plans and early draft attempts. I labeled, I tagged. God help me, I calculated percentages. I sketched out the structure of the whole novel and made the folders and documents where my story’s elements will find their home.
It’s so nerdy, my friends. It’s so uncool. And it is EXACTLY what I needed.
So, far from the beautiful image I had created in my mind, yesterday I did what I had to do to get back to my story. Here’s the advice I gave myself to help me make peace with myself and How I Am. I hope that it can also help some of you.
Oy, writer! Don’t live in your movie montage version of creativity, with the rolled up pieces of paper scattered around you and the light coming through the window just so. Writing is an INventure, so go in. Live inside the story. Make this world accommodate the one you’re building in your imagination—your job here is to construct the doorway to that world, in whatever form works.
So make the doorway. Then go through.
Love, Ro
PS Do you have to bust any myths or overcome wishful thinking about your creative process? I’d LOVE to hear about it in the comments (for paid subscribers only!) 👇
This week I’m recommending this beautiful essay about love and marriage by Courtney Martin of The Examined Family, one of my favorite Substacks.
YES! I vibe with this SO deeply.
I am not a 'free willy-nilly' ...anything. At all. My entire life is spreadsheets and organization - and I actually think that this makes for a far more CONSISTENT capacity to be creative.
I like to look at bringing creativity through not as being a 'channel,' but rather as being a VESSEL. I feel like that word 'channel' comes with SO much baggage about the ever inspired artist who is just flitting around with creativity pouring through their veins at all times. I don't think that's actually realistic to a person who wants to make creativity a JOB or something that they do on a regular basis. Because inspiration isn't always there. And at the same time, being inspired, I believe, is a SKILL we develop over time, it's not something we just show up and 'are.'
The way I like to look at it is like this - Gabriel Cousins talks about 'vessel building' in a spiritual practice. He speaks to the idea that we show up, every day at a set time to meditate, we eat in a certain way, we do the practices we need to do in order to become the strong VESSEL that will then make WAY for the spiritual experiences/awareness to come through. We do the practices, we build the structure, we build OURSELVES in a way that promotes a mastery - and this actually is what facilitates the 'greatness' coming through. When we don't build the vessel, the cracks, the weak spots, the parts that haven't been truly built will leak the energy. The vessel will not be able to hold the inspiration, the light, the energy, and it will break - hello tortured artist. Hello one great work and that's it. Hello burnout. Hello having ideas you can't actually make manifest.
When the vessel is not built through discipline, it doesn't matter how much light is poured in, it will break. It will not be able to do the thing.
Just as we would never expect a dancer to be able to pull through a breath-taking piece without spending countless hours at the barre - doing the same exercises over and over again in order to build there bodies to a state of being ABLE to dance, just as we would never expect a great composer to bring through a masterpiece without working their scales over, and over, and over again, just as we would never expect a healing surgeon to do their work without having spent decades of their life studying, I don't think it's realistic to ask that any art or creative work to be brought through without structure. Discipline.
It's the structure, the form, the shape, the organization that MAKES the art, the experience, the expression valuable. Without the form, without the container - there's nothing.
I believe that we are the Divine in form, and that the more we strengthen ourselves via strengthening our container, the more we practice the art of being READY to receive via building ourselves up with that which actually FOSTERS our capacity to be a channel, the more we can create. The more we can be available when that stroke of genius comes. The more we can actually harness it instead of being thrown about by it, burned out by it or missing it - because WE are strong.
The structure is what makes the channel an effective channel.
Especially if we want to be consistent.
You have it figured Ro, you're already doing it. <3 <3 <3
Rowan!! This! You honest, fabulous writing person!
Today I am starting my book for the fourth time. I started writing it a year ago and thought I would be finishing it now, not starting again. It has been an excruciating process of deconstruction, honesty, and shame triggering. I wrote about the underlying narrative in a newsletter just this week https://melissagilbert.substack.com/p/im-not-good-enough which I hope you get time to read.
I am so grateful for your honesty because ultimately you are giving women permission to set themselves free. The "truthiest truth" (A Glennonism) makes our hearts sing, enabling us to be the most whole, honest, glorious version of ourselves.
"50% more spouses" :-) I love this so much. I've experienced thrupleness and I can concur it is a WHOLE lot more stuff. Go, you brave humans. Melissa