Creative Rollercoaster

The paradox of creative activity is that, unlike assembly-line widget production, time spent at the computer screen does not directly correlate to the quantity or indeed the quality of the words that appear thereon.Writing appears to be a quite delicate activity that is dependent on the whims of an unpredictable and sometimes inconsiderate muse.There are takeaways from this.Create space and show up. Though the muse is not a words-per-hour kind of creature, you can’t just wait idly for the muse to show up. Just like the assembly-line worker, I need to clock in daily. If you don’t like to “clock in,” how about “create space on a daily basis for inspiration to visit me.” I don’t write for a living, and thus I can afford to dedicate only two hours to it. I go through a daily ritual. I get up early, around 4:30 (thankfully, I am a morning person). I make coffee. Sit down in my “writing” chair. Put on my headphones and start my “writing” soundtrack: Bach’s Concerto No. 1 in D Minor.If the words are flowing, I thank the writing god. If they are not, I stare at the blank screen and… I type. If I do not like what I wrote, which happens very often, I hit “ctrl” and “enter,” which creates a brand-new blank page, and I try again. I don’t wait on inspiration; I create the space and time for inspiration to come. If the words are flowing, I milk that moment for all it’s worth. Then life inevitably interrupts – kids wake up, we have to eat breakfast, I have to drive them to school, and so on. If the muse did not pay a visit, then I have put in two hours of typing. I close the laptop and come back the next day.Write regularly. If you don’t write on a regular basis, then it gets difficult (though not impossible) to restart the flow. Imagine you are in Minnesota in January; it is freezing cold outside. There is a fountain in the middle of St. Paul. The fountain is covered in ice, but the stream of water keeps flowing. Here is the secret to this fountain: If the water is constantly running, no matter how cold it is outside, it will keep running. But if the water is stopped for even 20 minutes, it will take a lot of effort to restart the flow. Writing is just like that.That’s why I write daily.Go easy on self-criticism. There are times when two hours in front of the laptop results in complete nonsense (it happens often). I tell myself that my subconscious (the muse) was not ready today. But it’s a continuous process, and I kept the door open for something good to come out tomorrow. This reminds me of being a parent – when my kids succeed, I congratulate them; but when they fail, I tell them that there is always tomorrow.Here is the secret: You don’t stop writing when you close your computer screen; your thoughts are still being processed by your subconscious when you are taking a shower, walking in the park, or cooking. This is why coming back the next day is so important.

Self-doubt

I’m beginning to fear that I am losing my powers of composition and becoming angry with myself. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a letter to a friend, July 2, 1887 Tchaikovsky’s pain and self-doubt resulted in stunning pieces of music. One thought keeps coming back to me: Maybe (creative) pain is a necessary part of growth; maybe it’s an indicator that we are pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone.I experience a burning feeling of self-doubt every time I take a break from writing. Self-doubt is part of the price you pay for the water freezing on the writing fountain.But even if I write daily, I still experience a trickle of fear and anxiety when I sit down to write a new piece. Someone compared writing to driving a car on a very dark night in a snowstorm. You can’t see ten feet in front of you – that is, past the next sentence.How do I overcome this fear? Curiosity. The fear is also accompanied by a trickle of curiosity. As you are reading this now, you are (hopefully) curious to know what I will say next. I want to know as much as you do, my dear reader, what this will look like when my subconscious is done with it, and what will I learn and discover for myself.I’ve been writing for over a decade and a half, and still to this day the fear and curiosity are right here with me. As long as the curiosity keeps getting the upper hand, I’ll keep writing.

Pushing your circle of competence

I began it three days ago and am writing with difficulty, not for wont of new ideas, but because of the novelty of the form. One requires six independent yet homogeneous voices. This is unimaginably difficult. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, to his brother Modest, on June 27, 1890 Let me tell you a bit about Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence. It is a sextet; a piece composed for six-string instruments. In this case, two violins, two violas, and two cellos. Tchaikovsky was guilted into writing it. He had been awarded an honorary membership in the Saint Petersburg Chamber Music Society, and in thanks he promised to write a chamber music piece (music composed for a small group of performers).Tchaikovsky had never written a sextet before. It was a new domain for him. I can relate to this so much. It is so comfortable to write about familiar subjects and remain on familiar turf. However, the real growth comes when you push the walls of your circle of competence further out.I started out as an investor writing about stocks and the economy – that was it. It wasn’t easy, but it was a familiar territory where I had spent most of my adult life. And then I pushed into writing about family and travel adventures, classical music (a huge step for a person who cannot even read music), diet, and exercise; and then I had the audacity to write about creativity and about writing. Every push into a new domain of writing was accompanied by fear.The fear undermined my confidence and made writing so much harder.However, as I spent more time in new domains, I gradually grew more self-confident being there. I found unexpected benefits. Writing changed me, rewired me as an individual. As I started writing about music, I found myself reading and learning more about it.I developed a thirst to learn and found more meaning in life. I can thank my parents for this, but I know that the seeds they so diligently planted would have not seen the sunlight if they were not watered by my writing, constantly venturing into new domains and pushing my circle of competence. I started seeing myself as a student of life.I can pat myself on the back and congratulate myself, but I won’t. I just have to remind myself, the next time I venture into a new domain, that while the journey so far involved some fear, overcoming it made my life so much more fulfilling.