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The notion of “inspiration” is exciting, romantic and, well, inspiring. Our mythologies of creativity tell us that the right synchronicity of circumstances will spark not only The Idea that will change everything, but the will and ability to execute it. In reality, sitting around waiting for inspiration to “strike” is about as effective as waiting for actual lightning to strike and start your campfire. Inspiration can be cultivated and sought out, though.

Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, no matter how much consistent work and practice one puts in. It is the encounters and experiences that excite, intrigue and teach us that generate and motivate creativity. Sudden, striking ideas do happen – but they don’t come out of nowhere, they are the result of a long-simmering idea suddenly coalescing as the last piece falls into place. To be creative, go out into the world and seek out inspiration. This can take any form you like, from getting back to the land and nature, to delving into works of philosophy for new ideas. Inspiration is all the little pieces of life that keep you motivated and keep you thinking until The Idea finally coalesces (or, more likely, is finally forced into being like molding a stiff piece clay.)

Do not shy away from engaging with others’ works of creativity as a source of inspiration. Far from tainting the authenticity of your creative expression with influence, others’ art can be a great source of inspiration. Most peoples’ original inspiration to become a writer, artist or any other creative was probably someone else’s work. Don’t be afraid to revisit that original inspiration in times of low motivation.

Art exists to provoke emotional and intellectual responses and to expose new ideas and perspectives, all of which are the essence of inspiration. In a sense, art is a short cut to inspiration! Whatever kind of creative you are, try to be open to what all kinds of creativity can teach you – visual art, performance, music, literature, digital arts….

A risk of relying on others’ art to inspire you in periods of low motivation and inspiration is that witnessing the peak of others’ creative process may stir up insecurity and fear. The doubting voice inside might just say “Well I can’t do that, so why bother…” The gulf between where you see yourself and where you want to be may become stark and intimidating. Remember that inspiration is also about learning. Look at work that you admire, or consider “better” than yours, as something to learn from rather than envy. What is it that you see in that work that seems to be missing from your work and how can you develop that missing piece? What technique and craft does that artist use that you can learn? If inadequacy and fear clouds inspiration, focus on learning and honing your craft.

Creativity requires consistent work, but it also needs to be nurtured with inspiration. Fortunately, creatives do not need to passively await inspiration: they can go out and find it. Part of the work of creativity is spending time immersed in others’ creativity, looking for the little pieces that will build and motivate your own.

 

IMG_20180718_115103_621Elisabeth Hill is an Edmonton-based writer and researcher who currently works as a Programming and Engagement Coordinator at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

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In a productivity-centric society, busyness is not just a norm, it is almost practiced as a virtue. Keeping busy demonstrates dedication to productivity and efficiency, but it is ironically counter effective to genuinely fulfilling and meaningful productivity. Busyness is how we experience the route to shallow productivity: the accomplishment of multiple tasks in quick succession under pressure. Busyness looks, and initially may feel, like efficiency, but it is unsustainable. In a prolonged period of busyness, even the most adept multi-tasker becomes distracted, rushed, and unable to absorb information, ultimately leading to burn out.

Different people can manage, or even thrive at, different paces and degrees of busyness. Most people, however, need room for their creativity to grow and be nurtured. Meaningful and fulfilling productivity, both in the sense of artistic output and more broadly in the sense of innovation, is driven by creativity. Creativity requires focus, depth of thought and practice, and room for simmering ideas to coalesce in seemingly spontaneous inspiration. Many people benefit creatively from high levels of stimulation or a certain amount of pressure, but shallow, urgent busyness is antithetical to the circumstances under which creativity grows.

As much as we may wish to prioritize our creativity, busy periods are inevitable in most lives. Most workplaces, school programs or even personal projects have certain crunch periods. Personal circumstances like moving home, or even celebrating a holiday season put greater demands on our time and attention. Most of these are relatively short periods, but some circumstances such as raising children or working multiple jobs can cause more long-term busy periods. Fostering and maintaining creativity through these periods is important. The fulfillment and meaning derived from creativity can even be an antidote to the mental and emotional tolls of being overly busy.

