CiT Guests: One Thing

Feb 10, 2012 by Stacia Rogan

To finish out this week, we thought it would be interesting to hear where others struggle. We asked a variety of creative women the following question:

What’s one thing you can change today that would help you nurture your creativity more consistently?

Melinda:
“One thing that I can change to nurture my creativity would be to set aside more time for myself. I have found that planning creative time doesn’t work for me because I don’t always feel that creative during those times. But if I set aside time for myself to do whatever moves me, I feel as though I end up using it to sew or plan new projects. I would like to set aside time after dinner every night to either read or sew or whatever. Keeping it open ended keeps the pressure off and is more inspiring.”

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Patti:
“The one thing I could do to help nurture my creative process is to spend less time online. It should be simple – just don’t turn on the computer – but then I can’t write (I like to type; it’s faster and my hand doesn’t cramp as easily). When the computer is on, it’s so easy to get online ‘just for a second’. And sometimes, I’m actually doing it for the sake of story – I need to look up something that will help me better form an idea or jog my memory. But for me, if I fire up the internet it’s tempting to get sucked into random stuff – I’ve often got a stream-of-consciousness thought process, and one site leads to another and another and another. Before I realize it, I’m reading blogs about things that have nothing to do with my story and I’ve spent hours, sometimes, doing things that are not in any way productive.

If I stay away from the internet more, I get things done. If I’ve done my chores and I’ve spent time with my kids, there is no excuse for not writing (or doing other creative pursuits) while the kids do things like play with play doh or color. But when I’ve spent all my ‘free’ time surfing as though I literally have nothing better do, it’s harder to justify sitting down for a few hours to write. Especially when I should do the laundry…or the dishes…or play with the kids…or hop in the shower…or make dinner. You get the idea. It’s not even about procrastination or boredom, I just get easily enveloped by the insanity and minutia that is the World Wide Web. When I seriously want to create, I either avoid the computer altogether if it’s possible or I avoid the internet if the computer is required. If I did that on a daily basis, oh the things I could do…”

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Natalie:
“Set aside time for myself to work on projects I want to work on; that’s the only way it’ll happen.”

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Kayleigh:
“I think I could nurture my creativity by setting aside a specific time and place that is just for me and my own creative work.  I spend most of my day being creative, which is fabulous, but it’s usually creativity for hire.  I have a hard time convincing myself that it’s okay to give myself some 20% time, essentially, to just make whatever feels good.  Even if that thing never leaves the sketchbook.  I have a feeling that giving myself some guilt-free leeway to play with my own brain-toys would help me a lot in terms of fostering new ideas and creativity, not to mention preventing burnout.   . . . now I just need to do it.”

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Jane:
“Not watching TV, which forces me to spend that time in a more creative way.”

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TMC:
“Sometimes being creative is an exercise in self-discipline. There are things we want to do and things we feel compelled to do, all in the name of expressing ourselves. To nurture our creativity we feed it things like time, materials, brain storming sessions and other things to keep the spark going. We come up against walls and bleak periods of self-doubt and double guessing. Still, creativity is worth nurturing… we’re often proud of what we produce and want to share it with others. But as a way of nurturing our creativity more consistently, I’d like to make the suggestion that instead of trying conventional things like buying more materials, re-arranging your work area, or scrolling through Pinterest for ideas when you’re feeling uncreative or uninterested in the projects you’ve started, try switching up your motivation. I suspect that while we creative types might occasionally produce our art or craft with someone else in mind, our motivation is more often one of “look what I did!” rather than “I thought this might benefit you somehow.” If we leave a little room in our creative process to include the motivation of doing x, y or z for others, we might find that we can take the expectation off of ourselves to be praised for what we’ve created, thereby leaving room for our creativity to flourish.”

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C. Beth:
“Say no to some of the things I don’t want to do, so I have more freedom to say yes when the creative stuff comes along.”

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Veronica:
“It was my first week at work, a completely different environment. Ties, slacks and nicely starched shirts surrounded me, when all I have ever been use to was whatever one decided to roll out of bed with. Needless to say, the third day of work was starting to get to me. The work I was producing as a graphic designer for a prestigious university, wasn’t challenging my creative side. There are certain limitations on what type of design a designer can produce in “conservative environments”. I needed to figure out a way to keep inspired and keep producing creative work. I searched through my head of quotes my dearest professors and friends have once said to me. Then it dawned on me there was one tool that I have never used before in my creative process. Only because I tend to let my creative process flow organically. Two words; it’s pretty simple to say. Task Manager. There it is, a simple task manager. I wrote out how much time I was going to spend on each part of my creative process. It looked something like this:

• Monday, 8:30am
• 30mins surfing the net end time 9:00am
• 1.5 hours sketching end time 10:20am
• 20 min break end time 10:40am
• 1.5 – 2 hours first stage design
• 1 hour lunch
• 20mins surfing the net…

And you get the idea. I was creating and producing like a machine! I was setting deadlines for myself and I was meeting them. I’ve found that I work best under pressure, when it comes to pretty much anything in my life. I never thought that something so boring as a “task manager” could actually help me. So now I’ve been at my job for a month and I’m still holding on to my task manager. The lesson here is, sometimes doing something that is unfamiliar to us and incorporating it into our work process can push you just a little further and help you create some wonderful things.”

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Thanks, ladies, for sharing your answers with us! What about you? Any of these sound familiar? What one thing could YOU change today that would help you nurture your creativity more consistently?