Friday, April 16, 2021
Well, we’ve had another week with heartbreak and trauma in the news. And if you’ve had a tough time (this week or any week) finding your creative center, you aren’t alone.
In 2014, quiltmaker Sherry Ann Byrd reflected on how her grandmother — a woman in poor health with more than twenty grandchildren and a mountain of household tasks to maintain — kept her center through her practice of making quilts.
” … it gradually dawned on me that somehow she took a vacation, organized daily life, and maintained peace of mind, all at the same time – while quilting.” – Byrd in a interview with Roderick Kirakofe, from Unconventional & Unexpected: American Quilts below the Radar
Byrd’s grandmother found a way to make art every day, in the midst of a daunting set of responsibilities.
Creative work can be one of the best responses to stress and trauma.
The trouble is, trauma actively interferes with our creative impulse. And that means we need to be intentional about prioritizing creative expression, especially when we’re struggling.
Trauma can kill creative energy
Economist Lisa Cook conducted groundbreaking work on an idea that most of us intuitively sense: That being in a traumatic environment, even if you aren’t personally exposed to the trauma, blocks creativity and innovation.
Cook looked at patent applications submitted by Black Americans during Reconstruction, as well as during the racist terrorism of the Jim Crow era. She showed that systemic violence, even in communities where violent acts were not occurring, strongly reduced the filing of patent applications.
In other words, even the stress of knowing about violent acts is enough to suppress creative innovation.
You probably experience some version of this yourself. You see an awful story on Twitter or Facebook, and for the rest of your day, your energy flatlines for your own creative work.
NPR’s Planet Money had a terrific interview with Cook, which you can find here if you want to know more about her research (both a transcript and the recording are available).
One solution: Write it out
Many of us turn to a journal when we’re feeling frustrated or upset. It turns out there’s solid research to support that as a smart practice.
Social psychologist James Pennebaker conducted forty years of research on precisely this phenomenon, and found that:
“people who wrote about emotionally charged episodes experienced a marked increase in their physical and mental well-being. They were happier, less depressed, and less anxious. In the months after the writing sessions, they had lower blood pressure, better immune function, and fewer doctor visits. They also reported higher quality relationships, better memory, and more success at work.” (from Emotional Agility by Susan David)
The same effects didn’t hold for writing about things that didn’t carry an emotional charge. But writing about strong emotions seems to help us see those emotions with some distance, without getting as hooked by them.
In other words, taking an experience and turning it into creative expression, even in a private journal, will help you to work with your emotions in a healthier way.
I wrote about Pennebaker’s work in this post: A brief but powerful technique if you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed
How to use it: Pick up your journal (if you don’t have one yet, grab any blank book at all, even one that’s already been written in) and spend 20 minutes or more writing about something that’s had a strong emotional impact on you.
Then, make a practice of it. Give yourself time regularly – at least once a week if you can – to get those emotionally charged experiences onto the page.
Put it on autopilot
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
That quote comes from Gustave Flaubert, who is sometimes credited as the father of modern realist narration.
Flaubert produced a large body of work, and the work he produced was original and important.
Our stereotype of artists and other creatives is that they’re flakes who work when they feel like it. But nearly all of the excellent writers you admire keep scrupulously regular habits.
The specifics around those habits, though, can vary wildly from person to person. Mason Currey wrote a fun book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work detailing the famous habits of brilliant writers, musicians, and other creative genius types.
I raided Currey’s book for my own list of five useful habits and rituals in this podcast episode (transcript is included): 5 Work Habit Hacks from 12 Creative Geniuses
That podcast is retired now, so feel free to ignore the request to review it on ITunes. 🙂
Walk it off
Taking a walk is one of the most popular creative rituals of all time. It helps you process all those stress chemicals, and also helps you think more “divergently” (which is just a science-y way of saying “creatively”).
This is another one with lots of research to support it. (Here’s a research report from Stanford as just one example.)
All forms of exercise are excellent stress relief, but walking (especially if you can do it “in nature,” even if that’s your neighborhood park) has a particularly good creative track record.
(If you’re a runner, roller skater, or Prancercise enthusiast, my bet is that those will also work nicely.)
Experiment with how you schedule your walks. For example, you might pose yourself a creative question, then take a short walk and let some good solutions bubble to the surface.
Walks are also an excellent way to break up work blocks – because sitting in front of a screen for hours on end is terrible for your health, your eyesight, and your creativity.
Pro tip: While you’re out walking, make sure you have a good way to capture the ideas that come to you. This can be as simple as a scrap of notebook paper and the stub of a pencil. Or, if you don’t think you’ll get sucked into an unhelpful distraction, your phone works just fine, too.
The creative writing workshop returns!
Just a heads up – I’m going to be holding my private writing creativity workshop again in mid-May. This one is always fun and popular, and I’m restructuring it to be a little more user-friendly.
I’ll talk about how to make your writing more vibrant and readable, and how you can build your creative confidence. And we’ll look at the tools and techniques that sustain creative excellence. We’ll have lots of fun, interesting exercises to do … some of which you may want to adopt as longterm habits.
I’ll be sending the details to folks who are receiving my emails, so make sure you’ve got that squared away if you want to join us.
Next week’s topic is writing excellence, where I’ll share a few of my favorite techniques for producing exceptional work.
Until then, May the Fierce be with You.
Sonia
