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How to mistreat your creativity & drain your well of inspiration
Have you ever heard about the frogs placed in a pot of water? If the temperature rises slowly enough, it’s said they don’t noticed they’re being boiled into an early froggy grave.
It’s not a pretty experiment. Apparently the 19th century German researchers who did this - they were on a quest to locate the soul - didn’t think much of our amphibious friends' ability to feel pain.
And it’s not a particularly flattering metaphor either. It has been applied to humans who don’t take action in the face of all sorts of worsening circumstances from the Cold War to climate change to civil rights abuses.
I have no desire to equate myself with our friends from the swamp, so let’s prettify and domesticate the image, shall we?
If you slowly drain the creative waters out of a bathtub and just keep turning up the heat in the steamy room, it seems that a writer won’t notice she’s no longer bathing in inspiration.
When I began #365StrongStories, I made a declaration: I would walk my talk and demonstrate that it’s possible to consistently turn little moments of life and brief flashes of inspiration into stories. Ruthlessly, I named the project, pointed to the calendar, and embarked upon my mission.
I certainly do not have the temperament to be a scientist, but I realize I would have been better served to call this an “experiment” and talking about my "hypothesis" instead. That way, skipping a day or two of writing and publishing wouldn't have felt like a failure. A day of silence would have been a data point on the living graph that tracks the ebb and flow of creative energy, time to devote to the page, and the patience it takes to select just the right font and image.
When the creative waters dry up
I didn’t plan to take a long weekend away from my stories. We weren’t occupied by a special occasion or some family trauma. The creative tub had simply run dry. Ordinarily, I would have put off sleep or couch time with my husband to pull something together for the blog. Over the last few days, however, I just poured a glass of wine and said “let’s watch one more Outlander. ”
I couldn't even muster the energy to feel guilty or fret over the promises I had made to my audience.
Three days away from writing and generally refusing to show up gave me the space to notice how emptied out I am. I’ve let my most vital resources - my creativity and my inspiration - dry up in the name of some personal mission that was conceived with all too little self-compassion.
What happens after "failure"?
The stories will continue to flow when there’s enough in my reserves to share.
At this point, I am using what creative juices I have left to look at “365” in a new way. I promised a year of stories. Well, who said they all have to appear in 2016?
Today is the 137th day of the year and I believe this is the 132nd story I have written or curated since January 1. That realization alone and seeing how much I have created and held? That begins to fill the cisterns immediately.
This experience is teaching me to become a student of compassionate creative limits. Let’s learn from one another! Please let me know how you manage to keep the tub of inspiration filled and how you might have let your resources run dry.
Open the Gateway to Your Sovereign Story
Yin yoga, she said, is a journey along a path. From time to time, you reach a gate. You have the choice press into it. You see if your body wishes to surrender and move through or if the gate must stay shut. The practice is stay on path and accept that this is as far as you’re going to get today.
I followed along, contemplating the divots in a mat that once saw vigorous daily use. It was distracting, trying to remember how long it had been since I took “work time” to do something as rebellious as an online yoga class. Clearly this was one of those “emotional gates” the instructor was talking about.
The resistance in my hips, in the back of my thighs, I knew these were untold stories. These were the stories I had literally been sitting on. The body was asked to hold them because my mind was just too full.
This isn’t an original idea, of course. We know that the cells, the joints, and the muscles carry the information and the feelings the brain refuses to claim. But this “gate theory” that Julie Schoen talked about, I felt this reverberate through my creaking bones as I tried to rely on them to support me through these long poses.
There are gates along the pathway to telling your Story.
And by “Story,” I mean the capital “s” Sovereign Story that you craft as you pass through the gates of all the small “s” stories. Your Sovereign Story is your declaration of why you are here, what you are meant to offer, who you know yourself to be. It is your True Story of what it means to be human.
To get to that story, you write into situations, into long held emotions, into unresolved hurts, and triumphs you think you fully understand. You invariably get stuck by thoughts of "this is too dark, too boring, too contrived, too intimate..."
You allow all that to be true. Until the next writing session, of course. The next time, you just might discover that there is light in the darkness, wisdom in the boring, humor in the contrived, and universal insight in the intimate.
