We want to stay informed and be aware of all that is happening in the world, but these days that can become overwhelming fast. That constant intake of bad news and conflict can fill our minds and make us feel many things—angry, hopeless, even guilty about our limited ability to help—but our creative impulses are drowning. Putting aside your creativity when the world feels like it’s on fire is not the way to help others or ourselves. Today we’re talking about why protecting your creativity is so important, especially when times are dark. Watch below or keep scrolling for a written version.
Reading is essential to improving your writing skills, and reading like a writer means seeing past the glossy end-result into a book’s structure and the author’s choices about how the story is told. Learning to read like a writer doesn’t mean learning how to merely imitate but learning the craft by example. We’re excited to announce the launch of our Memoir Method Book Club! Your first session is free, so sign up to save your seat here.
Overconsuming the Doom
You’re not imagining it; things haven’t felt good lately. Especially with the news feeds that are often filtered through social media are filled with dark and upsetting revelations each day. We feel a need to stay informed and connected, but that can tip into simply doom scrolling. We find ourselves glued to our phones and all that adds up to weigh us down. Often the first thing we do in the morning is look at our phones—check the calendar, play the Wordle, and get caught up on what’s new and happening in the world. We do this with the best of intentions, aiming to teach ourselves the information about the world. However, when we keep consuming this information over and over again, it’s not helping us make better connections, decisions, or get through our day. Rather, it’s just consuming. It’s just filling our minds to the brim with this bad news.
Lately, we have noticed patterns emerging where all that weight and overconsumption of bad news and angry rhetoric add up to making people feel selfish anytime they focus on their own creative projects instead.
But this is not selfishness, it’s necessary.
We are not trying to tell you to pay less attention to the world around us. Quite the opposite, in fact, now more than ever it’s important for everyone to be paying attention and doing what we can to help others in our community and keep those community connections thriving. But the way to do that is not to sacrifice or suppress your own creativity, because that creativity is what connects us and gives us the energy to weather these hard times.
Creativity is the key to Community
Creativity is a broad term, but what we mean creativity in this context is finding ways to truly express our true selves. We can’t always show our true selves in all contexts. In our working lives, we may need to quiet parts of our personality to keep that livelihood or maintain professionalism. This often starts with training we experience as children as we’re taught to keep a tight control and push down on the parts of our personality and expression because we were taught to avoid making ourselves inconvenient for the adults around us. This habit of tamping down our expression doesn’t make that inner uniqueness go away, however. To form real communities and feel that genuine community connection, we need to find ways to feel safe expressing ourselves. And that generates reciprocity, where others also feel safe to express themselves to us and that wonderful feeling of genuine, deep-down connection can form.
When we are consuming material constantly, our own voices and personal viewpoints start to get drowned out. When we do express, it’s often to parrot or share takes we agree with strongly. That can be good in some ways, as lifting up voices that resonate with us is a good practice, but it becomes dangerous when we lose our own voice or even adopt the voices of others as if they are our own.
Create without Pressure
As you are creating, whether you are writing or some other form of creative expression, do so without pressure from external forces. Set aside how you are thinking about the expectations of others. Set aside the weight of world and your heavy desire to work against all the dark patterns that are happening in the world while you are creating. No one person, no one writer or artist or activist or voice or leader, is going to be able to roll back all these problems. Don’t wear that impossible mantle while you’re trying to create. Real change happens through communities, and when you tap into your creativity, finding a safe place to truly express yourself, you are building your community. You are generating energy within yourself to make those honest and genuine connections.
Create with Joy
We understand how strained things are right now, how much conflict, damage, and injustice is happening. It can be so hard to connect to our joy in that knowledge. It can even make us feel guilty, as if our enjoyment and experience of uplifting and joyful expression will some how make the problems worse or keep us from doing our part to help. We associate joy with ease and think ourselves selfish and indulgent if we lean into that joy.
But if there are no joyful experiences and creativity happening, what’s the point of the fight? Denying ourselves joy isn’t respect; it’s surrender.
Create with Purpose
When you have tapped into your inner voice and self, your unique perspective and experience in order to share that through your creativity, you are adding something invaluable to the world: your little slice of the truth. When you set that as you purpose for tapping into your creativity, you have centered finding that truth in your purpose. The more we can nourish that part of ourselves, the more we can sustain our energy. We will need that energy in order to support our communities and loved ones in these hard times and after.
PS. Searching the internet for writing, publishing, and book marketing advice can be exhausting to say the least! If you’re ready for hands on, one-on-one support for your memoir, check out The Memoir Method. We’d love to welcome you into this nine-month group program specially designed for women writing their first memoirs. And don’t forget, if you’d like to chat with Amanda about the program (or any other services we offer), you can book a free consult any time!
