Creativity as Self-Care: Writing in the Time of Covid

As shelter-in-place orders spread, I started to see this strange pressure on the creative, “Now is the time to write the next great American novel.” And then came the rebuttal to this argument that the amount of anxiety in quarantine is not compatible with creativity. Well, I offer something in between. 

I propose that creativity can be a form of self-care right now. The pressures are all too real. Creativity shouldn’t be another one, but at the same time abandoning one’s creativity means taking away a tool, an asset, a coping strategy. Now more than ever is when we need to hear our souls sing. Whether through poetry, pottery, or print making, connecting with that higher part of yourself can make this time bearable.

In my experience, the more time I spend away from my artistic endeavors the crazier I feel. My primary creative expression, writing, feels like medicine. It flushes out the toxins. While expressing my ideas and imaginings, my writing also expresses the blight from my system. And right now we need all the healing power we have at our disposal. 

I hit a hard place this past winter and started doing all the things that doctors tell you to do: exercise, eat well, sleep well, go outside, but I had forgotten about an essential piece of life until a friend reminded me. “Joanna, have you been writing?” she asked. I opened my novel the next day and a bit of relief rushed in. I realized that creativity is my self-care. Writing allows me to connect with my soul, but unfortunately, it’s one of the first things I let go when life gets hard.

We all need to escape. The Netflix binge is necessary in these times. We need to rest and retreat, but when your mind becomes mushy from endless episodes, excessive napping, or obsessive news consumption, try reclaiming your own creative power. Carve out some generative time for yourself and see how that makes you feel. 

If you work from home, shut off all notifications for a bit. If you have kids, use some nap time or screen time in order to feed your own soul. You could even allow these time-boxed departures to be a structure for you to get as many words on the page or as many songs in the air as you can. Despite the higher activation energy required, you might feel a lot better afterwards. You might feel lighter, you might feel your own power, you might feel hope. 

When you do create, create without pressure to produce. You don’t have to discover the law of gravity or pen a work of genius. Creating with the ego at the forefront doesn’t usually end well even under normal circumstances. Instead, create to care for yourself and banish the expectations and critics (inside and out). You just need to give yourself the space to talk to your soul. 

If you can’t manage to find blocks of time (I’m looking at you full-time working parents), let your mind play while you are doing the mundane tasks of cooking beans and feeding a baby. Play with ideas in your heart while your body does what it needs to do. What would that melody sound like? What wounds might drive my protagonist? How would these colors blend?

And if you are totally exhausted and can’t manage any of this, just survive. I wish I could hold your hand. This will end, and we will create on the other side. 

Let It Be Easy

Elizabeth Gilbert posted her top ten tips for writing the other week. And #10 really caught me.

“Be willing to let it be easy.”

For the past several months, I’ve been dreaming up and outlining my second novel. And last week, I was ready to get going with the first draft, but I paused at the start. Eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched.

Writing my first book felt like a battle with little victories and lots of struggle. I think all the fight came from fear. Was I doing it right? I applied that question to every part of the novel and every stage of the writing process.

Is the first chapter right?

Is my character development complete?

Is this detail historically accurate?

Is the plot moving too quickly? Too slowly?

Is this joke funny?

Is the ending satisfying?

Ugh, exhausting. Thank goodness for my unrelenting drive to write and my dear, patient writing friends that scooped me off my keyboard over and over again. I produced a first novel I feel very proud of and now as I start my second, I braced for the onslaught again.

Then came Liz’s #10 tip. Let it be easy.

Intellectually, I know that the first draft is crap. Anne Lamott really drove that home for me in Bird by Bird. Writing a first draft lets me find the story. It helps me meet the characters. It lets me test out the plot. But I don’t think I really allowed that for myself.

Energetically, I was still feeling like I needed to get it right. I’ve received the advice to write badly, but that didn’t land the way “easy” landed. ‘Let it be easy’ bypassed the judgement of good and bad. The advice invited me to check in with my energy not my craft. ‘Let it be easy’ let me set aside my judgement, and therefore my fear, and just write.

In my experience, the hard came from the judgement, and really the inappropriate judgement about my work. It’s not time for me to worry if I nailed the first line. It’s not time for me to worry if my characters are fully developed. It’s time for me to get the words on a page. Letting that go, allowed me to melt into ease.

So each day, I hit my word count. I am not getting blocked because I can’t get it wrong. It’s easy…for now anyways.

How I Became a Writer

Some people came into this world knowing what they want to do or be.

We hate these people.

No, not really. (Maybe a little).

The rest of us haven’t always known our purpose. Maybe we have a guiding idea but don’t know how to translate it into an action, or maybe we have so many ideas we don’t know how to pick, or maybe we have no idea at all.

I spent the first decade of my adult life training as a nurse and scientist. This felt as right as it could until I looked up and saw that even if I was as successful as I could be, it wasn’t the life I wanted. That was very hard to accept after years of intensive training and heavy expectations. I didn’t know until I knew. And once I knew, I had to leave. So if I wasn’t a scientist then what was I?

Using our savings, my partner and I moved across country. We landed in the Bay Area, and I tried everything. I farmed, I protested, I coded, I cooked, I designed, I organized, but I still didn’t know. And I desperately wanted to know. Oh how I envied the people that knew their calling to their core, but there was no clear signal in my heart. After a summer of exploring, I started to panic.

