Stretching Your Creative Muscles
Image Description: A woman in a white t-shirt has her back to the camera as she stretches her arms above her head while she looks outside a window to an apartment building across the street. Photo courtesy of Pixabay.
As we approach the midpoint of the year, it’s normally a good point to review where we are with our resolutions. Remember your New Year’s Resolutions? I even addressed them in my first blog entry of the year. January? That innocent time seemed like a lifetime ago. Or just yesterday. Or both. If you are at all like me, you may have lost track of time.
As I write this, we are still living in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of you may have lost your jobs or income stream. Some of you may be essential workers who are continuing to commute to jobs where both the commute and the job may be stressful. And some of you may be spending the majority of your hours at home, the place that has become where you sleep, where you work, where you teach our children, where you pretty much ARE for the foreseeable future.
It is possible some of you may have given up on any resolutions about leading a healthier life. The pandemic and the associated stress of encountering crowds of people outside may have reduced your physical exercise. Others may have double-downed on these resolutions, using the extra time and pent-up energy to do exercise programs you can watch on a screen or going for longer walks, runs, bike rides or whatever gets you outside as much as possible.
But have you paid attention to your creative exercise?
Just as with our bodies, our minds need to be stretched and toned. When you are creatively stuck, this can be akin to the slump you may feel when you are not moving your body as much as you should. This can be especially true right now because you may be so busy with managing all the facets of your life that you have had to put creative projects to the side.
It is also true that many of you may be suffering from a dearth of productivity, not only with your creative work. There are numerous news articles that explain why this is. “Don’t feel like ‘getting things done’? It’s okay not to be productive during a pandemic.” says the Washington Post, one of many articles that emphasized the point that we are experiencing a collective trauma and are responding in similar ways to how we process grief. This, possibly combined with sharing tight quarters with other household members, including kids, at all hours of the day, can be a recipe for not wanting to make a recipe. Or alternatively going into overdrive with a multitude of recipes rather than focus on art (unless your art is cooking, that is).
I have experienced this firsthand. While I wanted to use the additional home time to focus my efforts on writing the book that is the companion to this blog, I found myself putting it at the bottom of my priorities list. In the meantime, in addition to my paid work that I am grateful to have, I reorganized my pantry, completed a personal filing project, put in extra time on two film community volunteer initiatives, discovered new paths for dog walks, participated in numerous game nights with friends, and half-heartedly gave in to a friend’s suggestion that I take up birdwatching. By the time I got to cleaning my oven, watching the pilot episode of multiple old sitcoms, and NOT writing my April blog entry, I knew that I needed to return to my creative work. In spite of the way the pandemic was impacting me psychologically -- or perhaps because of it -- I knew that I had to find ways to refocus myself. While I could be easier on myself for having varying levels of energy and interest, I had to harness what energy I was able to muster into re-establishing a creative practice. Apathy could not be a coping strategy.
Here are a few approaches I took (they may not all work for you, but try them out or share your own approaches in the comments):
Make carefree art
While I could have jumped right into writing, I decided instead to make a collage.
In the first few weeks of the quarantine, like many others, my productivity went way down. I decided to revisit collage since it was a way for my mind to play at a time when it alternated between fight or flight mode and pure exhaustion. I found a box of expired credit cards, bank cards, and store cards that I needed to get rid of. Instead of cutting them up and disposing of them in multiple trash cans, I decided instead to cut them into little pieces and make a collage out of them. It was a way to get some creative juices flowing and upcycle at the same time. The work isn’t quite complete but I like where it is going.
Image Description: An unfinished collage of cut up credit cards shaped into the trunk and branches of a tree next to several boxes of cut up credit card pieces, green scissors, and a bottle of Mod Podge glue. Photo courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.
After this experience, I felt refreshed. It was a physical process that refreshingly replaced screens and keyboards with scissors and Mod Podge. Yes Mod Podge! For those unfamiliar, this is a type of glue, sealer, and finish designed for craft and art projects that I had not used since elementary school. In some ways, this art exercise felt more like play similarly to how active pursuits I recall from elementary school recess feel more like play than going on a treadmill. does. Just as we are more likely to integrate physical exercise into our lives if we find exercise that we enjoy, the more we can have that feeling of play when we make art, the more we are likely to continue making it.
It also was important that I had no larger goals or ego investment in the collage. I was able to do something for the pure joy and challenge of creating. My mind was more open, and it helped me feel more inspired to work on my book (even if that meant returning to the screen and keyboard).
While hopefully you gain joy from your primary creative discipline, it can also be reinvigorating to temporarily take a step back from making work that is marketable (whether for a client, a buyer, a grant, a competition, or any outside influence). It’s important to “get creative by any means necessary,” as my friend and creative coach Roxanne Jarrett often advises. (I’ll be featuring some more wisdom from Roxanne in a future blog entry).
Change It up
Sometimes it’s helpful to try a different approach to your normal way of problem-solving your work. This is what is known as lateral thinking, a concept that the psychologist Edward DeBono has written about in his book by the same name. At its core, lateral thinking is a process-focused means of finding novel solutions to challenges by relaxing rigid ways of thinking and exploring them from different angles.
In the world of the arts, one of the most famous examples of encouraging lateral thinking is Oblique Strategies, a series of cards that was developed by the musician Brian Eno and the artist Peter Schmidt. Each card contains a short prompt that the artist can apply to their own work. Some examples include:
Honor thy error like a hidden intention.
Listen in total darkness or in a large empty room very quietly.
Faced with a choice, do both.
Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle.
Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities.
Repetition is a form of change.
What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving.
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do, and do the last thing on the list.
These may be particularly relevant for musicians (Eno used the method frequently with artists he produced), but they can be applied more broadly. Even the ones that read like odd fortune cookie aphorisms are intended to get artists to pause and change up the approach to process to get through creative blocks. If you need a daily dose of prompts, there is even an online version.
