2020 and the Creative Well

Sitting down to write out this blog post turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be at the beginning of the semester. I never used to have trouble sitting down for an hour or so and putting words on a page, especially when it could be about anything I wanted. When it comes to words, I’ve always felt like I’m an unending well, they come forth without too much effort and I mold them into the shape I need them to take for whatever project I’m currently working on.

Words don’t feel that way anymore.

Between March and now, things have changed so much. The state of the world has affected a lot of things, from the way we tackle classes this year to the way we have to live our normal, day-to-day lives. One thing I didn’t expect it to have an affect on was my creativity.

Writing stories has always been my reprieve from the things that cause stress in my life. Something about sitting down to create a whole new world and losing myself in that world and the characters within it is magical. I’ve felt that way about words since I was little. Words are magical. And being someone who can sit down and manipulate them is its own form of magic. Wielding that magic was stress relief. It was happiness.

I’ve always been a homebody. I’m usually perfectly happy to stay home all day. I find endless entertainment in books and movies and television and video games. But I never realized how much the routine of being forced out of the house affected me. Having to leave to go to work or class every day, having to leave to see friends if I wanted social interaction. Those things have all drastically changed this year. And with those drastic changes, I’m learning a lot about my creative well. In particular, I’m learning that it’s not endless, but that it can definitely be refilled.

Having activities that brought me joy outside of writing was more important than I ever realized. Those things made writing special and also brought me inspiration. I often find inspiration through the media that I consume in my own time, but by talking those ideas out with friends or having more time outside the home to take my mind off my creative projects made my time with those creative projects more valuable.

Having all the time in the world to work on creative projects doesn’t necessarily make the time spent on those projects valuable for the person. At least, that’s what I’ve found for myself. I want to write, but the drive isn’t there. The well of ideas feels like it has run dry. Even though I’ve had ideas for projects, none of them seem like they are the right thing to be working on. I’m not passionate about any of them.

Usually, this time of year is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which basically means that for the month of November a bunch of writers join a massive online community and try to write a fifty thousand word manuscript in thirty days. I have taken part every single year since 2013, to varying degrees of success. I’ve written through some of my best ideas this way, albeit horribly. Editing is always mandatory after a month of NaNo. But as November was approaching this year, something didn’t feel right about it. It wasn’t school and the work involved, I’ve been in school for most of the NaNo’s that I’ve taken part in. I know that I can balance the two workloads if I try hard enough. But this year, I looked at November and the excitement that I usually feel to work on a new project just wasn’t there. I had an idea for a new manuscript, I worked on outlining it and getting it ready, but the same magic that I usually feel just wasn’t there.

The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe taking part would have been the right idea. Part of what makes NaNo so magical is the community of writers that come together and encourage each other to work on their projects and reach the daily word count goal. What I’ve been missing so much in a world with a global pandemic is the people. I didn’t think I would as an introvert, but time with the people you’re close with is so important. The community aspect of NaNo is one of the best parts of it in general, and in a world where being social is difficult, I think taking part in a global event would have scratched that itch, at least a little bit.

But it’s hard to commit to that kind of event when your passion for the activity seems to be waning.  And it’s hard to tell if the lack of passion is natural or if its just because of the way that the world is right now.

So I guess the question becomes what do I need to do to reignite that passion and find the magic in words again? Or, is that what I want? Passions wax and wane like phases of the moon, that’s always been true. Writing has just always been a constant, which is why I think this is just a phase I need to get through. So, assuming that’s the case, what do I need to do?

I think the thing that everyone needs to acknowledge this year, whether you identify yourself as a creative person or not, is that we need to be kind to ourselves. We need to take breaks, we need to accept that this pandemic has had an impact on our mental health and our productivity. And for those of us to do identify as creative people, we need to know that it’s okay to not be creative for a while. It’s okay for us to take breaks from our creative endeavors, just as much as it’s okay for anyone else to take a break from their modes of productivity. We need to be kind to ourselves.

I say this to try and remind myself of the truth of that statement. My creative well is empty. I need to give it time to refill. Allowing myself to take a break isn’t a bad thing. The well will refill, ideas and passion will come back. Letting myself consume media without trying to find inspiration for new ideas will refill the well. Taking time with friends, once its allowed again, will refill the well. Not forcing myself to be creative right now will refill the well.

2020 is the year of letting the well refill and being kind to ourselves and, hopefully, to each other. It’s the year of letting your passions wane and understanding that, given time, they will return. I know that posts that say essentially exactly this have been circulating on Facebook for months, but sometimes a random post that isn’t directed to anyone in particular isn’t enough. Sometimes it takes someone looking you in the eye and telling you something you’ve already heard over and over again or seen over and over again for it to actually sink in. So, if you read this, and you are someone who is generally speaking a creative person and you, like me, feel as if your creative well has run dry, this post is for you. This is me looking you in the eyes and telling you that your well isn’t dry, it just needs time to refill. Be kind to yourself.