Once upon a time when I wasn’t so concerned about whether I should be doing more important things instead, I wrote goofy stories in response to challenges posted on creative writers’ lists. You know, stuff like “Write a story where the main character’s lines come from the lyrics of a popular song.” But I got busy with other things and didn’t write much fiction for a while. After that, I found it wasn’t flowing as easily as it once did, but instead felt more like a slow stream lazily meandering through mossy rocks.
 

Stream flowing through mossy rocks.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

Then I was reminded of how much I once liked challenge stories when the author of the cheerful blog Nuggets of Gold recently invited her readers to post ideas for story topics in the comments, and she would find something to do with them! So I’ve decided to give my creative writing a boost by joining in the fun with a new weekly feature, Tuesday’s Tales. Even if I end up with a lot of silliness, at least it’ll keep me from taking myself and my writing too seriously.

Readers, please feel free to post challenge topics here. What would you like to see a story about?

Last summer I embarked upon a time-attraction experiment, which I described in a series of posts that started with Tithing Time. I was curious as to whether giving away some of my time would shift my perspective toward seeing time as an abundant resource, with the result of attracting more time. Although I did not in fact have any extra time at the end of the year, I felt more relaxed about my time and considered that to be a positive outcome.

This year, although time hasn’t been a worry, I sometimes feel that my creative energy level isn’t where it should be. So I found myself wondering: If, as a general rule, we get more of what we give, then shouldn’t that rule also apply to creative energy? And how does one go about tithing creative energy anyway? Money and material goods are easily measured, and time isn’t hard to track either, in a world that has lists and schedules for just about everything. Perhaps creativity might be measured by counting output, such as the number of words written; but how would donating a percentage of it work?

Then I realized that I was overthinking it and that the measure was pretty simple after all. When I write something that’s part of my job, I get paid for it. The percentage of creative energy that I tithe consists of other writing that I share freely, in the interest of contributing to a better world. This would include blog posts that uplift and inspire my readers; other materials I donate for publication elsewhere; and comments, emails, and reviews in which I compliment other authors and encourage them to write more. There’s no way of knowing how far such small ripples might spread…
 

Brown leaf on water with ripples and cloud reflections.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

When I set aside more time last year for reading positive blogs and leaving encouraging comments for their authors, my creative output did in fact increase. I went from writing occasional blog entries a few times a month to posting three days a week regularly. I also have more readers who like and comment on my posts. So, if I still feel that my creativity is not where it ought to be, that’s not because I actually have less of it. On the contrary, it’s because I have been doing more, which has given me higher expectations. All those ideas for creative projects that piled up over the years, without really going anywhere, now feel as if they’re within reach. That leaves me feeling impatient to get on with them.

Rather than being impatient, I just need to keep on with what I’ve been doing—that is, writing my regular posts and commenting on other blogs, while gradually moving the larger projects forward too. Those ripples are moving in the right direction!

My latest approach to banishing those to-do list pressures from my personal creative projects is to put together a “Fun Things To Do List” every three or four months. It’s just one page of whatever activities I happen to be enjoying at the time, mixed in with a few creative projects that I would like to get done—or, at least, to get moving forward.

Picking a few items for the list helps me to stay focused on making progress with them. Even if I write only a few sentences at a time, that still gets something done on the project, which is better than sitting there looking at a big heap of unfinished stuff and wondering what to do. By putting my creative projects in with random unimportant things like “watch the latest superhero movie” or “play video games,” I remind myself they are mainly for fun. No life or death consequences are attached to finishing a blog post or a story.

That’s not to say I consider the projects unimportant. On the contrary, I would describe myself as an ambitious writer, seeking to touch my readers’ emotions and have a positive impact on the culture. But just as with anything else, stressing about creativity and trying to force it can be counterproductive. The muse needs plenty of space to fly around sprinkling fairy dust on whatever takes her fancy!

Production schedules can be helpful in reasonable doses, of course. Since I began writing weekly Clutter Comedy posts, I’ve made a lot more progress in getting old junk out of my house, in addition to creating more content for my blog. I also enjoy taking part in Nurturing Thursday, which reminds me to set aside time for restful, nurturing activities.

