I have an assignment I do with my students that starts with a conversation about what creativity is and how we can use it in everything we do, from math problems to drawing to our dream jobs.
Then I take a random object in the room, such as the Little Munchies cheese corn snacks container I’ve repurposed for holding the class pencils, and do my own version of Guilford's "Alternative Uses Test." I ask my students, “What are some different things I could use this container for?” The first few students inevitably say things like, “You could put markers in it!” “You could put play-dough in it!” But by the end, the kids really get creative: “You could use it as a drum!” “You could wear it as a hat!” “You could make it into a lantern!”
Then I pass out pieces of paper that have a pre-traced circle on them. The assignment: Transform the circle. I ask that my students sketch out at least 3 ideas on the back of their paper before deciding on their favorite one. Often the idea they choose isn’t the first one they came up with. Sometimes a kid will even spend the entire class just coming up with ideas.
The core concept of this lesson is one I find myself at odds with every single day.
Creative ideas have an incubation period.
An example from my "What can you do with a circle?" assignment, made by one of my second graders.
A few weeks ago I attended the annual Pratt-Draw-A-Thon: 12 hours of live model drawing, with pizza and a drum circle and all the nostalgia that comes with revisiting my alma-mater. I arrived at the event around 8:00PM, but it wasn’t until about 11:00PM that I found myself making progress on a drawing I actually liked. By the time my husband and I reluctantly left around 2:00AM (we needed to work the following day), we agreed that we were only just getting started. Because just like athletes, artists need to warm up.
We’ve all heard the advice before:
“You need to make a lot of crappy paintings to make a good one!”
“If you want a good 2 page paper, write 10 pages first.”
“Just sleep on it!”
If you’re going to successfully follow any of this advice, you need to carve out some capital T Time. Time for thinking. Time for doing. Time. Time. Time.
Look deeply into any "eureka" moment and you will find months or even years of egg-sitting, of sword-sharpening, of trial-and-error experiments. The belief that brilliant ideas simply appear out of thin air might be convenient but I've found little evidence to support it. If we want a great loaf of bread, we've got to find a recipe, knead the dough and preheat the oven.
Another piece from this year's draw-a-thon, the last one of the evening.
But it doesn’t end there. Once you’ve made the time, there’s the problem of prioritization. As someone who enjoys a host of different creative activities, the choice of what-to-do can be paralyzing. Should I paint or draw? Journal or blog? Update my website or organize my workspace? I’ve found that what’s most important isn’t what I do, but that I stick to one thing for the duration of time that I have. If I’m drawing and it looks like garbage, I try not to abandon it or switch to writing, because at least for me, the weight of two half-baked, unfinished creations are heavier than one. If you manage to stay on task, there's still the danger that you forget to take that loaf out of the oven and burn the bread - as in the case of an overworked painting, screenplay or poem.
I remember when I first downloaded the “Headspace” app and was told that all I needed was 10 uninterrupted minutes at roughly the same time every day to sit for meditation. My first thought was, “10 uninterrupted minutes? How on earth will I do that?” Some of you might laugh, but busy parents know exactly what I’m talking about. We’re lucky to get some “me time” on the toilet.
This inescapable feature of parenthood had me especially depressed while I was reading Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Of the 150+ artists whose daily routines Currey carefully documents, less than 30 of them were women. That’s depressing in and of itself, but it’s not even the end of it. Less than half of the women in Currey’s book had children. Even fewer had more than one. One of the very few creatives in Currey’s book whose difficulty balancing parenting duties merited any acknowledgement at all was a writer whose greatest work was produced over the span of just two months while raising her two children alone. Her name was Sylvia Plath. [1]
I’m not trying to imply that balancing parenting with a creative lifestyle is what drove Plath to put her head in an oven. But the lack of women in Currey's book who juggled their practice with parenthood (and didn't later kill themselves) was discouraging to say the least.
But what about the fathers? In the “no excuses” tone of a true ex-marine, author Steven Pressfield remarks in his book The War of Art that “Tolstoy had thirteen kids and wrote War and Peace.”[3] This may well be true, but what Pressfield doesn’t mention in his book is that Tolstoy was born the wealthy son of Russian nobility, that he greeted his children “hastily and reluctantly” each morning (according to his eldest son), and that he had a private study which only his wife was permitted to enter.[4] Tolstoy’s ridiculously badass wife Sophia, in addition to bearing a baker’s dozen of babies, was also her husband's personal secretary, proofreader and financial manager.[5] Despite there being many dads in Currey's book, I never happened upon a phrase like, “Before sitting down to write, Hemingway would cut the crust’s off Billy’s sandwiches and drop him off at school.”
I did find at least one artist whose routines I could relate to: Alice Munro, a 1950s housewife who began writing in secret once her older daughter was in school and she'd put her youngest down for a nap. Once both daughters were in school, she began publishing her work. "While Munro published short stories steadily throughout these years," Currey writes, "it ultimately took her almost two decades to put together the material for her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, published in 1968, when she was thirty-seven-years old."[2] Though progress for Munro was stilted and slow, she never gave up.
These days, I’ve managed to upgrade my meditation time to an entire 15 minutes. I don’t find these minutes every day, and they’re not always uninterrupted. My artistic practices are likewise sporadic, but they exist. Finding time requires help and sacrifices. I got rid of facebook. I don’t drink. I wake up every day between 5-6, even on weekends, so I can try to get a sketch done or get some words down before the day begins. My husband and sister-in-law help me watch my daughter. If they weren't here to help me, this blog would not exist.
What's heartbreaking is that, even when we have help, the weight of one’s creative duty can be crushing. This self-imposed obligation that I must create something genius now because I only have this tiny scrap of time and I’m missing out on precious moments with family and I’ve asked so and so to watch my daughter for this much money and meanwhile I’m not producing anything that actually makes money… that kind of pressure alone can smother the flames of creativity before we’ve even gotten started.
Some mornings, when I’ve just sat down to work, my daughter will decide to wake up early too. When that happens, I’ll either abandon what I’m doing to spend time with her or I’ll plop her down in front of a cartoon. If I choose the latter and the inspiration isn’t flowing well that morning or I find myself distracted, I might feel like I’m a worthless artist and a selfish mom. I’ll wonder if I’m going to regret this when she’s older and out of the house and I still haven’t “made it.” I ask myself, “Why bother?” If I force extra screen time on my child instead of making her an organic breakfast or a pinterest worthy sensory bin, and what I do make in that time is still complete crap that fills me with self-loathing afterward, then why the hell am I doing this anyway?
Well, because I have to.
Because the guilt of creating bad art is nothing when compared to the guilt of not making anything at all.
Because if I create something, I might still be miserable. But if I don’t, I will definitely be miserable.
I take most parenting advice with a grain of salt, but one idea that I believe very firmly in is that good leaders and good parents lead by example. If I want to teach my daughter to eat healthy, I’ve got to buy healthy food and eat it too. If I want her to read books, then I’ve got to go to the library with her and read. And if I want her to pursue her dreams, then I’ve got to keep chasing mine.
So even if the interruptions keep coming, even if dinner doesn’t get made that day, I have to keep working.
There is no other way.
[1] Mason Currey, Daily Rituals (New York, Randomhouse, 2013) 109.
[2] Ibid, 211.
[3] Susan Jacoby, "The Wife of the Genius" (April 19, 1981) The New York Times
[4] Mason Currey, Daily Rituals (New York, Randomhouse, 2013) 169.
[5] Steven Pressfield, The War of Art (New York, Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2002) 55-56.