Bite-Size Your Efforts
Some creatives can feel overwhelmed by your creative aspirations -- whether due to outside forces beyond your control or just because of your natural temperament. This is why many books and articles about the creative process advise you to create something every day, whether you are feeling inspired or not. Personally, that doesn’t work for me since it just leaves me feeling frustrated. Instead I try to incorporate creative chunks on days when I am feeling more energetic and focused.
This is especially important to consider right now because of the psychological impact of the pandemic when our energy levels may be higher or lower than normal and may indeed vary significantly day to day or hour to hour. As New York psychologist Dr. Eileen Feliciano has written in advice that can apply to our creative work and life more broadly:,
Chunk your quarantine, take it moment by moment. We have no road map for this.
We don’t know what this will look like in one day, one week, or one month from now.
Often, when I work with patients who have anxiety around overwhelming issues,
I suggest that they engage in a strategy called “chunking”—focusing on whatever
bite-sized piece of a challenge that feels manageable. Whether that be five minutes,
a day, or a week at a time—find what feels doable for you, and set a time stamp
for how far ahead in the future you will let yourself worry. Take each chunk one at a time,
and move through stress in pieces.
Another approach to this is something called the Pomodoro Technique which may work particularly well for creative pursuits where you don’t need a lot of materials, such as sketching, writing or video editing. With this method, your primary focus is working in the time you have rather than keeping it open-ended. Named for the tomato-shaped egg timers (though you can use the timer on your phone), you simply set a timer for 25 minutes while you are working. When the timer goes off, you can take a 5 minute break and then either be done for the day or you can set the timer again for another 25 minutes followed by a 5 minute break.
Image Description: A red egg timer in the shape of a tomato.. Image used under Creative Commons license. Image by Marco Verch.
I’ve used this technique for writing when I didn’t start off particularly energized or inspired. Often I am surprised to find that I go through four “pomodoros” when I only thought I had the capacity for one. In many ways, this is like going for a walk or a run with a modest expectation of how long or how far you will go. Either you meet that goal and head home or you find yourself warmed up enough to want to keep going. You won’t feel ashamed if you don’t go beyond the initial goal, but you also have the potential to exceed it.
Find an accountability buddy
Sometimes the way forward with our practice is not to go it alone. It can help from feeling isolated or unique in our struggles. It can also give us a form of accountability.
One of the core components of many artist labs, fellowships, or other formalized peer support groups is for the artists to develop specific intentions and state these publicly among the peer group in the same program. This allows them not only to develop SMART goals (also discussed in more depth in my blog on resolutions), but also to state these goals in front of other artists who will help them keep accountable to those goals.
While these can be helpful, you don’t necessarily need to be part of a lab. You just need one other person to be an accountability buddy. who is also working on something creative and who agrees to be an accountability buddy. I recently started an accountability buddy system with my colleague Richard Chisolm who, like me, is drawing from his experience in the film industry to write a book. Since April, we have agreed to share our work on a chapter of our respective books on a weekly basis no matter how rough we feel the work is. We spend 60-90 minutes by phone each week giving each other notes and discussing our work.
It is important to choose an accountability buddy wisely, finding someone who:
Is as committed as you are to the process. Don’t find someone who is like that workout buddy who always has an excuse to cancel on you. Richard and I aim to talk every week at a standing time. Sometimes life gets in the way and we have to change the day or time, but our commitment is that we must share work and connect weekly. We conclude each call with setting our intention for the following week. That helps give us a specific goal to work towards and a deadline of sorts.
Understands the art. While anyone can review your creative output and say they like or don’t like it, you want someone in this role who understands the art itself and the artistic process through their own experience. It’s an added plus if they are also sharing their art with you so your accountability is mutual and you can bounce ideas off each other. We can often learn so much about our own process by giving feedback to others. One caution though: It is important that you feel like equals for the most part. The energy of a lateral exchange is different than that of a teacher/student or mentor/mentee. There are values to those relationships as well, but they are different.
Is comfortable giving honest but constructive feedback. This is not just an exercise in creating deadlines and commitments, but also a way to work out ideas in a safe and supportive space. Finding the right balance of honesty and critique is like tasting the soups the Three Bears made for Goldilocks. Having a buddy who offers nothing but praise doesn’t get you to think about the solutions for the weaknesses of your work. Having a buddy whose critique is hard-edged can feel like a knife stabbing your ego. Each of us can accommodate different types and levels of critique that we can apply to our work, so you want to find the one that is just right. This may also be why you may not want your accountability buddy to be family, significant others, or close friends.
While a phone conversation or notes on a shared document works well for writing, there are all sorts of creative approaches to creative accountability if you cannot meet in person. Share video ideas for choreography or a new song. Block out a few hours of “studio time” where you will paint together while chatting via teleconference. If you are particularly bold, commit to sharing something with your peers on a consistent basis through Instagram or artists sites like Behance or Deviant Art.
The key is to move beyond the worry about not making something or not making something up to your inner perfectionist’s standards. Make something. Make anything. Especially in stressful times, we need to find ways to increase our endorphins. This is why I think of artistic practice as akin to physical exercise. Recently I decided to return to yoga as a way to stretch muscles and relax while in quarantine at home. It had been many years since I had a regular yoga practice, so it was very hard at first. I couldn’t hold poses as long as the instructor and some I had to modify significantly. But instead of getting frustrated because I wasn’t doing things right, I just focused on doing what I could do. My muscles were still being stretched, just at my own pace. I know that, as I continue to keep up with it, I will get stronger. The same is true of art. Like our muscles, our creativity has never left us. We just need to devote some time to it to get stronger.
So let the stretching commence...
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