Having regular features on my blog does not overwhelm me with production pressure because those entries are relatively short and structured, so they flow easily. What’s more problematical is writing unstructured blog posts on different topics regularly (such as this one) while also having plenty of other creative projects in various stages of completion, which totally lack a schedule.

When I work on a book or other large project, I sometimes feel pressured to write a blog entry instead, as otherwise it might not get done. And if there’s a week when I don’t write anything but blog entries, then I feel like I’m slacking off with the large projects. Because I have too many large projects to put them all on a production schedule, just deciding what to do can feel like a major drain on my mental energy.

Choosing two or three projects for the near future gives me permission to set aside the others till later, without feeling guilty for neglecting them. The projects I’ve picked for my current list are turning a short-story collection into a free Kindle book, creating content for a new website, and writing more installments of Breaking the Ice. Setting a fuzzy “due date” a few months from now gives me some impetus to stick to the schedule, but it’s not looming over me as an anxiety-provoking hard deadline.

Posting this entry also gives me a bit of accountability, in that I may have readers looking for the free Kindle book or expecting to find more story installments over the next few months! Coming soon…

This morning when I went to get my hair done, I ended up having to wait because my appointment had not been entered into the computer and the stylist hadn’t arrived at work yet. So, rather than get annoyed about it, I started writing this post while sitting in the salon’s waiting room, which seemed very well suited to my current topic—writing in bits and pieces.

I keep a folder with handwritten notes and partial drafts of projects that I am working on, or that I’d like to work on when I get around to it. Sometimes they sit for a very long time. I began posting a serialized novel called Breaking the Ice last year, but the original draft goes back to the year 2000. To be honest, that draft sucked, and putting it aside until I had a better idea of what to do with it was definitely the right choice!

The subconscious mind often sets priorities and makes judgments that we don’t notice consciously. When we jump into a project with enthusiasm and then find that it’s fizzling out all of a sudden, or that we’ve gotten distracted by another new interest, there is probably a lot of subconscious processing involved. It doesn’t mean that we are lazy, can’t finish what we start, or need to discipline ourselves to just tough it out regardless of how we feel.

If it’s not a business project that needs to get finished right away to pay the rent, then why force it? After all, there will surely be time to do it later. Even if it doesn’t look like it has reached a natural stopping point, maybe that just means it is missing something that hasn’t become obvious yet.

(At this point I wasn’t sure what my next paragraph should be, so I decided that I had reached one of those non-obvious stopping points and put the draft aside to finish this evening.)

Why does a big heap of unfinished creative projects leave us feeling like we ought to have accomplished much more? Probably because our society has been insisting that we finish our work since we were in preschool. And while that might be fine for reciting the alphabet and other rote stuff, creativity travels its own paths, and they’re not always linear. Sometimes when we feel like we’re slacking off, there are plenty of connections being made beneath the surface.

(Went outside just now to eat a yummy red apple while enjoying the warmth of the setting sun.)

Usually I have the most creative energy at the very times when my folder is crammed full of notes and drafts. It doesn’t mean that I have been neglecting my projects—on the contrary, it means that my mind has been tossing out ideas much faster than I can keep up with them! And that is a very good thing because it means I’ll always have something fun to work on. Whether or not they’ll ever turn into something productive in the business world, well, who knows? There’s no harm done by leaving that question for another day.

Now that this blog is in its fourth year (yay!) I’ve been posting entries on a fairly regular schedule. Usually I write three (optimistically four) posts a week: a Clutter Comedy post every Sunday, a Nurturing Thursday post every Thursday, and one or two articles or stories in between. That’s mostly good because my blog now has more content than it had in past years, and the posts that I write for my two regular feature days flow pretty easily because they’re short and structured.

But if Wednesday evening arrives and I haven’t yet written the miscellaneous early-week post, then I feel as if I’m slacking off because my readers will expect me to stay on my regular schedule. Yes, I know that’s a silly thing to worry about. I never had any plans to make money from my blog, so there’s certainly no reason to think of it as having a production schedule like work; and in reality, I don’t believe I have such a demanding audience.

If I slack off once, though, I might do it again, and then this blog could end up as just another derelict hulk adrift in cyberspace. It’s the slippery slope worry—once you start slipping, there’s just no telling where you might end up!
 

