Anything creative comes from somewhere — it’s not magicked out of thin air. Well, arguably it can seem like it, but it’s actually very much like a duck. To outsiders, the duck is floating serenely on the pond, but if you look a little closer, you can see its feet paddling frantically underneath.
Yes, I like to mix my metaphors.
My point is that in order to be creative, you need creative fuel a.k.a. fodder to support your inspiration. It’s called filling your well. This is the place you dip into when you’re thirsty for inspiration and it can come from almost anywhere except doing your creative thing.
Many writers discovered this during the pandemic. I was not alone in thinking that I’d use all that time away from others to finish my next book, but… I couldn’t. I could not write anything beyond my usual freelance work. It felt very much like my well had run dry.
About a year and a half into what I call the Plague Times, I attended a virtual writing conference. One of the presenters addressed the elephant in the room (continuing with mixing metaphors) and I discovered that this was a normal thing. Which was a huge relief, as I had been convinced I was the only person who couldn’t produce anything creative and that’s a big load of failure to carry around.
It turns out that in order to write, you need to have experiences. Leave the house. People watch. Look at art. Loggygag in public. Basically, everything we hadn’t been doing for the better part of two years.
In other words, you have to fill your well.
That’s what I’m doing for the next 35 days. Every year, I take a mini sabbatical for the month of August with the intention to write at least part of whatever book I’m working on, take long walks in the sunshine, and enjoy life at a slower pace.
In the past, I’ve sabotaged myself by working way too hard during the month of July so I could take time off and inevitably lost the first two weeks of August to crashing in a spectacular fashion. This year, I planned ahead, tried to work ahead, and reduced some of the things I normally do this month, such as no daily Instagram posts about Disability Pride Month. Actually, this year I did very little social media in July at all and that was restful in itself.
I’m hoping it worked so I can for the first time in a while write most days in August. Well, after I first take a few days off to nap.