Find Your Creative Familiar
Have you ever stopped writing, painting, or even reading because you simply didn’t know where to start? Maybe you’re in the middle of a cycle and aren’t sure if it’s time to begin a new one. Or maybe you’ve just completely lost your inspiration.
Creative process
The creative process can be difficult to understand. It can feel magical and unknown. How does someone “think” up a creative idea? How does that creative idea get developed, and where do you start? Where do you stop? If you break it down, there are steps in the process that can be learned, mastered, practiced, and honed.
The term, “magical thinking,” is considered taboo in most facets of the real world, but for personal creative purposes, I’ve found that it can be a powerful tool to train your brain to switch modes of thought.
One learning experience
I’d been struggling for years as a young designer and entrepreneur. I mean, I was succeeding professionally, but I carried a haunting feeling of failure and dogged exhaustion. I was hurling my most precious commodities at creativity: time and intensity. It was taking a toll on my well-being, and, ultimately, on my ability to feel and be creative!
At the close of a workday, I shared this experience with a close colleague. I related feeling creative block; a term I’d heard used to describe novelists struggling to complete their work. After considering this, they suggested that I try to, “Write drunk and edit sober.”
I took this advice, both literally and immediately. That evening at home, I grabbed a couple of beers and started cranking away on a freelance project. After a few hours, I stumbled off to bed feeling the rush of creative output. The next morning, achy and dry-mouthed, I assessed the result: lots of output with varying levels of usability.
In recalling these decades-old events it now occurs to me that I had then thought of creativity as a fickle, temperamental power. It was sometimes docile, calm, and serene—out to pasture and nowhere to be seen. At other times it charged and raged — potential always rippling under its taut surface. Like a bull, its aloof power beckoned the foolish man to be ridden.
It dawned on me that I was viewing my creative self as this bull. That realization was the beginning of an exploration into magical thinking as a tool for use as a creative professional. I had been considering this bull as a kind of creative familiar — something both a part and detached from me and my work.
In many ways, this bull metaphor still rings true to me. For example, when facing a challenge that will require creative power, I find it’s almost always best to charge right up to it and jump onto its back or be forever doomed to chase its fleeting tail.
Be reckless
If there’s any true wisdom in, “writing drunk,” it might be, to approach creativity with reckless abandon. Steady your hand; loosen your grip on outcomes. Take some deep breaths; commit and let creativity take you where it will. Work hard, but mostly, work smart; the opposite of time and intensity.
If there’s any true wisdom in, “writing drunk,” it might be, to approach creativity with reckless abandon.
In my case, smarts could only be attained through personal experience, and I still struggle to start slowly with grace rather than powerfully by will.
Clearly, as the years pass, my relationship with creativity continues to evolve. Instead of thinking of creativity as something wild to be caught, I now try to think of it as a force to understand and exist within. Maybe it’s better to think of creativity not as a bull, but as a cunning eagle soaring atop a thermal. I am influenced along my creative path by the environment I inhabit.
I am influenced along my creative path by the environment I inhabit.
Yet this isn’t a flawless game of the mind. How do I metaphorically take flight, creatively? While potentially entertaining to the onlooker, running around while flapping my arms is wildly exhausting! Oh, but the challenges don’t end there. Once I get lift, how do I stay aloft? Soaring looks effortless to a novice bird but takes wisdom and experience. Most importantly, what does landing look like? If I get it wrong, I might be too scared to try again, and if I don’t land, how do I stop?
What’s your creative familiar?
What comes to mind when you try to picture your creative self? A dodging hare? A mighty bear? A flitting butterfly?
No matter your approach, the question remains: how can creatives advance their mastery of creativity? In my mind, the trick for creators looking to master purposeful creativity is three-fold:
- How to start: Initiating your creative mind
- How to stay: Understanding how to guide the experience
- How to stop: Knowing when it’s time to stop or pause
Using the metaphor of a creative familiar may help you to start, stay in, and stop your creativity and gain a better understanding of your unique relationship with your own creativity.
In the end, there’s no right or wrong way to approach your creative work. Every person is different, and we all have different ways of working. Know that you’re not alone in these struggles — creative people have been fighting through them since time immemorial. And if it’s hard, that just means you’re doing it right.
Finding your creative familiar animal will help you find your unique and unconventional approach to creativity, and can help reignite the passion for and within your work. All it takes is some patience, some self-reflection, and a willingness to explore.
Read on in this series with, The Magic Chair.
