Weekend Edition – The Secret of Creative Space Plus Good Reads and Writing Tips

Your writing needs more than time. It needs space.

There is never enough time to practice your art. You are forever battling against the many demands life puts on the precious hours in your day, fighting for your creative life. You eventually learn that you’re never going to simply find the time, you have to make the time, stealing a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Making choices in order to make art.

So you work hard to carve out pockets of time for yourself. Maybe you get up a little early, or stay up a little late. Maybe you forgo an hour of television, or learn to work amidst the chaos of children who haven’t yet gone to bed. Lunch breaks, waiting in line, your public transport commute – you commandeer these moments for your creative crusade. Each day you wrest another small bit of time from the clutches of life’s obligations and responsibilities.

You are doing a good job. A great job.

You are making progress, taking all-important baby steps towards building your creative life. But, at some point, you start to feel like something isn’t quite “clicking.” The initial elation of (at last!) acquiring time for your art has lost a bit of its shine. Your cache of minutes and hours is growing, but you aren’t feeling any more creatively fulfilled. Something is missing.

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As intangible as time is, it’s still only an instrument, not an inspiration. Time alone will not release your creativity. Minutes and hours are only an inert ingredient in the creative process. Without the right catalyst, they will just lie there, staring at you reproachfully as they slip, unused, through your anxious fingers.

More than mere time, you need space.

I’m not talking about physical space. I’m talking about headspace.

It’s not enough to simply make the time, you have to give yourself the gift of that time – wholly and without strings.

You have to step into your stolen moments as open, light, and unencumbered as you can be. You want to be happily distracted by the things that pique your curiosity, not tangled up in your day-to-day worries. You want to be able to surrender all your attention to the creative task at hand, setting everything else aside, if only for a brief moment.

You want to lose yourself in the creative process.

This blissful state is often called “flow,” and you find it when you slip into that state of being where you are not so much working on your art as becoming your art. This is the space where your creativity thrives. This is the space that you need to create within the minutes and hours that you’ve fought for.

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It’s tough to create instantaneous headspace when you’re cramming your writing into the nooks and crannies of a busy day. Though I don’t believe in waiting for the muse, I also don’t believe in on-demand creativity. Imagine inviting your muse to a creative session, and then – the minute she she sits down with a cup of tea – commanding her to inspire you. That probably wouldn’t go down very well, right?

While there’s a case to be made for simply going through the motions in order to jumpstart your creative process, writing is not like laying bricks. Laying bricks is very straightforward. You place one brick atop another with mortar in between, and – over time – you build a wall. It doesn’t much matter what you’re thinking about while you’re stacking the bricks. It’s a purely mechanical process, and the outcome is dictated simply by how much time you put into the effort. More time means more bricks means a bigger wall. Simple math.

Writing, or any other creative endeavor, requires a different kind of approach and an entirely different kind of equation. Creativity is not simply a matter of time + effort = art. Though this approach might eventually produce work you’re proud of simply through persistence and a kind of brute force, you will find the process more pleasant and the results more pleasing if you can add headspace into the mix: time + space + effort = art.

 •••)o(•••

How do you create headspace?

Think of it like giving yourself breathing room.

Like letting go.

Allow your canvas to be blank. Clear your mind. Daydream. Stare out the window into space. Take away the pressure to produce. Eliminate expectations. Schedule creative time to do nothing.

Give yourself permission to step outside your life for a little bit. Forget about your worries. Be someone else. Think someone else’s thoughts.

Setting aside time to work on a particular creative goal is an admirable practice. But letting your inner task master own and manage all your creative time will eventually lead to burn out. You can’t always be pushing. Art is not a race. Consistent work and productivity are good things, but there’s a balance to be struck. All work and no play makes Jane a little sad and crazy. And it definitely robs her of her creative fire, leaving her frustrated and uninspired.

There is a natural ebb and flow to your creativity. And while you cannot ever run out of creativity, you can drain its energy. You can push too hard for too long and get stuck, like a wind-up toy that just keeps trying to walk forward even though it’s hit a wall.

Before you get to that point, give yourself a break. Step back. Explore. Play. Go ahead and fall down the rabbit hole. On purpose. Forget about word counts and just rest your creative muscles. Remember that usually epiphanies come from unexpected quarters. Sometimes the best way to get your synapses firing is to stop trying so damn hard, and instead just relax.

Creating headspace is a matter of removing things in order to make room for other things. Prioritizing things differently, just for a little while.

