As a creative person, you’ve probably questioned the value of continuing to make whatever it is you make at some point – or multiple points – in your life. Sticking with your goal when it all hits the fan is less of a personal decision when your goal is, say, managing the quality control department for a packaging company. By contrast, when your life gets turned on its head, it’s a lot easier to give up on your career if you’re building a recording studio, taking the time to revise a novel, working on an independent film just for the resume credit, or developing a group of paintings that you need to complete before beginning to show. Each of these takes significant time and investment before you see a financial return.
I’ve recently been fortunate enough to join Full Sail University as an English professor. This is just one of an array of pursuits on my professional palette. In addition to teaching, I also write fiction and memoir, paint, and offer resume writing and creativity coaching services through a counseling center. This week, I launched my first product line of fair trade clothing. And, I’m a mom of a serious young musician who just started high school.
One assignment my students write is an essay about persevering in a creative career when the going gets tough. It’s been an encouraging assignment to grade since, for the past year, the going has gotten tougher by the month: My husband has been going blind since last September. This puts a significant amount of pressure on my need to earn greater income while also being more available to chauffer my family. This would, in short, be a reasonable time for me to use my resume writing skills to fashion myself into a corporate trainer or project manager, and give up on revising the novel that likely won’t see an agent’s desk until next year, along with the creativity coaching, painting, etc. All the things that I love to do. So in a spirit of solidarity with my students, I’ve decided to take some time to write a bit about persevering while developing a creative career. If you’re watching the debris of a recent crisis rain down on you and your art, here are some tools that I hope will help.
.
1. Dedicated space – Between my husband’s last two eye surgeries, I was feeling empty because I wasn’t writing. I pulled a table into my studio space (the breakfast nook in our kitchen), and decided that the only thing I’d do there is write or make art. I’m sitting there right now. And, I’m writing. Whether it’s an all-out studio or a Sheldon Cooper style favorite spot on the couch, dedicate a space to your creativity. In this space, do nothing else. Do not check email; do not complete at-home work; do not hang out with friends; do not research mechanics for your broken car; do not do any activity unrelated to your creativity. Visit this space at least once a day, even if it’s just for five minutes of sitting alone promising yourself that, as soon as you can, you’ll actually make/write/mix/play something here. Visiting frequently makes the promise more real, and when you do have that stray 30 minutes, you’ll know exactly how you want to use it because you’ll already be in the habit of considering that project. You won’t waste those precious seconds sitting there wondering where to start.
.
2. A calendar that works, with permission to say, “f**k it” – I am a digital immigrant, born before the internet, raised without it, and introduced to it as more of a concept than a useful tool in late high school. Digital calendars don’t work for me, though phone alerts help me keep appointments. I have a beautiful, hardbound author’s calendar from Barnes & Noble with profiles, birthdays, and awards of different writers throughout. It works for me because I still think on paper. It also allows me to look at my life, see at a glance how crazy it is, and know that if I wanted to kill an enemy slowly, I could just make them do everything listed on time with no exceptions. Since I’d like to live happily, I let myself move things around, and, as long as it doesn’t affect something truly important, I skip things sometimes. I also have one day a week where I schedule exactly nothing. Keeping my calendar with me gives me a visual aid when I need permission to say no to commitments that might threaten my health and sanity.
.
3. Good music – Life is better when you’re listening to what you love. Develop playlists for different moods, creative projects, gentle reminders that you’re human and deserve sleep, and suit-up-for-battle-because-it’s-going-to-be-another-16-hour-day days. Don’t have time to develop a playlist? Get on Pandora. Or Youtube. Or whatever the kids these days are using to find pre-packaged playlists (remember, digital immigrant here). Heck, if you’re me, pull out some of your old mixtapes and a cassette player. There’s nothing like nostalgia music to make you feel like everything is possible.
.
4. Symbaloo - This free web tool was originally developed for teachers to curate curriculum for their classrooms, but I've found it works as a way to organize websites that relate to multiple creative projects. It's basically a bookmark organizer, and it allows me to quickly save something I know I want to come back to when I have time. It's also great for when I've been away from a project for a while, and want to get inspired again. I go to the project tab and read a few of the articles that got me excited in the first place.
.
5. Give yourself a break – You won’t paint/write/sing/dance every day when life throws real crisis at you. Don’t get wrapped up in the drama, but do give yourself time to experience the situation at hand. It’s OK to take a week or a month off. Visit your creative space for a few minutes a day so that you remember who you are at the core, and then walk back into the rest of your life and live it. Because, ultimately, that’s where the best art comes from. If you have nothing to challenge your way of thinking, you won’t have very interesting things to say in your work. Give your life the time it deserves.
.
