Is there a limit to creativity?
I’ve been asking myself that lately. I haven’t written anything in quite a while – other than a few very short practice pieces, it’s been a slow year. In fact, it’s been just over a year since I published my book, Ten at the Wedding, and since then I’m not sure I’ve really “finished” a short story. Just lots of ideas that I don’t seem to have time to follow up on.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been being creative. I’ve been doing lots of crafting and sewing. I’ve been designing websites in my day job as a WordPress developer, which for me is a creative endeavour. In my role as a Girl Guide leader, I’ve been inventing games and designing science experiments and planning theme nights.
It’s rewarding, and I like it, but I find it takes away from my ability to write. It’s like I have a finite amount of creativity in me – or at least, a finite amount of time to be creative – and that’s been funneled into other projects right now.
To write, I need both time, but also space. I need the mental area to dream, to make my writing project the only exciting thing in my mind right then. If other creative projects are also on the go, they distract me like shiny objects for a magpie.
It’s been so long now since I made time and space for storytelling that I started to worry that I’d lost it, and maybe would never write anything again. In fact, I was so worried that I was afraid to try.
So this week I forced myself to enter a contest. Contests for me are like Writing First Principles. They are the thing that got me into fiction in the first place. I respond really well to a) having a deadline and b) having a general guideline to follow, like a theme and word count. Given those two things, I WILL write. It will push the other shiny objects out of my head and make the space it needs.
I’m not gonna lie – it was hard. I hated everything I wrote – so much so that I threw out my first story completely and wrote a second. Then, I threw out that second one and wrote a third.
Then I went back to the first one and edited it until I could tolerate it, a little, and sent it in.
The thing is – I spent this week writing not one, not two, but THREE stories. They are definitely not the best thing I have ever written. They might even be the WORST things I’ve ever written. But by the end of the week I felt a kind of groove returning. The feeling of, Oh Right, I DO know how to do this.
I am, in fact, still a writer. It’s really good to know.
Do you worry when you take time away from writing? How do you find your way back?
Love this post, Lynn! I think all of us ‘creatives’ question ourselves a lot about what we’re doing, how much we’re producing, if it’s the right thing and always, always, is it ENOUGH.
I love that you’ve reminded me about how many different forms creativity can take: design, crafts, experiments, theme nights. Take a bow for having so many diverse outlets and creative skills! Of which writing is an important one for you, clearly. It’s good to know you miss it; better to know that ‘oh, right, I do know how to do this.’ Yes, you do!
I believe that taking a break from writing to do other forms of creative work will eventually feed the writing. Maybe there’s a future story about a crafter, or better yet, a story with crafting as a theme.
I think that a break from writing is like taking a break from an exercise regime: you return surprisingly stronger for it!
I had, very recently, some external factors inspire me and I dabbled in something that was completely foreign to me, and very surprising: romantic fiction.
ACK! I am not a romantic person, but I have to tell you, I have a knack for this!
Too bad no one will see the story…I’m too embarrassed. It’s a little…steamy. lol 🙂
But I see it as a way to be creative with my writing, beyond the blogging. So I don’t know…we do what we can when we can, I guess.
Good luck with your contests! I’ve not approached any for quite some time.
I think that is fabulous! It is always a cool thing to explore new genres and find something that interests you.
Plus, romance is absolutely WHERE IT IS AT in terms of actually making a living as a writer. Romance is HUGE with the eBook crowd – romance readers tend to gobble through multiple titles a month, and they like their privacy!
I have done several websites now for romance writers who are making a living at writing. They are self-publishing titles via Amazon and selling oodles of them at a $3 price point and pumping out series with great success. I’ve worked with authors who tell sweet love stories with a little fooling around, to basically hardcore porn stuff, to fantasy/sci-fi with plenty of sex scenes, and everything in between. They are ALL making it work in terms of making sales.
It’s hard to crack in until you have a few titles under your belt. But if this feels like it could work for you – under an alias, of course!! – then consider working on it a bit and seeing where it takes you. It doens’t mean you only have to write romance from now on, but this could be a gateway to an actual career.
(I’m TERRIBLE at romance! I envy you!).