Waterfall over steep, slippery rocks.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

Earlier today, when I didn’t have anything in mind to write, I got those slacking-off feelings and then started giving myself a lecture on how ridiculous it was to worry about staying on a schedule that I had just invented last year for no particular reason. Life in the modern world already has too many randomly imposed expectations, so why add more?

I had just about decided it was time to apply to the Court of Conscience for official permission to slack off, when I realized that everything I had been telling myself would work just fine as a blog entry! So as it turned out, there’s a post for Wednesday after all, and no need to get myself an excuse note just yet.

I haven’t felt in touch with my creative self recently, even though I’ve posted about the same number of blog entries. When I have a few quiet hours on a weekend and sit down with a cup of coffee or tea, instead of feeling inspired to create stories I’m likely to start reading a novel instead, or maybe just daydream about how I’d like to redecorate my house and plant new flowerbeds in my backyard.

That’s when the nagging voice at the back of my mind starts up again, asking where are all the stories I ought to be writing? When I examine that question more closely, it strikes me as the wrong question—or at least an incomplete one, packed with assumptions that don’t seem to be tethered to anything in present-day reality. And we all know what assumptions make of us, don’t we?
 

Donkey standing in a field.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

Unpacking the assumptions gives rise to a lot more questions than what seemed to be there at first. Where did I get the idea that I was supposed to write stories whenever I had some free time on a weekend? Most likely, that came from letting myself get too busy several years ago. Well, okay, I’m not too busy now, so why are those feelings of pressure still there?

Besides, I never had a strictly regimented writing schedule where I produced a specific number of pages at the same time every day, unless you want to count the time I wrote a vampire romance novel while waiting at my daughter’s physical therapy appointments after she had a knee injury in high school soccer. So there’s no particular quantity of stories that I can reasonably assume I ought to create in a week or month or whatever, given the fact that my past experience has been nowhere near that predictable.

Some of it probably has to do with cultural attitudes, in that our society tends to dismiss writing stories as an insignificant, silly hobby. That leads to worrying (often subconsciously) that if we haven’t done much with our stories lately, then maybe the naysayers are right and our creative work will never amount to anything. And if we have an especially prolific week or month or whatever, it gives us the idea that if we’re not sustaining that level all the time, then we’re not doing our best and something must be wrong.

Another assumption in need of deconstruction is that I ought to be writing stories, rather than engaging in other creative efforts such as writing nonfiction entries on this blog—which in fact I’ve been doing quite regularly. Why do I feel that I’m not doing enough unless my creative work includes stories, in particular? What gave me the idea that I can best express myself through fiction? That’s not necessarily true—or at least, it’s not necessarily true at all times. Maybe I’ve been doing more good for myself and my readers by writing nonfiction posts that spark reflection.

Because stories are drawn from real life, maybe those daydreams are telling me that I need to recharge my creative energy by getting out and doing more in the real world. Maybe they’re telling me to spend some time discovering the right questions!

Somehow I got myself into a mood the past few days where instead of actually writing posts, I started ruminating about why I write a blog, whether I’ve really accomplished much with it, and so forth. Instead of giving my creativity room to run around and have fun (which is, of course, the reason why I write a blog—it’s not that complicated!), I got sucked into a pointless black hole of navel gazing.

Then I decided to just sit down and write a blog entry anyway, inspired or not, to let the air out of my own absurdities. Because I don’t have a pretty bellybutton ring like my daughter, I refrained from illustrating this post with my actual navel and instead took a photo of a navel orange on my kitchen counter.
 

Navel orange on my kitchen counter. 

That looks so goofy, I feel better already just seeing it in the preview! There is no profound, world-changing insight to be found in this post, except perhaps the simple observation that I never was obligated to produce world-changing insights on a regular production schedule. And what’s more, the next time I start taking myself and this blog too seriously, I’m just going to come back to this post and gaze at the navel orange until I go away giggling.

So I’m standing in front of the washing machine on Sunday afternoon, not really thinking about anything besides putting in a load of shirts. It’s a dark day with heavy clouds hanging low. That is all right because I don’t have to go anywhere. It seems like a calm, quiet day with no distractions going on. But when I look a bit deeper, I realize that I’ve got two conflicting lines of subconscious thought running through my head.