Keep practicing.

Keep doing what you do, even if just for thirty minutes a day or an hour a week. Lower your expectations and let yourself cut back the amount of time you spend on creative projects, but don’t abandon them. Recognize your creativity as a priority amidst life’s demands, but don’t turn “write every day” into yet another task on your busy list.

Take in others’ creativity.

Schedule time to visit an exhibition, see a performance, or just read a good book or watch a film. In a busy time, you may be tempted to use mindless distractions to wind down (and that has its place!) but choose to spend time with works that will feed you creatively.

Make space.

Whether you want to call it “mindfulness” or not, give yourself some mental peace. Do activities that engage your body but make limited demands on your mental focus, like walking the dog, attending an exercise class, or doing a familiar handcraft. If you’re really pressed for time, you can even use mundane, necessary tasks like doing the dishes as a chance to either let your mind rest and wander or practice more focused mindfulness.

Trust that it will end.

Remember that this busy period will end and you will have room to practice and focus again. When you again have time to engage with your creativity but are struggling with motivation, remember how you missed it when you were too busy with other things! If there is no foreseeable end to your busyness and it is causing you distress, it may be time to consider some bigger life changes.

IMG_20180718_115103_621Elisabeth Hill is an Edmonton-based writer and researcher who currently works as a Curatorial Assistant at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

 

 

 

 

 

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So often I see writing advice along the lines of “try to write for fifteen minutes each day.” Fifteen minutes?! I can barely write a haiku in fifteen minutes. Leaving alone the fact that any commitment as flippant as “fifteen minutes each day” is bound to get bumped in favour of other priorities, it is not, in my experience, possible to have satisfactorily brilliant writing without accompanying torturous obsession.

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We live in a non-linear world full of countless interconnections and complexities. There is overlap. There are gray areas. There are exceptions. There are deeply rooted issues and finely made distinctions. And we, as writers, ask ourselves to look at this convoluted mess and produce provocative, astute work. How do we create a flowing, sensical, accessible, funny, interesting narrative exploring such chaos? Creative, original writing cannot and should not be so undervalued as for it to become a reasonable expectation that it be produced in the minutes between the end of dinner and the start of a favourite television show. It can and does only come out of many, many hours of dedicated, involved labour.

I am passionate on this issue not because I think it is a bad idea to try to write for fifteen minutes each day, but because I believe there is a link between impractical, unrealistic writing advice and the perpetual belittling of writing in our culture. Writing is often seen not as a practiced, useful, difficult skill but as something that anyone could do if they just put aside the time to do it. There is nothing further from the truth.

There is a reason why so many great artists, novelists, academics, and poets ended up struggling with mental illness, had difficulty with relationships, and lived in perpetual poverty. Passionate creation does not fit nicely within a balanced lifestyle. It is not something that you can expect to sit down, complete, and then leave when your shift is done. It is a demanding experience that can bring such extreme highs and lows that it can sometimes feel as if you are living on a different plane of existence. It can keep you up all night and then evade you for the entirety of your scheduled work day. Thoughts may arrive so urgently they drive away such staples of regular human existence as showering, eating, and catching the bus on time.

It is imperative that we, as a culture, recognize the difficulty intrinsic in producing good writing. Without a collective understanding of writing as a turbulent experience, it is only reasonable to expect writers everywhere to feel there is something wrong with them if they do not function within their scheduled 35-hour work week. We also risk ignorance of one of the experience’s greatest benefits: that nothing will challenge you so much as your own writing. We, as writers, must remember that to experience difficulty in our craft is not to be failing but rather the opposite. We only succeed by struggling.

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A couple of years ago, I was told that the student I thought I was supposed to be tutoring in math also needed help in reading and writing.

Except that he didn’t.

To be clear, he didn’t need help in math either. He could do entire questions in his head while whistling his own made-up tunes.

