I will never go {creatively} hungry again

A useful perspective for anyone who finds finds the fallow times difficult

I have long known myself to be an obsessively creative person.

I have to make things, and I have to make them every day, otherwise I start to lose my selfness. I get irritable and demotivated to do normal life tasks. Little things become disproportionately huge. I become less pleasant to be around. I flail about psychologically and start to question the point of anything. The world’s colours seem to desaturate. My fuse decreases in length.

When I first started to recognise and honour this aspect of myself, I felt so much more like myself, more of the time. Even a very bad day could be at least somewhat mitigated, its sharp edges smoothed out a little by bringing something from the invisible to the tangible.

I consider my two main channels of creativity to be painting and writing.

I’m used to these being cyclical. There must be artists out there who make art every single day of their lives, but in my experience they are not the majority. For most of us, creative motivation and momentum comes and goes, depending on a number of factors, both internal and external. And why wouldn’t it be this way? We are cyclical beings in a cyclical world; ebb and flow is built in. We’re not supposed to force it.

So it’s normal for me to have sometimes quite lengthy periods where I’m not painting.

I actually write every day, as a lifelong journaller {although we called it writing a diary back in the day}, so when I’m not writing creatively or with a view to sharing it, it’s less of a sharp contrast. If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll know I’m not a weekly publisher here on Substack. Essay ideas arise when they’re ready, and often need percolating time. {And extensive editing time.}

I don’t love the fallow periods, but sometimes I do need them, and the times when I’ve decided I don’t need them have taught me that I am not actually in control of everything. {I am still getting over the shock and disappointment of this news.} Sometimes the pause takes longer than I’d like, or than seems reasonable given that it’s so important to me, it’s part of my job, and also: capitalism. But understanding that this is part of it, however long it needs, and not a failure or a sign I’m broken or have lost it forever, makes navigating these periods a lot easier.

Acceptance is what makes anything easier.

The thing is, during these non-painting, non-writing times, that unmet need to create requires attention. Ignoring it is not the solution. So I do many other creative things, including cooking, baking, crochet, crafts, and pottering at home. And there are other things I love to do too that fuel my creative self - directly, or simply because they fill me up - sea swimming, walking with Poppy, going on adventures in the campervan, spending time with loved ones, to name a few. I’m an artist in a context, and I think that doesn’t get talked about enough. Even if painting is your one and only thing, you still have a body, a home, relationships, commitments, to tend.

I’ve written about it before, but last year my back went out, very suddenly, on day two of what was meant to be a week long visit to my parents’. It turned out I had a ‘disc derangement’ {because of course I’d have something deranged}, and the pain - as anyone who has experienced back pain knows - is Something Else.

The week long stay turned into two, and then three weeks, while I mostly lay flat and tried not to be the worst patient in the world. It was clever of me to engineer such a situation while at my parents’ house, since they were able to take care of me, feed me, and walk and feed Poppy, while I did the slow work of un-deranging my back. {They are truly very wonderful parents.}

Enforced bedrest - once the worst of the pain has passed, and the novelty of being able to lie around all day reading books and watching YouTube has subsided somewhat - can be very tedious. It also puts all your life choices in front of you for dissection. But in between snoozing, feeling bored, and questioning everything, insights come.

For someone who often goes through their days from thing to thing without pauses - consciously chosen or otherwise - what seems to happen is that the insights start piling up, waiting for the opportunity to come forward and offer their wisdom. At least that’s what happens with me. I do intentionally inject more space and quiet into my days than I used to … and sometimes I forget about that and get to the end of the day feeling a bit too full, or overwhelmed, or like there’s not much space for me in my life currently.

So I was given the gift of multiple insights during those three quiet weeks, and one of them was what felt like a key to my creativity. Because obviously I wasn’t doing any painting or writing during that time, given I could barely turn over, let alone sit up. I was also dealing with some other longstanding life things that had led to a low level burnout. So while my daily physical needs were being tended to, my creative self was starving.

What I realised was that there are two kinds of creativity.

1. There’s the kind I love most - going deep within and drawing out expressions that feel true and meaningful; that offer enough challenge to be satisfying, {and sometimes feel extremely difficult}, and are things that no one but me could create.

2. Then there’s the kind that don’t require any interior delving; that follow a repeatable pattern or a formula of some kind, or that simply don’t depend on depth of feeling or personal sensibility.

The first kind means things like making original art, writing personal essays, poetry, or fiction, or any creative act that necessitates pulling from your interior world and pouring yourself into it. It’s very personal.