 •••)o(•••

You will not always be able to add the catalyst of headspace to your writing time. Sometimes, you will only have time, and that’s okay. When that happens, focus your efforts on the more automatic parts of the writing process – editing, research, etc. If it’s all you can manage in that moment, just go through the motions of putting one word after another. Don’t worry about a lack of inspiration. Remember that the ebb and flow is natural. Feel free to make mistakes. Do the work, but don’t let the critical voices in your head make you judge the work before you’re ready.

But when you have the opportunity, give yourself the gift of space to create. Give yourself permission to work without a specific goal, without a safety net, without a predetermined path. Let go of preconceived notions, weighty expectations, and creative assumptions. Claim your creative freedom and rediscover your creative joy.

 

What I’m {Learning About} Writing: “Just Right” Story/Book Lengths

Painting by Katharine Pyle

Do you ever wonder about the typical lengths for different kinds of stories and novels? I do.

This week was the first of six classes in the flash fiction course I’m taking via Grub Street’s online venue. While I’ve been learning a lot about the flash fiction form by reading Rose Metal Press’ Field Guide to Flash Fiction, I loved the very simple definition that Sue Williams provided. In a brief video introducing the concept of flash fiction, Williams states that a flash fiction story differs from other similar forms (such as vignettes and prose poems) because it has three elements: character, conflict, and resolution.

As I began noodling on story ideas for my first homework assignment, I repeated this trio of criteria in my head like a mantra, “Character, conflict, resolution … character, conflict, resolution …” I bounced each idea that came to me off these three concepts, and found that it was pretty simple to tell when I had an actual story vs. when I just had a vignette or a prose poem. I still haven’t finished my homework, but I’ve got some good starter ideas.

While I was wrestling with how to tell my stories in the extremely condensed flash fiction form, I came across a Writer’s Digest post that provides “rule of thumb” word count ranges for a variety of written forms. In Word Count for Novels and Children’s Books: The Definitive Post, Chuck Sambuchino provides an overview of not only standard target word counts for various genres, but also a little insight into why these word counts land where they do, and when it’s okay to break the rules.

Here’s a quick rundown of the standard, “safe” word counts according to Sambuchino:

• Adult Commercial and Literary Novels: 80,000 – 90,000
• Science Fiction and Fantasy: 100,000 – 115,000
• Middle Grade: 20,000 – 55,000
• Young Adult: 55,000 – 69,999
• Picture Books: 500 – 600
• Westerns: 50,000 – 65,000
• Memoirs: 80,000 – 89,999

 

What I’m Reading: Lots and Lots!

Do you read more than one book at a time?

I used to be a monogamous reader, sticking to just one novel at a time. In recent years, however, I’ve become an overtly polygamous reader. At the moment, I’m reading one novel on my Kindle, listening to another on Audible, and chipping away at several paperback anthologies of short stories. I’m also wrapping up the Field Guide to Flash Fiction and just picked up another book of essays on the craft (which I may or may not get to before it’s due back at the library).

I wonder if my increased reading pace has something to do with getting a little older and feeling the pressure of so-many-books-so-little-time. I feel a certain defiance that makes me want to ignore the rest of the world so that I can read more. I swear that when I’m sitting at my desk, diligently hammering away on client deadlines, the books in my reading pile across the room sometimes whisper to me.

Does that ever happen to you?

 

And let’s not forget the blogs. Here are a few of my favorite writerly posts from this week:

•  Content marketing isn’t the dirty word you think it is by @pjrvs
• That Overused Word “Community”—But Why We Still Have to Talk About It by @JaneFriedman
• 3 Things Your About Page Must Do by @bernadettejiwa
• How Authentic is Your Blog Writing?… And,How Do You Write Authentically? by @Patsiblogsquad
• Writing a Book? 3 Reasons to Work in a Noisy Place by @DavidWBerner via @thewritelife
• Writing Your Way to Happiness by Tara Parker-Pope via @nytimes
• Author Websites Q & A: How To Create An Effective, Mobile-Friendly Website by @thecreativepenn
• Don’t Blog Unless You Use These 11 Tools by @neilpatel

 

Finally, a quote for the week:

Here’s to giving yourself creative space as well as time. Happy reading. Happy writing. See you on the other side! 
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Jamie Lee Wallace Hi. I’m Jamie. I am a content marketer and branding consultant, columnist, sometime feature writer, prolific blogger, and aspiring fiction writer. I’m a mom, a student of equestrian and aerial arts (not at the same time), and a nature lover. I believe in small kindnesses, daily chocolate, and happy endings. Introduce yourself on Facebook, twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. I don’t bite … usually.
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