Dive deeper into story with me and join The Story Triangle webinar when it goes live on May 11.
Enough with the Tortured Entrepreneur. Love the Process.
“It doesn’t have to be easy. Isn’t it enough that it’s magic?”
Ohhhhh, Liz Gilbert, thank you! Thank you for this and thank you for piercing through my crunch week mania and my cranky mama is on a deadline B.S.
I’ve talked about how putting the finishing touches on my new course - You, Your Stories, and your Audience - has been a total grind. If you saw my sleep starved eyes and my messy ponytail you’d understand that I wanted your sympathy. And fresh brewed coffee. And a time machine. And full time care for my children.
But I am done with that. I am embracing this as the creative process it is. I am showing up to fix one more slide presentation with gratitude rather than resentment.
Enough with the tortured entrepreneur. The business martyr is every bit as worn out and uninspiring as the "tortured artist."
[tweetthis] "Business martyr" is just as cliched and unhelpful as "tortured artist" #lovetheprocess[/tweetthis]
It’s time to recognize that this process is the reward - that gathering and honing of what I know and shaping it into something that is worthy and helpful and TRUE. When people take the course and start writing their own strong stories that better lives… that is just going to make an already powerful, beautiful act of creation into something that much sweeter.
Deep gratitude to Elizabeth Gilbert and to the podcaster who hosted her, the wicked brilliant Rob Bell (no, he is not a man who says “wicked,” but if he was from Massachusetts rather than Michigan he would say it all the time and would be freaking adorable).
Listen to this one for the brilliance about the cake and the icing and this whole riff about the “transrational” that I am super excited to explore.
And try this one if you want to jump into Big Magic and get the context for the quote above.
Curious about what's in the new course? Get a sweet little taste in the content rich webinar, The Story Triangle, that goes live May 11!
The privilege of a quiet place
Apparently Ben Franklin had noisy children. If they were mentioned at the man's museum, I didn't notice because I was herding my own children (who were no noisier than the other kids playing tourist in Philadelphia with their families.)
Indisputably, Franklin was a terrifically accomplished guy. He needed the quiet to think all the thoughts and invent all the things.
Having a quiet place to read, think, create... What a privilege.
I hope you have a room of your own to shape your stories and craft your ideas. I hope you have noisy outings with family and friends that enable you to appreciate the silence too. And if either is lacking in your life, I pray they manifest soon.
The Dark Side of Professional & Creative Overcommitment
Stories of overwhelm and overcommitment can be funny or tragic.
Picture the comedy montage of the woman trying to do it all who ends up passing the dog a sippy cup, placing a bowl of kibble in front of the toddler, and leaving the house in her slippers. You've seen these pictures by Danielle Guenther, right?
The un-funny tales of a woman weeping in the school drop off line and staring blankly at her computer screen, willing herself to get something done aren't the stuff of Facebook shares - though they might be the stories that you use to connect to clients who need to heal overworked minds and bodies and who need support to heal and feel whole again.
Sometimes you can't be funny enough to cover up the ache
I'm running the risk of giving my "oh, silly mama, you can't do it all!" story into something way darker and related to a breakdown. I hope I am seeing this soon enough to make a change so I don't end up really letting myself, my clients, my readers, and my family down. Instead, I am rumbling with what it means to make a daily commitment and what it means to change it or even break it.
Still, I don't have an answer. Still, I am not able to tell you a strong story with a beginning, middle, and end about #365StrongStories. Still, there's no satisfying resolution to my #365project dilemma.
Instead, from the messy middle of it all, I can share with you a daily practice sister who understand - Saundra Goldman is re-examining her own continuous practice routine.
Saundra's current project is a 100-day commitment to meditation, not a year of public writing, but I am inspired by her willingness to listen to her physical, emotional, and creative needs and recognize that life happens. We need to flow with life and the muse and honor ourselves enough to reevaluate when necessary.
Saundra references Karen Brody's yoga nidra training in her post. Here's a guest post that Karen wrote for us last year.
One of the things that is inspiring this #365 review is my free online class, Connect with Readers & Clients: Discover the Story Triangle. Ultimately, the triangle is about keeping your writing is in balance - a lesson I think we could all use in all aspects of work, story, and life.