The second kind means things like making a delicious meal, sewing, gardening, knitting, or in my case crochet, towards which I developed a sudden pull because it was something I could make while lying down. I’d tried it long ago and never quite got to grips with it, but I decided to find a beginner kit and try again.

So there’s ‘inside’ creativity, and there’s ‘outside’ creativity, and both offer sustenance.

I do want to point out that I am not attaching value judgements to either of these kinds of creativity, and I’m also aware that something like sewing could absolutely pull from within in a personally expressive way. There’s always nuance. For me the distinction is helpful in this instance, because what it did was give me a way to continue to be creative in ways that felt fulfilling enough while I wasn’t able to do the kind I usually prefer. Not everyone wants to paint, and making a crochet washcloth from a pattern is not ‘less than’ in some way - at least, not to me. They both have different functions in the creative landscape.

So while it’s not at the level of painting or long form writing for me, crochet has actually been a blessing and a teacher in enriching my life.

Yes, I made a hat with ears

Here’s why the second kind of creativity means never going creatively hungry again, even during fallow periods:

It allows me to do something with my hands - both giving me that much needed sensory, experiential feeling of using my hands in a creative way, as well as preventing me from turning to my phone more than I’d like.

I don’t need to be inspired to do it. For me this is the key difference between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ creativity. While some artists {including me} might argue that if you wait to be inspired before painting, or whatever it is you do, you’ll hardly ever do it, and they have a point - again, it’s nuanced. There’s a difference between not feeling inspired and actually not being at all in the right place in yourself to paint, and it can be subtle, and needs to be learned. But with crochet, I can feel dead inside {creatively speaking} and still be able to pick it up and make something pleasing in both process and outcome.

It fits into small pockets of time, if that’s all I have. I can pick up the current crochet project any time and do a few stitches. I don’t need swathes of time to make something - even a few minutes feels just satisfying enough to tide me over till I can go deeper with something else.

It creates something from nothing, with the more or less instant gratification of seeing stitches appear beneath your fingers. A few rows later - you’ve literally made fabric.

Even if it’s full of holes and loose threads and uneven edges. My crochet pieces are imperfect and I love them all the more for that. This is one place I can be ‘bad’ at something without that insidious conditioned voice that pressures me to do everything brilliantly. My crochet lacks finesse, and I do not care, and that feels amazing.

It calms my brain down. There’s an absolute glut of research now about the benefits of mindfulness and the kinds of things that facilitate it, and many people know that both knitting and crochet’s rhythmic movements and gentle slowness are excellent mind-quieters. And even though my ‘technique’ is more awkward fumbling than smooth rhythm, I still get the benefits of feeling both soothed by it, and more present.

It provides enough mental challenge to be satisfying, without being so frustrating I don’t want to continue. {Learning the ukulele has so far defied me in this respect.} I’m in no rush to ‘get really good at it’, or make ambitious projects, but I like that my brain has to reshape itself to learn the stitches, and that I’m starting to be able to understand the abbreviations and symbols in a pattern that initially seemed like another language.

It enables me to fill my need to make things when other creative pursuits - that may involve standing or moving about, or more energy than I have - are more than I can do, and I can also do it while listening to podcasts, or talking to someone. {Except when I need to check the instructions because I have once again forgotten how to do a treble crochet, a half double crochet, or indeed anything that isn’t chain stitch.}

It’s got growth potential. I’m excited about graduating from holey washcloths, granny squares, leg warmers and wrist warmers, simple bookmarks and a very basic hat, to socks, little animals, maybe even a jumper and other more complex items of clothing. It can satisfy my need for variety and mental challenge. I enjoyed giving people I love something awkward and full of holes for Christmas.

It’s not that I didn’t know that creative-things-I-enjoy-that-aren’t painting-or-writing exist. It’s that I hadn’t clearly seen that viewing creative acts in these two different ways would enable to me to both keep the thread of my creativity going, even when lying down, or burned out, or just plain uninspired, and also to feel satisfied by whatever I was able to create on a given day. {I’ve been learning about Human Design recently, and apparently as a Manifesting Generator I need to feel satisfied to be at my most aligned - which is true - but I think we all feel filled up by satisfaction.}

It means I don’t feel the loss quite so much when the painting or the deeper writing isn’t happening. I understand another layer of the nuance {why yes, it is my favourite word, why’d you ask?} of being a kaleidoscopic creative being. I have a deeper understanding of how to take good care of myself and give myself what I need, even when circumstances aren’t supportive of my usual or preferred ways.

It’s so simple really, and of course it is. I overcomplicate like a pro, and time and again the simple truths - if I can just give myself enough space for them to land - bring me back to what’s needed, what works, what offers relief or peace or a way to feel creatively fulfilled.