🎙️ This is a 5AM StoryTalk Podcast BONUS EPISODE. Be sure to also listen to this week’s feature conversation — “Why Writers Want to Murder You When You Give Them Notes”.
📖 READ this episode as text below.
Have you ever wrapped a major project – maybe a novel manuscript or a screenplay that really kicked your ass – and, afterwards, found yourself creatively depleted? You know, empty?
Well, every few months, someone asks me about this experience, whether anything like it happens to me, and if I have any thoughts about how to recharge their creative batteries.
Yes, it happens to me. And yes, I have thoughts about – some tricks, so to say – for getting you back to work if that’s what you’re after.
Maybe we should start with a little personal context, since most of you don’t know me in real life and I don’t want to presume you’ve read everything I’ve ever said here. I’ve been a professional writer for 20 or so years now. Some 17 of those have been as a full-time screenwriter. I’ve had a TV series I created produced. Other TV produced. I’ve had graphic novels published; Headline Books published my novel Psalms for the End of the World a few years ago. I’ve been published by dozens of newspapers on two continents and written more than 500 articles or essays at Substack now.
In short, I have a lot of experience with words. I’ve had a lot of huge projects land in my lap and I’m incredibly accustomed to turning them around in a short amount of time and, in the aftermath – because being a working writer tends not to afford you a lot of time sitting around neither writing nor chasing more work – finding the enthusiasm, the motivation, the capcity to get back to work right away.
I want to point out, this isn’t exactly conducive to a generally healthy creative lifestyle.
If you’ve just typed THE END on a major project, you should hit save, close the file, and walk away from it and any other creative endeavors for as long as you need to reacquaint yourself with life, with friends and family, with joy.
That all said, like I already said, sometimes we don’t have that luxury. So, after that big, taxing project, we’re left laid out, dazed, sometimes so bloodied we’re little more than a figurative corpse on a slab. In lieu of harnessing lightning to resurrect ourselves, what can we do?
Here are three tricks I use in case they help you, too.They’re simple, but, I think, effective to both help us recover and encourage positive mental health – or, at least as much as any artist can ever have positive mental health. We’re all fucking nuts in one way or another; not necessarily for who we are, but for choosing to pursue a career in the arts.
Tip 1: Peer to peer interaction
What I mean is, artist to artist conversations – in person, always in person, if possible. The real matters. Phones and Zoom are great in a pinch, but you need to sit there across from someone else who lives and breathes your pain – preferably several someone elses – so you can just be together. Swap horror stories, debate great art you’ve recently encountered, or just listen to someone else’s ideas for a change.
Artists are inspiring, or at least they are to me. Surround yourself with them. Absorb their creative energy. Let yourself be super-charged by it – both as an artist and a human being.
Tip 2: Nature
That is, if you’re able to access it. Not everyone is as able as I am.
But if you can, disconnecting from your devices and getting out into nature will calm your nervous system and allow you to think in new, unexpected directions.
I don’t mean deep hikes into exotic locales either. Just in green space, where you’re not looking at manmade things as much as natural wonder. Try to find awe in these moments. If not awe, at least peace.
Without a device – and that includes music or podcasts to listen to – your imagination will take over. I know we’ve forgotten how to do this, but consider all those great, juicy ideas that come to you in the shower. That’s because you’re disconnected from everything else. You’re trapped in a kind of sensory bath that calms you and then, all of a sudden, your brain is exploding with great thoughts.
Turning the radio off when you’re driving will do this, too. Or at least switch to classical music or something ambient. You don’t want to overstimulate yourself. You want calm – and with that your creative well begins to bubble whether you’re ready for it or not.