6. But then come back – And come back gently. When I’ve been away from a novel project for a while, I can’t just jump back in. The characters are too complex and, often, there are too many pages to review in order to catch up with the story. And my writing muscle is out of practice. Trying to start the next chapter the first writing day after a month away will inevitably shut me down and make me feel like a failure. Instead, I write stream-of-conscious schlock (those of you familiar with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way will know this as morning pages). I do this for several days, sometimes weeks. When it has become a habit, I then move on to writing from prompts. This gets me thinking like a writer again instead of being my own therapy patient on the page. Once I’ve started to produce some paragraphs that I feel good about, I pick up the last chapter or two that I worked on and read it to begin to enter the novel once more. And, after that, I begin writing. The process takes time, but it can result in unexpected gifts. Two weeks ago, I ended up with a flash fiction piece I never planned to write.
.
7. Remember, even the quality control manager at the packaging company started somewhere - It's easy for us to listen to the naysayers who want us to believe that we'll never make money in a creative career. But most professional careers take time to cultivate. A doctor did not launch her own practice the day she got her bachelor's degree. She had medical school, an internship, a residency, and ongoing specialized training before she finally got to that level. Depending on the area of medicine, this may take 8-10 years or more. Most professional careers take a long time. Your art deserves the same kind of deliberate and thorough cultivation. Some creatives will have sudden success, and that's a fantastic thing. But many of us will have to put in years of hard work before seeing a comfortable income. And that's OK. It's no different from any other professional field, so it doesn't make sense to give up if we're not raking in the dough early on.
.
8. Start a group studio session – As the resident artist and writer for HD Counseling, LLC, I host an Open Studio session every Saturday. Artists and writers bring their current projects and we work in the same space for about three hours each week. Many of us find that when we frame them as a commitment to others, we’re more likely to honor our creative endeavors.
.
9. Ask for help – You do not have to go it alone. You might ask friends or family to help out with chores, cooking, etc. while in crisis mode. Often, they’ll be glad to contribute. If you don’t have this kind of community, there are still ways to get help. I recently got a Shipt membership. For less than $10/month, they deliver our groceries every week. With the internet, more services like this are popping up. If you’re strapped for cash, contact a nearby college and see if any of the clubs/students are looking for volunteer opportunities.
.
10. Have a partner or friend who knows you’re a beautiful unicorn – I mentioned my husband has been going blind. One reason I’ve stuck with all of my creative pursuits instead of consolidating my earning activities into one miserable corporate position is because he would be devastated and furious if I stopped doing what I love in the name of helping him. He believes in every potential project I consider. He roots for every possibility. He recruits our teenaged daughter to don blanket capes and goggles and take a super hero stance with him to make me laugh, and then gets her to change the cat litter so I have time to paint. Not everyone in our lives gets us as creatives. But we choose our friendships. Choose at least one person who does get it, and nurture and love that friendship above all others. If there's no one nearby like this, join a creative group on Facebook or another social media outlet. Because the person who gets you needs you to be yourself just as much as you do, and, though you may not always see it, you need them to be themselves, too. When you connect with someone at the creative level, you feed each other. Blind or sighted, caped or in a business suit, it doesn’t matter. We all need our heroes.
I’ve recently been fortunate enough to join Full Sail University as an English professor. This is just one of an array of pursuits on my professional palette. In addition to teaching, I also write fiction and memoir, paint, and offer resume writing and creativity coaching services through a counseling center. This week, I launched my first product line of fair trade clothing. And, I’m a mom of a serious young musician who just started high school.
One assignment my students write is an essay about persevering in a creative career when the going gets tough. It’s been an encouraging assignment to grade since, for the past year, the going has gotten tougher by the month: My husband has been going blind since last September. This puts a significant amount of pressure on my need to earn greater income while also being more available to chauffer my family. This would, in short, be a reasonable time for me to use my resume writing skills to fashion myself into a corporate trainer or project manager, and give up on revising the novel that likely won’t see an agent’s desk until next year, along with the creativity coaching, painting, etc. All the things that I love to do. So in a spirit of solidarity with my students, I’ve decided to take some time to write a bit about persevering while developing a creative career. If you’re watching the debris of a recent crisis rain down on you and your art, here are some tools that I hope will help.
.
1. Dedicated space – Between my husband’s last two eye surgeries, I was feeling empty because I wasn’t writing. I pulled a table into my studio space (the breakfast nook in our kitchen), and decided that the only thing I’d do there is write or make art. I’m sitting there right now. And, I’m writing. Whether it’s an all-out studio or a Sheldon Cooper style favorite spot on the couch, dedicate a space to your creativity. In this space, do nothing else. Do not check email; do not complete at-home work; do not hang out with friends; do not research mechanics for your broken car; do not do any activity unrelated to your creativity. Visit this space at least once a day, even if it’s just for five minutes of sitting alone promising yourself that, as soon as you can, you’ll actually make/write/mix/play something here. Visiting frequently makes the promise more real, and when you do have that stray 30 minutes, you’ll know exactly how you want to use it because you’ll already be in the habit of considering that project. You won’t waste those precious seconds sitting there wondering where to start.
.
