Creativity, I often think, is like a river. Each project is a tributary that you approach, pausing on the bank, the sand soft beneath you. Completing the project, you know, will require a thorough soaking. You are going to have to wade into this river and become one with the current.
But good lord, that’s where the resistance starts creeping in. You baulk. You don’t want to get sopping wet. You’re wearing jeans, for heaven’s sake, and they’ll weigh you down. No one wants to swim around in jeans. Plus there are so many other rivers—look at all those tributaries you could go splash around in! Why this one? It’s just too much work. And besides, it’s November. It would be much nicer to go chill by the fire with a nice cup of tea.
When I’m in the grip of resistance, I have to lure myself back into the river. I might dip my proverbial toe in, or even go up to my knees. No, too far! I flail back out and run up and down the bank. Who would want to get in this river???
Yet at some point…through some alchemical combination of inspiration, pothos1 and (as banal as it sounds) scheduling2…I find myself wading deeper and deeper into the river. Soon I am completely swept into the current. Transfixed, absorbed.
And pulling myself out of the current? That becomes much harder than getting in. The water has become warm, and the air outside is chill! Stay in, stay in! Let’s see where this river is going.
Perhaps the metaphor of different tributaries can help explain why it’s hard to multitask. For some of us, we feel like we have to physically drag ourselves out of the river in order to do anything besides our creative work. Presumably, for some people, it’s more like hopping and skipping between different currents.
Some projects are easier to hop out of than others. The river is shallower, perhaps. Or maybe there are multiple branches in this tributary that you can easily skip between.
Some rivers, though, flow so deep and cold and mysterious that it feels as if you could spend a lifetime exploring them. You embark into them, thinking you know what they are; you’ve seen their oxbows sketched on a map. But once you’re in the current, the river reveals depths, glimmers, realizations and wonders you had not before even guessed.
A few years ago, in the throes of struggling with some project or other, I transcribed/channeled some 20 pages of words from a source that seemed to be both within and beyond me. I called this our lady of the waters, but if that weirds you out, you can think of it as me talking to myself.3 This dialogue was all about the creative process and mostly, envisioning it as a river. Here’s a snippet4:
Some days, most days, you will not necessarily plunge to the depths. Getting deep is a gift; it's an initiation. The mystery of your own River will determine how deep you go, and no amount of rational effort will ever fake the true depths, or force you to get there. This is a natural process and can't be pushed. “Push not the River,” right? All you can do is arrive. Go to the River. Sit on its bank, visit the garden. Better yet, wade into the cool, pure water, slipping over moss-furred rocks. … Submerge yourself in these waters. Do this again and again until you become the water, until it is not only your inner but your outer expression…. The more you can engage in these expressions of your creative nature, of your communion with spirit, the more it will shine through your outer form, the less you will be a supplicant and the more you will become the River. You will always be a Pilgrim. You will always be following the River, because the River never ends. Some days it will become an ocean, some days a narrow Rapids, some days a lazy Oxbow, but it never stops, it never ceases to be a River, and you never stop moving with it. Now some days when you go to the River what you will capture is the light spangling off its surface, and the ripple of water warmed by the sun, and the shallows on the edges broken by rocks. There is nothing wrong with that. It is all part of the River. If we all only ever brought forth its depths, it would have no form: it would not seem to be a River but a cloud of water aching cold, and it's hard to plunge into that; it's a shock to the system. So you need to bring forth the shallows and the Shoals, the warm sun, the breath of wind, the soil and rock that hold the River, the sweetness of the garden and also its thorns, so that others might know how to access the River with you, and so that you yourself can find your way back in.
Some sources of inspiration:
Clarissa Pinkola Estes has a lovely chapter in Women Who Run with the Wolves on creativity and rivers
Steven Pressfield has some wonderful writing about resistance in his various books
Two posts ago, I talked about unicorn space and remain very fond of this idea — the book I referenced there is Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World by Eve Rodsky
What the heck is pothos? See here. And yes, we can directly blame my use and knowledge of this word on my teenage obsession with Alexander the Great.
I fear that when I teach writing classes, people’s eyes glaze over as soon as I start talking about the importance of scheduling, but guess what? If you don’t make time for your project, it’s not gonna magically sprout out of your head and take form. I remain, as ever, staunchly convinced that inspiration/creativity meet us where we are at. And if we show up, the inspiration (often) shows up in kind. Which is why getting back into the flow/river requires this sort of roulette of jumping in, jumping back out, running around, jumping back in….
Maybe that is even weirder? Hmmm….
The quirky capitalizations came through when I dictated it into Word, and I’ve kept them as they seem so appropriate.