#1: What a nice, quiet, peaceful day for relaxing. Just what a Sunday ought to be. No worries. I’m just standing here being myself in the moment. It’s all good.

#2: So where’s all the productive work today? That blog isn’t going to write itself, now is it? And when was the last time anything got done on a story? Writers are supposed to bubble over with fountains of spontaneous creative energy. None of that seems to be around today, so there must be something wrong.

I close the washer door, start the cycle running, and step out of the laundry room. The vertical blinds have been drawn back from the sliding glass door in the kitchen, showing a view of the backyard where the slender branches of the willow hedge are whipping around in the breeze. Pale white catkins are just starting to open.
 

View of my backyard fence and willow branches through the kitchen door. 

Meanwhile, the inner dialogue continues.

#1: This would be a perfect day to curl up on the couch with a good book and a cup of hot tea. Mmm, vanilla caramel tea…

#2: Why waste a quiet day that would be just right for writing? Tomorrow is another busy Monday—always a lot going on. Time is precious! Nothing will get done without seizing the moment!

Walking into the kitchen, out of habit I find myself trying to mediate the internal conflict—how about drinking that cup of vanilla caramel tea while composing a blog post? But then I decide it might be more useful to drag my subconscious assumptions up into the light of day (what light there is on this dark winter afternoon) and take a good look at them.

The first line of thought seems pretty simple—it assumes that I’m not in a hurry today, which the empirical evidence of being in a quiet house on a Sunday afternoon would tend to support. The second line of thought assumes that the time available for creative pursuits is scarce and must be snatched whenever it is found. There is some historical evidence in its favor; in past years when I let myself get too busy, my writing suffered as a result.

But at present I’m just standing in my kitchen with nothing in particular to do, and I can’t see any good reason to hoard time as if it’s a scarce resource. Like anything else, creative energy gets harder to hold when one grabs at it desperately, rather than just letting it flow gently along its natural course. I ought to be able to read a book on a quiet Sunday, while trusting that I’ll find inspiration for stories and blog posts later.

“We’ll see about that,” scoffs Voice #2, “it just sounds like an excuse for laziness. What’s to be done when no inspiration shows up?”

That’s when the muse peeks out and settles the matter by deciding to turn this entire internal conversation into a blog post—but not right away. Truth be told, she’s feeling just a tad miffed about being hurried. Writing the post later will work just as well. At present, there’s a nice comfy couch and a cup of vanilla caramel tea calling my name!

It’s in the air. We can taste it on every breath—all that restless energy flowing through the culture, dancing wildly into the future, calling us to expand into infinite possibilities and create all the beautiful things in our minds that are just waiting for us to make them real. Life is supposed to be joyful, it tells us. There is so much more we can create and become. We only have to imagine it.

So we meditate, we visualize, we say affirmations, and we believe it’s within our grasp. We try to harness that wonderful creative energy to run before us like the chariot horses of the Roman arena, hooves pounding in a glorious cloud of dust as the finish line nears. We read self-help books that encourage us to follow our passions, whatever they may be, and trust that the Universe will reward our devotion—by sending a big fat bank account our way.

And I’m left wondering just how the passionate desire to create beautiful things got tangled up in our minds with Wall Street-style greed. Why are we so tempted to visualize ourselves quitting our jobs and effortlessly raking in a gazillion dollars from the books we haven’t written yet, the songs we haven’t composed yet, or the movies we haven’t produced yet? Why does everything have to be monetized on a grand scale? Seriously, are those sparkling joyful surges of creative energy telling us to grab the most toys? What’s going on here?

In general, whenever a narrative spreads so widely through the culture, it reflects something that already exists in present-day reality. I don’t mean to say that we’re all ruled by greed, but that we live in a time of vastly expanding possibilities. Modern technologies and cultural changes have empowered us to pursue careers we couldn’t have imagined in the past. So naturally we’re not willing to resign ourselves to a lifetime of soul-numbing drudgery just because people once thought there was nothing better. That, I believe, is what’s at the root of the “financial freedom” narrative—it’s not so much about old-fashioned greed, but about seizing those shiny new potential-filled moments and making the most of them. Money represents possibility.

