lampposts for the path through the creative avoidance loop
The makings of creative avoidance
Last year, I got it in my head that I wanted to write a novel. And for the past few months, I’ve been re-reading my old draft, outlining the remaining plot, learning more about my characters, and fleshing out the world of my story. This new venture overlapped with starting a newsletter, which is a different writing container I use to share the worlds inside my head. And one of the key things that separates my newsletter writing practice from all the other kinds of writing I do is the lack of dread I feel about writing it. Don’t get me wrong, I get really nervous about sharing my work with a public audience and having it exist on the internet. But the private process of actually getting everything down feels very different. I think it’s safe to say that I feel nothing but excitement and giddyness about writing my newsletter, which are both words I would hesitate to use when describing the feeling of starting a new poem or more recently, writing my novel. And as I’ve welcomed the novel project into my life, I’ve been thinking more deeply about creative avoidance – specifically what my specific creative avoidance is made up of and what allows me to get out of the creative avoidance loop.
The makings of my creative avoidance loop (see diagram above):
inspiration (stage 1): I’m excited about a new creative project or excited about returning to a project I let sit on the back burner for a while. I keep seeing reminders of the project throughout my life, and the desire to start making and sharing makes me want to burst. I must begin.
overwhelm (stage 2): As I begin to embark on the project and move out of the ideation phase to the making phase, all these little and big doubts start to flood. I start thinking about how much work lies ahead for me, how I don’t have everything I need to keep going, and how I am not capable of making something that is worthy. This is the insecurity and overwhelm stage. I can get stuck here for a long time, looking for distractions to relieve me of the promises I made to myself to show up for my creativity.
welcome distractions (stage 3): At this stage, I allow life to get in the way and take me AWAY from creating. Distractions can be anything from freelance work, house chores, and social activities. I look for distractions that allow me to deprioritize my creative projects. This can feel good for a while, but it always comes back to bite me.
negative internalizations (stage 4): My period of welcome distractions usually results in me internalizing the avoidance as an intrinsic shortcoming of my creative talent or potential. “A good artist wouldn’t let themselves go so long without writing or making. I must not be a good artist,” I say to myself.
looking for guidance (stage 5): one thing about me, I usually can’t be in the moody, self-indulgent phase for too long. At some point, being distant from my creative practice makes me feel out of balance. This is when I try to shift something in my routine or approach, which usually comes in the form of seeking guidance from creative friends or other approaches from artists who share about their processes online (podcasts, books, interviews, etc). Some of my favorite resources include Cody Cook- Parrot’s Common Shapes podcast, Kening Zhu’s website/blogs, interviews and guides on The Creative Independent’s website, and the Writing Excuses podcast.
inspiration (back at stage 1): Looking outwards towards other artists and my creative community usually helps me get out of my slump and feel ready to try again. But sometimes I find myself right back at the overwhelm and insecurity stage shortly after.
From creative avoidance to creative play
So how do we take ourselves from inspiration (belief in the possibility of ourselves as artists and belief in our creative projects) to sustainable, creative momentum and progress that isn’t rattled by doubt (because doubt is also creative and will continue to come) ? What allows us to override that doubt and keep making?
PLAY!!! (more on that below)
I’ve noticed that my excitement about writing my newsletter feels discerningly different than what I feel about picking up my novel draft because I’ve set up the newsletter as something that I can play with. It doesn’t have a lot of expectations or outcomes tied to it. It’s meant to be an experiment or work in progress rather than a perfect product or work of art. It’s informal and relaxed. It changes with the seasons of my life and there is room for adaptation.
But before I say more about play, here are some practices that have helped me get more clear about my own creative avoidance:
practice 1: write down the commonly recurring negative thoughts that come up during the overwhelm stage. I often have thoughts about not making something that is good enough or feeling like I have set myself up to take on too much. I love making lists because it helps me cut away at all the extra noise and really look at my train of thought clearly.
practice 2: Once I’ve written down my doubts, I choose one and then turn that into some kind of creative container to play with (practice). A lot of my own creative avoidance correlates with cycles of losing momentum or belief in creative projects. How do I break those cycles? I turn down the pressure by inviting play into the project. When I first started re-reading my novel draft, I felt like I had so much to do and I didn’t know where to begin. I had no outline. And to add to that list, I have never written a novel before. It felt like I was starting completely from scratch, which in many ways I was. I built up this expectation of writing a book that gets published, and is seen as good and worthy by other people – a book that makes some kind of impact. And you know what all those expectations did to my creative appetite? They killed it. Every time I sat down to try to get some words down, my mind was crowded out by all the pressure I had put on myself. Every sentence had to feel well planned out and important. So I asked myself, how can I dial down the pressure? For me, that looked like telling myself that no one ever has to see this novel except me. I decided to treat this first novel writing adventure as an experiment. Let’s just see what happens. And turns out, opening up the behind-the-scenes process to some of my newsletter subscribers behind a pay wall helped me see it as an experiment that I get to share with people I love. Instead of putting so much value on the finished product, writing the novel updates for the newsletter helps me to make an art out of the process, in a safe container amongst people I know already support and love me. In other words, finding ways to make the process of writing the book more playful eviscerates pressure and lofty creative ideals. When I got stuck starting the character development process, I decided to create a visual mood board for the protagonist to get me thinking more about what this character looks and feels like. This resulted in me fleshing out the character’s astrological placements, which in turn helped me to start building out their character profile (backstory, goals/desires, etc). In other words, play shifts the focus from product-orientation to PROCESS-orientation. Play is about presence and feeling good, no matter the outcome. And it turns out when you can play, major creative breakthroughs have space to rain all over your creative projects — which in turn waters your creations for the better.
practice 3: Another element of creative avoidance for me includes identifying routines that no longer serve me. When I have been stuck in the creative avoidance loop, I usually need to ask myself what needs to change, however small, to help me get unstuck. In the beginning of the novel planning process, I would begin writing on my living room coach, only to become wracked with anxiety. Then two things happened: I started going to a monthly writing group and I started writing outside of my home in cafes and restaurants. I realized I needed to do my creative work in a space that was separate from the space I do my freelance work. And turns out writing with other writers who are going through similar writing challenges makes writing more approachable. I also greatly appreciate how the writing group meetups always have a clear beginning and end point, so the container of “on time” for writing allows for more ease. I only need to write for 1-2 hours and then I’m good.
Tracing the map
As a recap, when I find myself in a creative avoidance loop, physically documenting my doubts can be a clarifying balm.
Transforming these doubts into playful, discrete mini projects or containers where I can practice having fun while working on my projects allows for more ease in the entire process.
And when I’m feeling stuck, looking for one small thing I can change or shift slightly in my routine, expectations, or environment can open up windows for new creative momentum.