Writing
‘Shoulds’ Are the Death of Creative Spark
Try focusing on your wants
When the coronavirus was declared a pandemic in March 2020, everyone was baking that perfect sourdough, perfecting their Spanish language skills, or learning acoustic guitar (on social media anyway). I felt like I should be taking advantage of this time, of all of the wonderful offerings from my favorite creative institutions. I signed up for a Coursera class in art history with MOMA. I donated to do the first virtual Summer Jazz Academy through Lincoln Center. I signed up for a business-building class through one of my alma maters.
I didn’t show up to one of them.
Attending those online classes was more of a should than a want.
Shoulds often are the death of creativity and creative expression. Shoulds are the judgmental, nagging inner voice telling you: You should be doing more, generating more, producing more. Shoulds are watching while you’re scrolling through Insta and whispering: You should be doing that, too. You should be and you’re not. What is wrong with you?
Shoulds are guilt. Shoulds don’t motivate; they paralyze.
Shoulds are not what you want but what you think you should want.
In my case, the shoulds got to me. And I pushed back. I didn’t go to the classes, because they were shoulds and not what I wanted to do — not really.
So first I had to figure out what I really wanted, creatively, during this pandemic pause.
This required some radical honesty, which meant looking closely at why I wasn’t showing up to the classes I thought I wanted, not judging my response to myself, sitting quietly with whatever those honest thoughts were, and accepting whatever those maybe not so pleasant or attractive thoughts and responses were.
My honest reply to myself was that I wanted to expand myself a little bit creatively. Just a little bit because I already felt/feel so stretched, so worn out, so drained during this pandemic life that too big of a leap would be another should and would fall by the wayside. So what would a little stretch look like? I kept myself open to stumbling upon something that would be fun and a small stretch past what I’m already doing and already love.
I was struck with creative inspiration as I was watching Kara Cutruzzula’s second-year musical project for BMI over the summer. BMI’s Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop is “the premiere training ground for emerging musical theater composers, lyricists, and librettists.” I already create and perform long-form narrative musicals, and have been doing that for almost 10 years; what would scripting a musical be like?
My next questions were: Do I need support around this endeavor? Do I need more tools? Do I want or need collaborators? Do I need idea generators?
I saw that Marcy Heisler had an online six-week lyric-writing class. This is Marcy of Marcy & Zina and “Taylor, the Latte Boy” fame for you fellow musical theater nerds. It promised six two-hour classes with other lyric writers; we’d receive a writing prompt, write off-line for an hour, and then come back together for notes from Marcy and support from each other.
That sounded great to me! There’s some structure and there’s also doing the work, in real time. It’s an active versus passive class, mainly doing the thing you’re talking about doing. As I love process and community, this class sounded ideal.
Several months in and the class has been a joy. I have produced reams of lyrics for reams of yet-to-be-born musical shows.
My next little stretch: scripting a 10-minute musical based on one song I wrote in Marcy’s class.
Meanwhile, if this is you right now, feeling like you’d like to be more creative, that you’d like to stretch yourself a little but don’t know where to start, I say:
Work through your shoulds and discard them. They will only drag you down into a paralyzed place of what should have been (and isn’t). It’s also just fine to do nothing creatively right now. Know that.
Get to your wants. If you do want to stretch yourself a little, dig deeper into what already brings you joy: singing, cooking, blogging, podcasting, yoga, journaling, drawing, coding, etc.
Figure out what kind of support you need. Support that creative want with some doable, manageable outside structure to get the ball rolling. It could be an accountability partner; I talk with my partner’s sister weekly about what we’re working on. It could be a writing group; I lead a monthly writing and improv workshop where we write in class (and no sharing). It could be a class; I’ve been doing Marcy’s workshops for months now with tons and tons of content to show for it. It could be an online retreat or conference; BlogHer is doing free online conferences right now.
Remember this is for fun. It’s a creative challenge. Give yourself a little push, a little support, to help with that little stretch.
