Creative dry spells: how do you weather them?

[littlebutfierce]

It's exciting to see this community growing! Hello to all the new folks--I look forward to seeing what new thoughts & conversations & connections come up in posts here.

Recently I've read a couple of Julia Cameron books. She makes me wince a lot, though 750 Words, based on her idea of morning pages, is still the main reason I started writing fic.

Despite my frustration with her, one of the things I've found useful is the way she talks about creative dry spells. Maybe you have had a period of time where you're overflowing with ideas & are finding it relatively easy to get them down into words & polish them up enough to be sent out into the world as finished fics. I felt this way earlier this year, but now I feel like I've slowed down. My initial reaction is to worry: what if that was it, those were all the stories I had it in me to tell, I'll never be able to finish anything again? (& possibly worse: maybe I won't care that I won't be able to finish things...)

Cameron's take on this, though, is that when you're using a lot of creative energy, you need to take time to replenish it or you'll burn out. We can't pull those all-nighters, staying up writing thousands of words, for months on end: it just won't work. Ups & downs in creativity are to be expected; they're normal, if scary:

Because the seasons of creativity are so varied, they can be frightening. In spring we can doubt our budding ideas will come to anything. In summer we can worry about our ability to keep up. In fall we may fear that we will not harvest our ideas successfully, that we will bruise them as we try to bring them home. In winter we may fear that we will never work again, and use the long, quiet times to beat ourselves up over the creativity that seems gone, not merely dormant.

(from "Seasonality" in The Sound of Paper)

During creative droughts, we need to be kind to ourselves, think of the slowdown as a normal & indeed necessary part of creative cycles, & keep faith that we'll move into a new phase soon. This could mean taking more time to focus on other things (daily tasks like ensuring you get enough sleep or are eating sufficiently or doing the laundry, or maybe creative ventures in another form: art, music, etc.).

The key, she argues, is to keep writing (or doing whatever your creative activity is): those morning pages/750 words or what have you, because then your brain & your creative mind learns that you can write no matter what your mood. You stay in the habit, & when the phase in your own cycle of creativity shifts & you're full of ideas & energy again, you'll be in better shape to get those ideas down.

Sometimes her wording is a little cheesy for me, but here:

In times of creative drought, the only solution is to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep on slogging creatively, to keep moving toward a distant horizon. We are like people crossing a vast desert. Water lies ahead and not behind. It lies in our future and not in our present. We must move towards it when every foot-fall seems a mockery. And why must we keep on moving?

We must keep moving because all droughts end. The parched earth is slaked by rain, and the parched creative spirit is slaked, too, when the long months of forced work give way suddenly to the verdant flowering of inspiration.

...We want our art to flow as easily as a mountain stream, and we remember with bitterness the days when it did flow and we were ungrateful--unconscious, really, why we should be grateful. The days will come again when our art will flow freely and when we will be seized and carried away by inspiration. We help those days to come more easily if we keep the faith and keep working, however slowly and tentatively, through our periods of drought.

(from "Keep Moving" in The Sound of Paper)

Things I am doing right now to try to move through this phase:

• Doing 750 Words, whether just as a brain dump of what's happened in my world that day or as a way to keep writing (painful, painful) fic
  
• Reading fic to keep me excited (EDIT: And trying to comment too, heh.)
  
• Re/consuming source material for the same reason (it's also good to refamilarize myself w/canon!)
  
• Writing posts here because I'm really happy to have a place where we can hopefully have these sorts of conversations!

What creative season are you in right now? If you're in or approaching creative drought, what kinds of things might be helping you out of it? (&... does anyone want to commiserate with me? *whimper*)

Comments

[maerhys]

I like your list (and I may steal it). I am in a weird space in that I am writing but not quite finishing something. I don't send it to beta or I don't post it before I move on to the next thing. I am not quite sure why, but I am still writing so I try not to question it too much. So I am in the creative yet not wanting to move/share season... with a hefty dose of perfectionism coloring everything.

[littlebutfierce]

I probably needed to add things to that list like: eat real meals, but also chocolate; take naps; take a walk now & then; try to stay off the internet every now & then (?!). We'll see how I do!

When I write fic as part of my daily 750 Words, sometimes when I download my stuff off the site (which I do at the close of every month) I go back & look & some of the snippets have potential. They're not always as bad as I remember them being (sometimes they are though!), & it kind of encourages me to feel like I have lots of bits of stories that I might be able to do something with.

Maybe you're just letting the newest pieces of your writing sit for a bit before you go back to them at some point to see if there's anything there you want to post or get betaed? It's brilliant that you're able to keep writing & moving forward regardless of whether you're technically finishing things or posting them, though. Words on page=awesome.

(& oh yes, the perfectionism... eeeek...)