I took a break and went to the beach. I used to read scientific journal articles with my feet in the sand, but I heard that normal people read novels. I couldn’t quite remember the last time I let myself read for pleasure. But once I started, I could not stop. I wanted to live inside the fictional worlds I found. Now some people say that, but I really meant it. I felt like I belonged in books. I read. All. Day. Long. Some books I just looped through, over and over again, refusing to leave.

The only thing that finally brought me out of my reading frenzy was the idea to write my own book. I opened up my laptop and started chapter one of my first novel.

But I couldn’t make it as easy as that. Even as I continued to write, I refused it as a vocation. Writing fiction, don’t be ridiculous. Writing is not a real career. Making up stories doesn’t add value to the world. So I continued my search. I craved a sense of identity. What should I do? I tried more things. I foraged, I researched, I volunteered, I knit. I even considered going back to science.

I finally reached a breaking point. I wanted to commit to something, and I just needed to pick a horse and ride it. I leaned on my analytic skills (maybe that’s the reason I got a PhD, ha!). I opened up Excel and made a matrix. I listed my values along the top row: justice, beauty, kindness, family, things like that. Along the side, I listed out all the potential jobs I’d consider. At the very last moment, I threw “writer” on the list.  Then I assigned a number from 1 to 5, indicating how much each potential career fulfilled each value. I totaled the rows. Writing received the highest score. Wait, really? Writing? And because I’m a nerd and really needed to be sure I also ranked the values and produced a ranked score. Writing won again.

I felt a little scared. This is not how I conceptualized myself.

My partner offered a solution. Try it. Write. Commit for three months and stop asking the question “What should I do?” and just do it. This was powerful for me. Trying something new and edgy is hard when you question the whole enterprise every other day. With the financial support of my partner, I committed (just for three months). I let myself write all day long. And when I questioned myself, I looked at the date circled on the calendar and said I can consider all my doubts then.

Eventually I doubted less and wrote more. I didn’t even realize when the three months had ended. I didn’t need to return to the spreadsheet. I still had no idea why writing resonated with me. I still wondered where this vocation came from, but I knew that I didn’t want to do anything else.

People ask me, “How did I choose writing?” It’s strange to say, but I think that writing choose me. Looking back, I see that three things had an important impact on my discovery: the ability to walk away from a career and identity that didn’t bring me joy, giving myself the chance to try all the things, and committing to something I loved in the face of doubt.

Doubt has returned countless times in my writing journey. Apparently doubt is a defining characteristic of a writer. But I just can’t stop. I tried, but I returned over and over again to writing.

I wish I knew, “Why writing?” I still ask myself that. It’s not something I imagined choosing. It’s not something I designed. Even without understanding it fully, I commit because I can’t hardly help it.

Some people came into this world knowing what they want to do or be. Others have the creative adventure of discovering it along the way.

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Who am I?

Who am I? As a writer for young adults, this is a core question in my work. My protagonists strive page after page for the answer. So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that I keep asking the same thing of myself.

It’s a ginormous question. Even after several drafts, I still can’t put my finger on the solution for some characters. They don’t want to be plopped into a trope: “Nice to meet you. I am the brooding loner with a heart of gold.” But I also need to succinctly move them along a story arc towards greater understanding of themselves and their world.

I’ve been around for over three decades, and I am still asking, Who am I? After each life milestone, I thought I would have the answer. And then when I thought I finally had it, I got it wrong. I’m a nurse! I’m a scientist! I’m an activist! I’m a fiction writer? All these shifts got to be embarrassing. When people asked what I do at a party, I would give a respectably vague answer (aka a lie), “I’m a consultant.” After writing fiction for five years now, I give the courageous answer, “I am a writer.” But the question, Who am I?, still niggles me.

This is the third blog that I’ve started. I resisted writing directly about myself because I didn’t know how to pull all the pieces of me under one idea and what if the answer changes again. I kept waiting for a sense of stability. And in some ways dedicating half a decade to an endeavor is stability, but I still feel so full of possibility.

I am starting to understand why this question is so wiggly. Because people grow. I grow. Identity is something that evolves and evolves. Maybe that’s why so many adults enjoy YA. It’s a chance to revisit the question with vitality and optimism that gets wrung out of us over the years. The evolution of my identity isn’t a result of flippancy or indecision, as many damaging tropes of young women might suggest, but conscious reflection. Each identity, each blog that came before this informed these words. Instead of shame over an evolving identity, I am choosing to celebrate it as a sign of my growth.

But there is something deeply comforting about having a global understanding of who you are and what you stand for in the world. And then sharing that idea in few words. I imagine it’s like having a developmental itch scratched. So I made a list of my passions: writing, books, creativity, feminism, love, spirituality. But I couldn’t pick just one to blog about so I began searching for my unifying theme. A theme is an idea that a writer repeats in her literary work. I know how to write theme, so I could find the theme I’m living.

The answer is me. I am what all these concepts have in common. This is who I am. The word authenticity bubbled up. Authenticity, the degree to which one is true to one’s spirit or character despite external pressure. Or the quality of being who I am. Standing as me.

And again, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that this theme encapsulates my protagonist’s journey too (but it still surprised me). This journey of finding and being one’s true self is what I am focusing on right now. In writing, the way to rise above tropes and create an authentic character is to embrace all her flaws, her quirks, her fears, her desires (even the edgy ones, strike that, especially the edgy ones). So I will embrace all of myself here in my writing under the theme of authenticity.

I hope you enjoy it, but it’s okay if you don’t.