What I learned about my creative process this year
At the start of this year, I started SFU Publishing’s The Writer’s Studio and finally committed to my creative practice more seriously. Over the past year, I managed to truly build out this important dimension to my life, one that for a long time I neglected by seeing it as a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have. I hit a number of personal writing goals, met incredible people who taught me so much along the way, as well as — most importantly — really honed in on my personal practice to find an effective way to sustain my creativity and motivation to create.
About three months into the program and after a handful of in-person classes and workshops, we entered a global pandemic. I instantly lost the creative spaces, both physical and abstract, that I expected I would have as I entered the program. I lost access to a printer and to desk space. Our classroom became a screen and my fellow classmates another Brady Bunch grid. In August, my Macbook died so I lost the comfort of my trusty, familiar keyboard (but thankfully had all my drafts backed up on Google Docs). I broke my back working from home. And while I didn’t entirely develop a tic from staring at screens too much during all that remote work time, I zoomed out philosophically and spiritually, overwhelmed by daily new-norm stressors and existential dread that made being and staying creative unprecedently challenging, if not impossible.
And what a treat. To have been able to find my way despite all the disturbances, and to be able to pull “creative writing” off it’s pedestal.
I owned what it takes to be a creative writer in the best and worst of times, and discovered the healing aspects of having a project to escape to and seek shelter in, as well as one I could also run away from, (which also gave me perspective and appreciation for the many blessings of my non-writing life..!)
The nonfiction work that I’ve spent the better part of the last year working on has been profoundly difficult. After all, “the rupture is inherent to the work,” as Canadian writer Wayde Compton taught us in the early weeks of class. Working with personal story is emotional, challenging, and has you twisting your own experiences into a series of questions that reveal to you how much your own life is artificially created from a set of temporary, everchanging truths. You become a character (too?) aware of herself, pondering questions of what lies outside the page, who chooses the ink, the words of your story. And to explain your version of your own story, you must then choose the page and the ink and the words, in hopes that in sharing it one day, it will offer readers the same opportunity, to glimpse their own lens on the world.
But, I haven’t been doing it alone. I am so grateful to have found the TWS community, to have had the chance to spend time (albeit mostly online) with so many inspiring writers and creatives, share stories and perspectives, and support one another during this topsy-turvy year — and beyond. One cannot work inside a vacuum.
This program really breathed new life into me at a time when little did I know, I would need it most.
In one of the final classes of this year, our instructor, Canadian novelist and poet Aislinn Hunter, asked us to reflect on a series of writing tips from famous writers curated by The Guardian. In that same spirit, I decided to spend some time thinking about what kind of tips I would give to writers now that I’ve spent a year consistently returning to my writing practice. Here they are for your reading pleasure.
10 writing tips
- Creativity is an ongoing process that exists even when there is no “output.” It begins long before it’s articulated through material and language.
- At the end of the day, the output is the only proof of creativity, though. Take breaks from the doing but make sure to come back to it otherwise not even you will know you’re making progress.
- Keep it low presh. Find the place where the doing feels good. This will take some time but once you figure out how to get there (and back there again and again), the rest will follow.
- Creativity is as much an intellectual and philosophical pursuit as it is a spiritual and intuitive one. (Just like the whole of reality🤯.) The task is to figure out when to make it be about what. Which is to say, don’t overthink it (at least, at first).
- When drafting (or in the “inscription” phase, as Betsy Warland puts it in Breathing the Page), find methods by which to bypass your brain. Tap into the wisdom of your body, the feelings and sensations you feel as you imagine and write. Avoid trying to intellectually pin down meaning right away. This will help you get into a flow.
- Flow? You won’t know you got there until you’re out.
- Then, pin it down intellectually. Ask yourself what your intention is even if you felt there was no intention when you started. Because everything created, by its function of existing and interfering with and relating to the world, should and will have some kind of effect.
- Creative work asks challenging questions of you and your engagement with materials is your attempt to isolate an answer. Accept the fact that the questions and answers will change, before and after you’ve shared the work — for your audience but also for yourself. The best you can do is excavate enough context for the dialogue your work creates to have enduring effect that doesn’t do unnecessary harm.
- Perfection isn’t possible; you can only try to make it seem that way to someone.
- …like by forcing lists to have a nice round number.
Happy creating!