But I could understand why he would suffer on report cards. He was a perpetual noise-making motion machine and a class clown. He never tired of the word “Why?” – even when he knew perfectly well why. He rolled his eyes and was intentionally inflammatory. He blatantly defied instructions while being the only student in a room sitting directly across from his teacher. I imagine he’s difficult in a class of thirty.

But that’s exactly what should make him a great writer.

Think about what it takes to be difficult. Defiance. Insubordination. Stubbornness. Captiousness. Humour. Creativity. Quick wit.

Those are all qualities of good writers. Writers are the relentless askers of questions, the defiers of authority, and the nit-pickers of every detail. They are those who can draw the absurdity out of the everyday, and make people laugh and rage and blush and raise their eyebrows and twist themselves up into knots.

Now, just because he has an impressive aptitude doesn’t mean he’s destined to become the next Stephen King, and it doesn’t excuse his behavioural problems, either. But sometimes it’s nice to be able to look at a difficult kid and say, “This is your time to shine.”

rachaelRachael Heffernan recently completed a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. In the course of her academic career, she has received the Harrison Prize in Religion and The Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship. During her undergraduate degree, Rachael was published twice in The Codex: Bishop University’s Journal of Philosophy, Religion, Classics, and Liberal Arts for her work on Hittite divination and magic and philosophy of religion. Rachael has also had the opportunity to participate in an archaeological dig in Israel, and has spoken at a conference on Secularism at the University of Alberta on the Christian nature of contemporary Western healthcare. Her wide-ranging interests in scholarship are complemented by her eclectic extra-curricular interests: she is a personal safety instructor and lifelong martial artist who has been recognized for her leadership with a Nepean Community Sports Hero Award. She is an enthusiastic reader, writer, and learner of all things, a tireless athlete, and a passionate teacher.

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This article was written by Rachael Heffernan, writer and researcher with The Drawing Board.

 

If you’re feeling like you don’t spend enough time on your creative self, and you’re getting tired of the same-old-same-old dinner and a movie, you may be a perfect candidate for Sits.

Sits, you say?

Yes, Sits.

Sits began (as far as I know) in my partner’s family. Because they all live far apart during the year, in the last few days of summer they have a ritual they’ve dubbed Sits. They each spend some time scouting out the best places around the property, and then, in one glorious day, grab a couple of bottles of wine and some folding chairs and trek their way to each spot. They sit, they drink, they chat, and they admire the beauty that can only be found in The Middle of Nowhere, Ontario. It’s a beautiful tradition all about spending time in undiscovered places with people you love.

The idea of Edmonton Sits came out of this ritual with a couple of little twists to make it more appropriate for city life, and, as a bonus, orient it towards accomplishing the dreams of two author-wannabes. Here’s how it works:

  1. You and your posse of creative minds go out on the town armed with good pens, notebooks, and no more than one book each for inspiration. You may trade books with one another as the night goes on.
  2. Go to a place you’ve never been before. This can be in nature or can be somewhere indoor that has beverages and appetizers.
  3. Everyone orders drinks OR a timer is set  – and here’s the crutch of the game – you must write as much as you can for the duration of one drink, or leave before the timer runs out.
  4. Then you move on to the next location.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for as long as you please.

My partner and I went out and it was one of the best date nights we had had in a very long time. Getting to spend some time joyfully writing together and sharing our silly stories and poems was hugely refreshing. The unexpected side effect was that I felt it activated my creativity in a whole new way – armed with my notebook in my purse, for the next few nights we went out I ended up furiously scribbling poetry amongst the baskets of french fries and pints of beer on the table.

Here are some of my favourite poems from our adventures:

BEER

Lemon half moon

Bubbly balloons

Sittin’ under Edmonton skies

Burdened down I ain’t

Pickin’ at the paint

Not knowin’ when I’m gonna die

HEIGHTS

My nephew toddled softly

He would adamantly walk

And stoop and stop and bend and stretch

And talk and talk and talk.