[mystiri_1]

My writing gets erratic when I am stressed or depressed. Ironically, I know that writing helps with the latter - both the actual creation of something, and the feedback I get from sharing it. Writing is one of the best therapy tools I could recommend to ANYONE. With everything that is going on lately (stress, sickness, earthquakes, lack of sleep) I'd have to say that yes, I am in a slump. But it's not lack of ideas - it's the time and/or motivation to sit down and write them. A lot of things are getting started, but going unfinished.

I have been contemplating ways to fix this latter problem. One is to create a to-do list, but I have tried this before. It gets lost in the clutter of my desk or journal, and there's nothing really reminding me or pressing me to do it. I need to come up with something that is both more visible, and more encouraging. I may try a poll on my journal for what other people would like to see finished, and see if that offers me some more motivation. Or maybe some sort of challenge.

[littlebutfierce]

Oh yes, I so agree w/you on the therapeutic nature of writing! And yet, yeah, when you're depressed it can be so hard to do something even if you know from experience that it will help. :/ Sometimes I am suffocated by routine but mostly I think I am reassured by it, so 750 Words has been really good for me, as I just started it & now feel like it's something that's just part of my routine. I've been able to stick to it through some rough mental health patches so far, but we'll see...

Re: your second paragraph--me & the other mods had been pondering, a while ago, what else might be activity for this comm. I wonder if there's some scope here? Like... I don't know. Some sort of communal thing where people talk about their WIPs & make a challenge to finish one (or more!) by a certain time, or whatever? Maybe even w/a buddy system? I don't know... do you feel like that sort of thing might be a helpful sort of challenge at all?

[mystiri_1]

I think it would be. The main reason that I tend to pay more attention to my fanfiction than I do original writing is because the former offers more of a social setting: people give you more feedback, talk about why characters did this or that, speculate over what ifs, that sort of thing. Although writing is technically a solo activity, I find it's more fun if you're not writing in a vaccuum. A little encouragment goes a long way for most of us.

[littlebutfierce]

Oh yes--that's part of what drew me to fic in the first place: I wanted to be part of the party!

Do you have any ideas on what kind of format would be useful for a comm-wide WIP challenge? I'm having a houseguest this weekend so likely won't get around to posting asking for suggestions/indications of interest from other folks for a bit, but if you have any thoughts please share! (or if you wanted to post & ask for suggestions from the comm, feel free!)

[mystiri_1]

One method would be a (weekly? monthly?) check-in post, for people to say how they're going, if they've made progress/got stuck/been completely sidetracked by characters doing their own thing... I'm thinking something that mostly encourages people to talk about what they're doing, and for others to talk back - they could share snippets if they want to, ask for beta-readers or help with a specific section of their story, anythng like that. I know for a lot of first-time writers, sharing is the hardest part, and doing so in a low-key environment might be helpful.

Maybe start with a post just asking people what they are working on?

I think once people get into things, we could maybe try a 'finish the damned fic'-type challenge, with a deadline, but it would need to take into account that people are working on things of different lengths, so possibly it would be best for each to set their own goals. That would be another possibility - a 'goal' post (pun intended) for people to say what their target is, whether it's to write a certain number of words or a finished chapter/story, where other people can see it, and encourage/remind them.

For myself, I write a lot of fanfiction - but when it comes to longer works, I tend to get very sidetracked, and they fall by the wayside in favour of other, shorter projects. I like it when somebody pokes me every now and then to remind me of an unfinished project.

[littlebutfierce]

Oooh, yes--I did a check-in post a while ago & thought I should possibly do another one, but... got sidetracked. o_O But yeah, I really liked hearing people's comments there & I'm glad to hear that it would be useful!

And YES, as someone still new to fic-writing, sharing is really hard for me. It's one thing if I've posted a fic--I can be scared that there are things that still I could've polished, etc. but posting it as a completed fic is me saying "OK, I'm done w/this, take it as you will." But asking for a beta or help or suggestions, while v. helpful, does make me feel much more vulnerable.

I write short (under 5k) works exclusively (or, at least so far), but that doesn't mean I'm any better at getting them finished, ahahaha.

Anyway: I will try to post something to the comm to gauge interest & get more suggestions sometime in the next few days. Huzzah!

[notunbroken]

Some sort of communal thing where people talk about their WIPs & make a challenge to finish one (or more!) by a certain time, or whatever?

I think this is a great idea! The WIP Club! ;)

The story I'm working on right now is shaping up to be kind of gigantic, and I'm feeling kind of daunted. Having a space to discuss and work through problems with other people who are in the same boat would be epic.

[littlebutfierce]

Oooh! Ooooh! A while ago someone here commented on feeling daunted by a big bang fic she was going to work on, so... hopefully there will be longer-work writers who would be interested in having those sorts of conversations.

(I seem to only write shorter fic--the idea of a big bang terrifies me--so no help from me personally, alas. ;)

I'll try to post to the comm sometime in the next couple of days to get more suggestions on how this all could work, etc.