Claiming the worthiness of our work

I haven’t been writing a lot of fiction lately, which is unusual for me. I suppose I burned out—lots of effort and work on a variety of projects, a nice pile of rejections, and also honestly, I’ve just been tired. For a couple years. I wanted to let life live through me rather than trying to organize it with words.

Sometimes I think one of the hardest things for us creative types is allowing ourselves to rest. And not just one day a week as if we’re on some kind of biblical sabbath schedule. I mean letting the need for rest, true creative rest, take us where it needs to go. Sometimes for days or weeks. It could be months, even years.

Though I’ve written a smidgeon of fiction recently, by and large I am coming to you from the longest period of rest I’ve taken in, uh…forever? Starting sometime in March or April last year, I decided to let myself off the hook with writing novels. I let myself get busy with other things. I worked at regular jobs. I did other types of art! I saw friends! Family! I went hiking and exploring and ran off to Scotland. I let all this take me over and except for a couple days here and there, I let it carry me away.

And you know what? It felt good. Really good. I felt like I reclaimed a balance I hadn’t fully understood that I was lacking. I was so happy.

Until last Thursday, when I sat down by my desk with a whole unscheduled day ahead of me, ready to write something, and realized I wasn’t sure what to do. But I wanted to work on something. I felt, somehow, both a desperate spiral of deep sadness over not working and a fierce longing to create A BOOK. And I heard a voice I haven’t heard in about nine months say within, I want to work. I want to sink deep into a project. I need this.

I’ll skip over the ensuing existential angst about what project to work on (spoiler, I went back to a project I’d been occasionally messing with), and get to the good bit: I got to work. I have no idea if anyone will want to read the story I’m writing, which has been limping along since 2021 with occasional sprints of absolute verbose madness and long rest periods simmering on my proverbial back burner, but whatever. I’m writing it!

I took such a long break from writing novels that I forgot how bold it can feel to claim that time, energy and focus for creative work. To have cleared out certain times so that I can devote myself to this thing…and to actually use those times to write. No matter what “becomes” of it (a.k.a. publishing, I’m talking about publishing), it felt strange and scary and also empowering as hell to say, This is my time. My work matters. My work has value. My work is worthy no matter what, simply because it’s my work. It’s one of the things I’m here to do.

It’s easy to fall into this loop of thinking your work isn’t worthy if nobody sees it. If it isn’t claimed by someone else, published, sold, sent wide-eyed out into the great unknown. Easy to feel shame: why didn’t I do this better? Why didn’t I write about this instead? Why didn’t I get so-and-so’s idea and sell it for a million dollars like they did?

But our creative work has more value than money. The things we make from our hands, our visions, our imaginations, always have more worth than any financial amount, no matter how much they might eventually sell for.

The other day, I drew the goddess Saraswati card from Meggan Watterson’s Divine Feminine Oracle deck (artwork by Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman). “Our art should not be judged on its popularity,” the description reads, “but on its power to transform us.”

This is a really beautiful and powerful deck for those who enjoy such things!

My mind has been circling back to that quote, and I’m finding that that is my prayer. I want to create something that transforms me. Something that is healing, something that helps and at the very least, something that matters deeply to me. And hopefully, if it matters to me, it will bring some light to others, too.

What more can we ask of our creative work?