He’d pick the little clovers

And stare down at the grass

He’d grab pink rocks and stash them

He’d point out bits of glass

And I’d walk and stop and hurry

I’d take him by the hand

All I could see were stop signs

While his eyes were on the land.

 

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As writers, we can often get stuck in a routine with our writing that can feel a bit dusty after a while. At its worst, this can cause us to stagnate and falter with our writing, or even set it aside for other pursuits. Writing takes persistent and consistent effort to produce worthwhile results, but that doesn’t mean the process by which you get there has to be boring.

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Many writers have different methods for keeping things fresh, regardless of the genre. Some writers like to use prompting exercises. These are usually one sentence assignments like “Write about the smell of your childhood neighbour’s house” or “Write about the first time you were disappointed in your parents” and from something fairly straightforward and simple, entire short stories or even books can evolve. These exercises get the creative juices flowing and nowhere is this truer than when prompts are combined with free writing. Free writing means that you aren’t thinking of things as a project or an essay. You’re just writing for the sake of writing without pressure to produce something even of quality or value at the end. This sense of freedom often gives writers the confidence they need to get started, and once they do, great things happen!

That being said, it’s not a trick of the mind, necessarily. It’s not a matter of making yourself think that there’s no pressure to accomplish something with your writing, but in the end you still have a lingering hope that something tangible will come  from it. Rather, this exercise is purely for the joy of writing as a transformative process, in and of itself.

I often link free writing (which I, sadly, have very little time for these days!) and meditation because I see the outcomes of both processes to be very similar, and below are few of the reasons why.

They are both good for you. Meditation has been medically linked to lowered stress and anxiety levels as well as decreased risks of major illnesses like depression and heart disease. Free writing allows you the freedom to express yourself and let go of things that are holding you back emotionally. In fact, therapists will often recommend free writing simply for the release it allows you and the mental health benefits that can come from that.

They both focus the mind and keep you present. When you are meditating on something, or even meditating on the clearing of the mind to bring it to the present moment, you are focused. Focus takes concentration and discipline, especially these days in the world of fast-paced technology and split-second attention spans. Free writing can offer a similar kind of focus, particularly if you set a time limit for the free writing. Set yourself a ten minute alarm for writing on a particular subject or whatever comes to mind and stay committed to the writing and only the writing until that alarm goes off. More times than not, you’ll get so invested in your work, the alarm will likely come as a forgotten surprise.

With both, you have to be aware of all the senses. For anyone who has just started meditation practice formally or informally, one thing can be said for sure: meditating certainly has the uncanny ability to make you aware of all facets of your surroundings from your itchy nose to the ache in your back, from the smell of the room you’re sitting in to the sounds outside your window. You become acutely aware of the world around you and your body within that world. With free writing and any writing in general, an awareness of the senses is critical. The best kinds of writing don’t tell us what is happening, they show us what is happening by making us feel, touch, taste, smell, hear and see things through our written words. The best writers are those that are in touch with these senses and know how to express them on the page.

Sometimes, they are painful. Meditation isn’t all fun and oms. There are serious challenges in terms of physical and mental endurance that need to be overcome through careful, calculated practice of keeping the mind aware and still. Writing can be similar in that it forces a kind of discipline that can be uncomfortable at first but pays off in the end. Also, not all meditation or writing sessions will be considered “successful” by you – and they don’t have to be successful… Failing and trying again are both their own forms of success.

They both help you evolve. Whether you are meditating of free writing, both tasks help you to learn a lot about yourself, particularly how fluid you are as an individual. A lot of people think that writing is about crystallizing a moment or a character in time, but in actuality, it’s more of a snapshot of an ever-changing scene or individual. In a similar way, meditation helps you hone in on the present moment because this is where attachments fall away. It is only in past and future memories that we hold onto rigid conceptions of ourselves and our identities. By breaking through and being present with ourselves and our pens on the page, we can capture some of the sense of our own movement and can grow because of it, becoming gentler with ourselves as we pass through time in perpetual motion.

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