Ten years ago, I made a decision to heal my creativity. It felt like the flow just wasn't there. The river was in past time, my perspective had changed and it needed to be brought into the present.
I remember that my creative rehab became the sole focus for a while It began with meditation and visualization healing work. I dug deep and addressed some wounds that I had sustained. I read (and did) Julia Cameron's The Artist Way. I painted, wove poetry and collaged my fears and blocks.
After that, I made a decision to look at my scrutinize my life. I wrote my life story, looked at past interactions, and discovered patterns that were making me unhappy.
When I finished with all of that, I surfed an unforgettable wave of creativity. I also experienced a profound sense of peace.
Ten years is a long time, and much has happened between then and now. I finished a major project exactly a year ago. It felt like an ending; a form of expression was finished.
Now, it's time again. Time for a creative rehabilitation. Time to look at what my relationship is with writing, to re-own my creativity. Its time to assess the past decade as well, to assign meaning to what's taken place.
As my spine undergoes its daily realignment at the chiropractor, so must everything else I guess. That's probably what Louise Hay would say. The physical is merely a symptom of the emotional, mental and spiritual.
So that's my writing project, for the time being. I do have the urge to start new projects, but I'm afraid that I'll simply be going to the same old well again.
What do you do to replenish your creativity?
I clear my mind and just don't try to do anything creative for a while. Then I let myself be open to things coming in. After I'm allowed to let the field sit fallow for a season, the ideas come flooding back in.
Posted by: Owen Tew | May 01, 2007 at 10:51 AM
volunteer at a soup kitchen. hang out in a bar every night. have an affair. assist seniors at a home. protest something. join a secret club. spend time with relatives. not saying it wont be painful, but get out into society and live life in a new way is what i try to do.
Posted by: RLewis | May 01, 2007 at 01:17 PM
Do not do No. 3, honey.
Posted by: Jethro | May 01, 2007 at 04:24 PM
I take a walk and try to do something else for a while.
I agree with Jethro. Do not do No.3. It leads nowhere good.
Posted by: malachy walsh | May 01, 2007 at 10:41 PM
I go to places where there are LOTS of people... stay there a day or two... listen, imagine what they are doing there, finish conversations in your head they start. Watch how someone driks their coffee, watch the person cleaning tables at the restaurant, watch the crazy person pace in front of the ice cream place...
Tell Jethro you love him every day (and Jethro, tell her you love her every day).
Get a P.O. Box and use it for sending cards to each other... and watch people get thier mail (at a real Post Office, not Mailboxes USA or whatever), watch the clerks, watch what people do in line.
Posted by: Michael | May 02, 2007 at 01:32 AM
I also re-read sections of Rollo May's The Courage to Create. Makes me stop worrying about needing to create. It just happens.
Posted by: RLewis | May 02, 2007 at 01:11 PM
I usually move. It works, for a time, because it forces me into a whole host of new experiences, but it's ultimately unfulfilling, since those experiences are largely the same ones as before, with different faces and names attached. I've also burned through NYC (twice), SF, and LA, so the city boy in me is running out of options.
So I've experimented with throwing myself into new creative disciplines. Music didn't work as well as I'd have liked, since the technical ramp-up was more frustrating than I'd have liked, but short-form improv was a very nice antidote to a plot-heavy writing funk.
I purchased a copy of The Artist's Way a few years ago, and every 6-12 months, I break it out and try to push myself through the program. My blockage is actually kind of silly, but still real. I just can't get past the word "God." I've tried and tried to substitute "creative inspiration" and the like for the word every time I see it in there, but no such luck. I have a ton of friends (most of them atheists, in fact), who swear by the book, and I really wish I could get into it, but all the God-talk is getting in the way. She really needs to publish a God-free edition. One quick search-and-replace in MS Word, an instant new audience. :)
Ah, well. Enough of my ramblings. I'm excited to check out The Courage to Create mentioned above.
Posted by: Cormac | May 02, 2007 at 06:04 PM
Those are a bunch of cool suggestions. Thanks. It makes me feel less alone. :)
Posted by: Laura | May 02, 2007 at 08:32 PM
Oh, yes, she does tell me she loves me every day. And vice versa.
I was just funnin' on RLewis' advice, which is not bad at all: Do something you wouldn't ordinarily do to shake things up. I'd forgotten a song (Some Friendly Advice) by the unheard-of Swirling Eddies gives the same presciption:
http://the-swirling-eddies.letras.terra.com.br/letras/865357/
Posted by: Jethro | May 02, 2007 at 08:44 PM
I read a lot of comic books and do a lot of bar-hopping. Even if it doesn't work, I at least spent a lot of time doing what I like doing.
Posted by: James | May 03, 2007 at 12:22 PM