Refilling the Well

A little while ago I wrote a review of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, after having “completed” the 12-week program. I put those quotation marks because whether or not I actually completed the program is actually up for debate. I did many of the tasks and exercises, but I also didn’t do a lot of them, if you know what I mean. If you read my review you’ll see that, in the end, I decided that the program was not for me. There were too many ideas and concepts that I just couldn’t quite agree with.

But there were a few things in the book that, when read, made me go “YES. Oh my flipping lord, YES.” One of those things was the concept of “refilling the well”. Basically, the idea is that we can wear ourselves out creatively. We can spend too much of our time and energy on the actual art, to the point that we’ve “drained the well”, so to speak. We run out of energy/ideas/creativity; we don’t know what’s wrong, exactly, but all of a sudden we find ourselves staring at a blank page without any idea of how to make use of it, or everything we create feels like complete and utter crap, or just the thought of working on our art anymore makes us want to burst into tears.

“Yep. Just as I thought. Dry as a bone.”
Image courtesy of Natasha Hanova

The suggestion, based on this phenomenon, is that creativity is a finite source, and we have to replenish it from time to time. It’s like calories; if we continuously burn more calories than we take in, we starve. If we use up all our creativity without shoring up our supply, we eventually run out and have nothing left to draw from.

So how exactly do we shore up our supply? Well, my experience thus far has been that the best way to rebuild creative stores is to allow yourself to experience other people’s creativity. Read books, watch movies, play video games. Allow yourself to enjoy and fully experience the creations of others. Say, for example, that you’ve been working on a science fiction novel. Take an evening and watch some classic sci-fi movies – you might just get some great ideas for that scene you’ve been stuck on. Working on something visual, like a painting, and not quite sure where you’re going with it? Spend a few hours on sites like Flickr and DeviantArt. Seeing how others have accomplished similar things might give you the spark you need to keep moving forward.

Why am I talking about this today? Because I am currently in the process of desperately trying to refill the well. Though I’ve finally gotten back to work on the last bit of manuscript editing I have to do (more on that tomorrow), I’ve been woefully disappointing in the amount of new writing that I’ve been doing of late. I just haven’t been able to push myself to sit down with a blank page and write something new; no new chapters to unfinished stories, no new drabbles or short stories…nothing new at all. Blogging, while important in its own way, does not count. I need to be writing new fiction. Lots of it. You can’t get better at writing unless you force yourself to do a lot of it, and you are seriously unlikely to reach a large year-long word-count goal if the only words you’re writing are for your blog.

And so here I find myself, staring into the well, tossing things in and hoping that soon I’ll be able to see the top of the pile. I’ve been (as previously mentioned) reading the most recent Sookie Stackhouse novels. I’ve recently completed (along with every trophy, thank you very much) the PS Vita game, Tearaway. I’ve been watching movies with my husband (most recently a horror and a goofy Grindhouse flick) and have plans to start watching the Doctor Who show right from the beginning original episodes. I’ve been using the books my husband gave me for Christmas to learn more about my favorite superheroes, their backgrounds, their villains, and their comrades.

Am I feeling more creative yet? Maybe a little. Maybe a little too much. I find myself actually drowning a little bit in the ideas. I’m not sure what to go for, where to turn next. There are so many areas on which I could focus, and I can’t tell which one I’m most interested in. While attempting to refill the well, I may have actually leaned a little too far forward and fallen in.

But it’s a good problem to have, I think. Soon I am going to be returning to my “day job” out West, a job that involves a lot of physical labor, moving about outside, and thinking technically. Therefore it is going to be a joy to go back to my room at night, curl up with my tablet or a new blank journal, and just write. Maybe I’ll choose one direction and aim for it with laser precision. Or maybe I’ll spin the needle each night and see where the winds take me. Either way, I suspect that 2014 is going to be an interesting year for seeing what pops out of my brain and onto the page.

 

In the Summer of (a Writer’s) Life

I’ve been talking a lot lately about Kristen Lamb‘s Rise of the Machines. And I’m not likely to stop anytime soon because every time I get a minute to read a bit more I end up finding something I want to talk about. It’s just that good. 😀

Today I read a short chapter that invites us to establish which type of writer we are…Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter. Spring writers are the young ones with tons of time, almost no responsibilities, but not a lot of experience. Fall writers are older so they have lots of experience, and they have few responsibilities because their bills are probably paid off and their children are probably grown up. Winter writers are of advanced age, meaning they don’t have a lot of time left to make their writing dreams come true, but the time they do have can be 100% devoted to writing, and they have tons of experience.

I fall firmly into the category of Summer writer. In fact, I fall so firmly in this category that I found myself nodding enthusiastically as I was reading Kristen’s description. Summer writers are still fairly young, but they’re old enough to have gained a bit of worldly experience. At first it seems like an ideal time to be writing, but there are other problems. The biggest problem facing Summer writers is that they are in the most responsibility-laden era of their lives. Summer writers have day-jobs, children, mortgages, car payments, student loan payments, chores and errands that need doing. Summer writers can’t always find time to write because they have to dedicate many of their waking hours dealing with day-to-day career and family issues. Summer writers may be fatigued because they’re run off their asses by household requirements and children keeping them up at all hours of the night.

