7 Ideas | Thoughts on Writing and The Creative Process

Photo Credit: Karen Baker

…Honing a creative process takes time and consistent refinement.  Over the past several years, I’ve implemented the seven ideas below, and they are making a serious impact on my creativity and production levels.  Not a writer?  These can be adapted for whatever you are working on. 

Writing schedule.  90 minutes, 3 days a week, M| W| F.  Best time to do it:  6:30 – 8:00 AM, but timing can change based on work/family.  No excuses.  And not stopping, especially when I get stuck.  After trying many other times, this is the time that works best for me. It is not too early, and I can still get the session in before my workday starts.  Also, it is fairly quiet around the house.  It is taking some time to get comfortable asking for the uninterrupted time needed, and for my family to remember and honor the request.  It’s also challenging to reign in my own distractibility.  But reading Cal Newport’s book on Deep Work has deepened my commitment to the creative process and the benefits of focus. If we can realize and remember that a change in habits requires some uptake time, this allows grace while the habits change on all sides.  Stay the course!

Daily Journal:  Because I want to capture what is happening in our daily lives, and because a lot of what I struggle with is potential content for the Workbench, I created a document in August of 2019 called “500 Words Journal.”  The original intention was to encourage a daily writing practice of 500 words a day.  Now it offers a place to capture daily life as a warm – up to the other writing I am doing.  I can also clear the decks of any aggravation or thoughts that are getting in the way of  the work.  Since August, over 76,000 words and 180 pages have been written.

Writing Index:  Inspired by my Mom, I recently have started keeping an index of my writing.  She writes by hand, and her index is a rainbow of lovely color.  I keep mine in an excel spreadsheet to capture subject matter and word count. 

At the end of the month, I have a rough word count, and am able to easily search for any topic that was included in the journal.  This is a huge help in finding stuff – something I’ve always done battle with.  I hope to be able to do away with the “Where the hell is it?” frustration.   Also, I have expanded it to include a place for my creative accomplishments, and as of May 17, 2020, just added a “level of focus” metric that is based on a blending of ideas from the work of Cal Newport and Jim Collins.  (Newport’s focus and Collins’ keeping track spreadsheet.)  These are the things I want to keep track of and combining them into one document made the most sense to me. 

Incorporating a Review Process:  There is so much work that I have started and not returned to.  It is a veritable shitshow of disorganization.  There is no day or week that I’ll ever have the patience to fully organize this, so to fix these issues, a long view is necessary.  It takes time to determine a good organizational structure and then consistently clean up.  Now that I have this process in place there is actually hope.  As I organize my work, I am separating it into Drafts, Ready to Publish, and Published folders.  I have also started incorporating writing notes in each document, so that I can capture when I began the draft, and the ideas and history of building the piece.  It’s both a prep list and a historical record.  Additionally, when I publish a blog post, I now keep an index of the postings in an Excel spreadsheet so that I can reference and remember the topics discussed.  My goal – have this mess well organized by June of 2021.  😊  Like I said, the long view…

A No Guilt Policy:  Life happens and energy ebbs and flows. Unless you are really just slacking, a no guilt policy is powerful because you don’t needlessly waste energy.  This means you can spend that energy producing.  On those days that you need to rejuvenate, do so consciously, and without guilt.  Get into the garden, binge watch your show – whatever.  Trust that work is happening in the background, and that this down time is useful too. 

The 5 Minute Rule:  During a session, when I get stuck and want to stop working, I implement the 5-minute rule.  Keep working for five more minutes, and it doesn’t matter what is produced, as long as things keep moving.  It can be the worst junk.  Most of the time, at the end of the 5 minutes, the logjam has broken, and momentum returns.  On the rare occasions that this doesn’t happen, I switch to another task that still advances the work but is better suited for my state of mind and concentration in the moment. Either way, it’s important to stay in the work session, but move the work forward in a different way. 

Exercise:  It used to be that I resented having to exercise before sitting down to work – I was so impatient to get into the work.  Now, it is an opportunity to move my body and let my senses engage with the natural world, which often generates ideas or solutions to the problems I’m tangling with in my work.  Then, when I sit down, I don’t feel (as) restless.

Here’s the thing:  the creative process is so rich with opportunity to look behind the scenes, to share the infrastructure behind the work.  If you can build the scaffold that works for you – that considers your process and the realities of your life, it will further open up the creative highways within your brain.  The process outlined here is still evolving AND a result of a ton of experimentation with my schedule, my energy levels, what my goals are, and the body of work that I am building.  If you are building something, take stock of it all, and shape the process that works for you. 

With love and light, K