And that’s all very well in itself; but the downside of equating money with possibility is that when the gazillion dollars never actually show up, it can feel like a personal failure, rather than simply reflecting the fact of a sputtering global economy that still needs time to expand. All that amazing creative energy takes a backseat to obsessively visualizing the big fat bank account and wondering what went wrong.

There is also a subtler trap, which is that we have been culturally conditioned to use the word “dream” to describe doing what we enjoy on a regular basis. That language puts it into the realm of distant fantasy, rather than within reach in everyday life. As a result, we can’t just be happy writing a blog or a novel or whatever because that’s what the creative energy calls us to do in this moment—no, that’s not good enough, we’ve got to have the glittering fantasy of being a super-wealthy celebrity. Otherwise, the culture might always dismiss our efforts as insignificant and leave us stuck forever in a dismal wage-slave existence.

Of course, we don’t really need that big fat bank account before we can take control of our lives. Nor is there any requirement to be a glitzy celebrity before anyone appreciates our creative projects. In fact, there are many celebrities and rich people who are notorious for their totally messed-up lives and always get laughed at in the tabloids. So if wealth and fame aren’t really where control, possibility, and respect come from—then how do we go about getting them?

Simply put, it’s all in the details. Not so much in those bright gleaming visualized details of future grand accomplishments, but in the words and images we use to frame our everyday acts—the details in present tense. I don’t, for example, dream of being a writer. I write stories. Fact. I write a blog. Fact. I control what I write and what I publish. Fact. These aren’t dreams—they are options I have chosen from among the many possibilities open to me in the here and now.

And though I can’t control what other people think of my writing, I have a fairly good idea of how to find readers who appreciate my work. First of all, I need to be consistently kind and courteous, showing others the same respect I’d like to get from them. It’s also important to take the time to put together quality work, free of careless errors. I need to be open to learning from constructive criticism and improving myself and my writing. And last but not least, I just need to get into the flow, relax, and have fun! If I became rich and famous, I still would need to do these things to earn genuine respect. There are no shortcuts to be bought.

I set up my blog on Kindle two weeks ago—not because I had any expectation of making money from it, but just because it seemed like a fun thing to do, as well as a convenience for any readers who might prefer following blogs on Kindle. Here’s a partial screenshot of my page on Amazon, which itself has a screenshot of my blog. I decided to put it into this post because the recursive effect looks cool.
 

Screenshot of my blog subscription page on Amazon.com. 

So far nobody has subscribed to it, but that’s okay because it is just a fun present-tense detail of the intentional life I’m in the process of creating. If I had been seriously planning to monetize my blog, I probably would’ve felt disappointed about not becoming an overnight gazillionaire. And we all know what we attract when we feel disappointed and unsuccessful—yup, more of the same. Simply enjoying the small details may not be as glamorous as the rich celebrity fantasy, but I believe it works out better as time goes by and more of those details fall into place.

Generally, leaving tasks undone sucks up a lot more mental energy than taking care of them promptly. But this time of year, when the days are cold and the nights are long, sometimes a lack of energy feels as if it comes from the season instead. That can lead to excusing procrastination with an internal narrative along the lines of, “I’m too tired to do a good job on that now, but I’ll work on it later when I feel more refreshed.” Too much of that, and the tiredness persists while the more refreshed feeling never comes. Creative projects, in particular, end up getting stalled.

So I’ve decided to give myself an attitude adjustment whenever I catch myself thinking like that, by changing my self-talk to convince myself that I have plenty of creative energy. Even if I don’t feel energetic, I take a few minutes to imagine myself working on the project and zipping easily through it. I tell myself something like, “I have lots of creative energy to put toward this, and it’s going to be so much fun and turn out great! I’m feeling fresh as a field of daisies!”
 

Field of white daisies.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)
 

Of course, there are days when I haven’t gotten enough sleep and honestly can’t focus on a creative project enough to do much with it. I’m certainly not suggesting that we should all force ourselves to check off tasks on the to-do list when we’re half asleep! But even on days when going to bed early is the best choice, we can cultivate creative energy by picturing how things ideally would go, instead of reinforcing a lack of energy with thoughts of feeling tired.

If we’re always telling ourselves that we feel too tired to do anything, sure enough that’s what happens! But when our self-image shifts to having lots of joyful energy, then we’re likely to feel more inspired the next day and get much more accomplished, after catching up on sleep.