Summer writers, to put it succinctly, are bogged down with copious amounts of stress. They’re young, and they have experience, but they have no time.

Currently I am experiencing a slight reprieve, as my job out West recently finished and we’ve paid off enough debts that we don’t have to worry about money for a little while. Regardless, a lack of time is still my biggest complaint. On a daily basis, as the sun wanes in the West, I chastise myself for not writing more, and promise to do better the next day. But the next day I find a million other things to do, or the baby has a bad day, or I didn’t get any sleep that night so I’m completely knackered. And so when I do get a few moments when I could be writing, I instead find myself reading or playing video games or watching movies in bed (and trying not to drift off while doing so).

I’m not trying to give myself a pass or anything; I don’t get to just blame all my troubles on the fact that I’m at a particular period of life and I don’t get to whine that I can’t write because everything else is in the way. But I can say that there are challenges, and that I’m definitely not alone in having to deal with them.

No matter the season, all writers have struggles that they must work through, and as a Summer writer, I invite all other “Summers” to struggle with me. We have families and jobs and responsibilities, but we also have writing, and we have each other. We can do it, come hell or high water!

What season are you? What struggles do you fight with because of the time of life you happen to be in? Please share! I’d love to hear from you!

It Only Makes Sense, When You Think About It

I have never been someone who exercises. Oh sure, when I was a kid I would ride my bike around town or go swimming and the like, but I grew into a pretty sendentary adult. I’ve always been more of a mental individual than a physical one, more artistic than athletic. I’ve always liked to read and write, to play piano and guitar, and to indulge in movies and video games. I did not play sports, I never got into anything like track or gymnastics, and I absolutely loathed physical education. I just never enjoyed any of it, and even the stuff I did get into had downsides. I became a cheerleader for a while in high school, but while I enjoyed the actual routines, I hated the fitness program portion that went with it. I was into Tae Kwon Do for a couple of years and I loved the training, but I hated the warm-ups and forms and the running at the beginning of each class.

Especially, especially, I hated the running. I’ve always hated running because I’ve always been bad at it. My legs get sore so quickly, I could never seem to be able to control my breathing, and I’ve always found it just dreadfully boring. I have had people around me telling me for years that if I want to get into shape I should run, but I could just never convince myself to do it. I’ve tried a number of times, but it always came to the same conclusion: “It’s too hard, I’m no good at it, and I hate it!”

Then I tried the Zombies! Run! 5k Training app. Yes, I know, I’ve already written about this before, but this is not a shameless plug. Just hear me out. I tried the app out partly because I was trying to figure out how to work some exercise into my day, but mostly because it sounded so interesting and different. Train to run by running from imaginary zombies? Hmm. Neat. So I gave it a whirl. I didn’t honestly expect to become hooked. I am now obsessed with this program. I long to hear more of the story, I’m motivated by the playful characters urging me on, and I feel genuinely proud of myself whenever I finish a run. I’ve done other exercise programs that made me feel good about myself at the end of the workout (P90X comes to mind), but this is the first time I can ever recall being excited to start the exercise. I’ve been practically leaping out of bed in the morning, I’m actually disappointed when the run is over, and I’ve been skipping the program-designated days off because I want to keep going. Let that sink in. The program is telling me to take a day off and I’m saying, “Screw that, give me more!”

This all confirms what I’ve been hearing for years; that is, the trick is to find something you enjoy doing. Exercise feels like a chore because we force ourselves to do things that are easily defined as “fitness” moves, like weight lifting for instance. But for every gym buff who lives for the free weights, there are a hundred more people thinking up every excuse in the book to not go to the gym because weight training makes them miserable. For every dedicated marathon runner there are dozens of people who spend their entire workout fantasizing about breaking a leg so they don’t have to run anymore. For every enlightened yogi there is a veritable army of agitated people with zero balance two deep breaths away from strangling their instructor with the yoga mat because it’s just not working for them.

You’ll never exercise if the very thought of the exercise makes you cringe. You’ll just keep making excuses, or you’ll phone it in, and afterward you’ll feel bad for not making the effort.

So find something you truly enjoy. It doesn’t have to be “traditional” exercise; it just has to be something physical that you enjoy enough to keep doing it. It could be swimming at the local pool, golfing with a friend, walking a friend’s dog, learning how to pole dance (they have classes for that now!), joining a gentlemen’s hockey team, tending your own garden, or any number of other possibilities. Find something you enjoy doing, do it often, and you will see results.

Myself, I may not have experienced any significant weight loss (yet!) on the Zombies! Run! program, but I have reduced my average pace from a 20-minute mile to a 14-minute mile in just two weeks, which is something I’m sure I never would have accomplished had I not found this app.

What kind of fitness programs have you tried? Have they worked for you? Do you enjoy your workouts? Please share!