Rediscovering creativity through creativity

Hi, hello, we're still in this awkward reintroduction phase, please bear with me. If you already know me, thanks for sticking around through the ick. And if you don't know me: hi, I'm Clair, welcome. Either way, have no fear, but we've got a little ground to cover in this reintroduction moment. If you can hold my hand and get through this with me, there's plenty of language content to come.

I want to revisit the topic of creative burnout that I mentioned in my last article. I'm still fighting my way through a bit of it, but I'm on the mend, I suppose. To the people that know me well, it would be no surprise that I didn't realize I was burning out, until it was a bit too late. I'd hit a wall, really fuckin hard, and so the struggle began.

I, unfortunately, do not have the privilege to be able to step away from work for a short period of time to recalibrate. I had to keep working, just ran around on fumes for a while trying to catch little breaks here and there, but as anyone with a young child knows, there is no such thing as a little break.

Since I had to keep working, the only thing I could think to do was to put all of my extracurricular activities on the back burner. I put all my little crafts on pause. I stopped using what little creative energy I had left at the end of the work day and just held onto it.

When I was an undergrad, I always had a small notebook in my back pocket or my bag and a pencil in my front pocket. I was always prepared to write things down or sketch ideas. For some reason I fell out of this practice years ago, over a decade ago even. In the early days of my intentional creative break, I had the idea to start carrying around a notebook with me again. It was such a small, simple step, but it had an immediate impact on my ability to breathe…take a load off. Instead of carrying all of my ideas around in my head, I got back to writing them down. And there was suddenly a clarity I hadn't felt in quite some time.

This may seem obvious, but don't forget to just write shit down. Get it out of your head. You will forget it, and you will exhaust yourself trying to remember what it was. You will make mental edits that start to get so bad and you won't remember where you started. Just write it down. It's so simple.

Now, I did The Artist's Way (TAW) a few years ago. It was great. If you need a hard reset creatively, emotionally, intellectually, I would recommend it. It's intense and requires a lot of the person taking it on, but it's great. That said, I know that it's important to write things down. I experienced the impact that can have through TAW. But I also FUCKING hated the daily journaling. Not for me. I need the freedom to write when and where and how I want, so I carry around a little notebook.

Carrying a tiny notebook around didn't miraculously cure my burnout, but it provided some clarity. I was not ready to start diving back into all the things. I still needed to rest, but getting things out of my head and onto some paper started to make things make some sort of sense again.

Here's the thing about "getting some rest" that can feel a bit counter-intuitive. Rest doesn't always look like doing nothing. I was so in my head about the importance of stepping back that I almost missed it when something actually excited me again. An old friend I hadn't talked to in at least ten years reached out and we found that the best way to ease back into our forgotten friendship was to play an email-based, asynchronous role-playing game together. I hadn't felt that kind of pull toward creating something purely for fun in a long time. I couldn't say no if I tried.

It's been a while since I really sat down and did some writing that wasn't for something. Yes, this was for a game, but it was also just for fun. Just creativity for the sake of creativity. My friend and I wrote a really incredible story together, but it doesn't need to exist beyond the game. It's not going anywhere and that's kind of the point.

I love games, I love role-playing games, I love character creation, I love world-building. And I gave myself the time and the permission to just do this creative thing that I love and I went fucking hard. If you ever want me to tell you about the incredibly difficult life choices made by Seren Lindqvist, I'd be happy to - she lives rent-free in my mind as a beacon of hope for my creative spirit.

I think it is really easy for us as creative individuals to forget that our creativity is not just something we have. It's a muscle that we have to exercise, but we can't overdo it.

Creative burnout is an overuse injury.

We have to rest and find the right exercises to get things moving smoothly again. A lot of us use our creative thinking all day long in our jobs and forget that we have to save some of that for ourselves.

If every ounce of your creative energy goes into the same motion, day after day, feeding the corporate machine, it stops being yours. It starts working against you instead. Maya Angelou said you can't use up your creativity, the more you use it, the more you have. I agree with this, wholeheartedly, but you still have to be mindful of how you're using your creativity. It only works for you when you get to move that muscle in more than one direction.

Why did I bring up playing a role-playing game with a friend? That was the right exercise. It called on a slightly different creative muscle, one that's maybe been a little atrophied as I overused the others. There was no deadline, no audience (outside of my friend who doesn't care how well I write), it didn't need to become anything. It was just movement for the sake of movement.

Creative burnout is an overuse injury. The cure isn't stagnation, it isn't strictly resting, it's finding a different way to move. If you're feeling stuck, if you can start to feel the burn, take a beat. It might be worth asking what you've been overworking and where you could find some different kind of exercise. Don't force it on yourself, take a step back, take that beat, and let it find you.

I found that movement through creative writing, something I haven't done in a loooooooooooooong time. I found it in the game Signal to Noise. If you're into role-playing games and writing and looking for a little creative reset, check it out. Maybe it'll do something for you too. It is an indie game, so please, give the guidebook a little bit of grace, but I still can't recommend it enough.