GOAL FOR THE DAYS:
Refill the well!
GOAL STATUS:
Completed!
I got a little behind on the daily blog posts so I'm going to fill in a number of days collectively on this post.
I'm going to cover two things in the brief article:
- Filling the Creative well
- Taking a break from writing
Creativity is a Beast
The more I engage in creative activities, the more I realize that creativity is like a living animal. And living animals need fed and maintained.
My brother and I watched Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2 at the cinema. After a crazy few months of juggling family, work, and writing, it was REALLY nice to relax. I also served to top up my creative well.
If I spend a few days doing nothing but writing, I often find I eventually run out of creative juice. Even though I have a strong plot and know exactly what direction the story is going, I just can't get any new words out. This is when I know the creative well is running low. If I push forward without addressing this, I tend to burn out.
Stopping and filling the well is something I'm constantly working on. The things the usually help me get my creative flow back--playing with my girls, video games, movies, a good book, a walk, travel, rest--often have a measure of guilt attached to them. While engaging in these activities, I at times have a niggling feeling in the back of my head that I'm wasting valuable time which could be dedicated to writing. But, the opposite is true. Doing these things is, in fact, an investment in my writing and I find that my writing flows so much smoother after a refill.
Sometimes refilling the well means taking a prolonged time away from writing, which brings me to my next point.
Getting Away From it All
My brother and I watched GOTG 2 on launch night so started at 12am and it was 3am by the time I got home. Needless to say I wasn't good for much outside of normal work the following day. But I still managed to do some plotting.
The following day though, the family and I went to stay with my sister in Dublin for the May bank holiday. We spent one day at the zoo, which was fantastic. We spend another day touring around the city. And the next day we took the kids for a walk in Phoenix Park before heading home. Over the entire weekend I thought a lot about my work in progress, but I did not write. Even though this frustrated me, I knew it was a necessity. I did reply to a few emails from my editor but other than that I did nothing writing related.
And guess what? When I got home and got back to writing, everything started to flow again.