2. A calendar that works, with permission to say, “f**k it” – I am a digital immigrant, born before the internet, raised without it, and introduced to it as more of a concept than a useful tool in late high school. Digital calendars don’t work for me, though phone alerts help me keep appointments. I have a beautiful, hardbound author’s calendar from Barnes & Noble with profiles, birthdays, and awards of different writers throughout. It works for me because I still think on paper. It also allows me to look at my life, see at a glance how crazy it is, and know that if I wanted to kill an enemy slowly, I could just make them do everything listed on time with no exceptions. Since I’d like to live happily, I let myself move things around, and, as long as it doesn’t affect something truly important, I skip things sometimes. I also have one day a week where I schedule exactly nothing. Keeping my calendar with me gives me a visual aid when I need permission to say no to commitments that might threaten my health and sanity.
.
3. Good music – Life is better when you’re listening to what you love. Develop playlists for different moods, creative projects, gentle reminders that you’re human and deserve sleep, and suit-up-for-battle-because-it’s-going-to-be-another-16-hour-day days. Don’t have time to develop a playlist? Get on Pandora. Or Youtube. Or whatever the kids these days are using to find pre-packaged playlists (remember, digital immigrant here). Heck, if you’re me, pull out some of your old mixtapes and a cassette player. There’s nothing like nostalgia music to make you feel like everything is possible.
.
4. Symbaloo - This free web tool was originally developed for teachers to curate curriculum for their classrooms, but I've found it works as a way to organize websites that relate to multiple creative projects. It's basically a bookmark organizer, and it allows me to quickly save something I know I want to come back to when I have time. It's also great for when I've been away from a project for a while, and want to get inspired again. I go to the project tab and read a few of the articles that got me excited in the first place.
.
5. Give yourself a break – You won’t paint/write/sing/dance every day when life throws real crisis at you. Don’t get wrapped up in the drama, but do give yourself time to experience the situation at hand. It’s OK to take a week or a month off. Visit your creative space for a few minutes a day so that you remember who you are at the core, and then walk back into the rest of your life and live it. Because, ultimately, that’s where the best art comes from. If you have nothing to challenge your way of thinking, you won’t have very interesting things to say in your work. Give your life the time it deserves.
.
6. But then come back – And come back gently. When I’ve been away from a novel project for a while, I can’t just jump back in. The characters are too complex and, often, there are too many pages to review in order to catch up with the story. And my writing muscle is out of practice. Trying to start the next chapter the first writing day after a month away will inevitably shut me down and make me feel like a failure. Instead, I write stream-of-conscious schlock (those of you familiar with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way will know this as morning pages). I do this for several days, sometimes weeks. When it has become a habit, I then move on to writing from prompts. This gets me thinking like a writer again instead of being my own therapy patient on the page. Once I’ve started to produce some paragraphs that I feel good about, I pick up the last chapter or two that I worked on and read it to begin to enter the novel once more. And, after that, I begin writing. The process takes time, but it can result in unexpected gifts. Two weeks ago, I ended up with a flash fiction piece I never planned to write.
.
7. Remember, even the quality control manager at the packaging company started somewhere - It's easy for us to listen to the naysayers who want us to believe that we'll never make money in a creative career. But most professional careers take time to cultivate. A doctor did not launch her own practice the day she got her bachelor's degree. She had medical school, an internship, a residency, and ongoing specialized training before she finally got to that level. Depending on the area of medicine, this may take 8-10 years or more. Most professional careers take a long time. Your art deserves the same kind of deliberate and thorough cultivation. Some creatives will have sudden success, and that's a fantastic thing. But many of us will have to put in years of hard work before seeing a comfortable income. And that's OK. It's no different from any other professional field, so it doesn't make sense to give up if we're not raking in the dough early on.
.
8. Start a group studio session – As the resident artist and writer for HD Counseling, LLC, I host an Open Studio session every Saturday. Artists and writers bring their current projects and we work in the same space for about three hours each week. Many of us find that when we frame them as a commitment to others, we’re more likely to honor our creative endeavors.
.
9. Ask for help – You do not have to go it alone. You might ask friends or family to help out with chores, cooking, etc. while in crisis mode. Often, they’ll be glad to contribute. If you don’t have this kind of community, there are still ways to get help. I recently got a Shipt membership. For less than $10/month, they deliver our groceries every week. With the internet, more services like this are popping up. If you’re strapped for cash, contact a nearby college and see if any of the clubs/students are looking for volunteer opportunities.
.
10. Have a partner or friend who knows you’re a beautiful unicorn – I mentioned my husband has been going blind. One reason I’ve stuck with all of my creative pursuits instead of consolidating my earning activities into one miserable corporate position is because he would be devastated and furious if I stopped doing what I love in the name of helping him. He believes in every potential project I consider. He roots for every possibility. He recruits our teenaged daughter to don blanket capes and goggles and take a super hero stance with him to make me laugh, and then gets her to change the cat litter so I have time to paint. Not everyone in our lives gets us as creatives. But we choose our friendships. Choose at least one person who does get it, and nurture and love that friendship above all others. If there's no one nearby like this, join a creative group on Facebook or another social media outlet. Because the person who gets you needs you to be yourself just as much as you do, and, though you may not always see it, you need them to be themselves, too. When you connect with someone at the creative level, you feed each other. Blind or sighted, caped or in a business suit, it doesn’t matter. We all need our heroes.
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