She asked me to roll down the windows in the car. It was the dead of winter. The sun worked to keep us warm and salt coated our lips as the sky bloomed pink and we skirted along the pacific. Our hair tangled together, my fingers barely gripping the wheel. How strange it was that it took my skin going numb to finally feel something.
I’m writing this note from a different season. The air is warm now, spring showing herself in the trees. I’m typing on my phone, in a parked car, as an evening wind enters through the window and washes a bare patch of skin with something holy that I can’t quite name. It all feels so gentle. There exists a tenderness for the earth and my writing that I haven’t felt in some time.
A few weeks ago I announced an experiment called a creative support group for springtime. It’s been four weeks and I’m still wondering if I’ve moved the needle on my writing and ambitions. I think the answer is yes. While I haven’t reached the word count goals or written every day as I promised myself I would, I have noticed an internal shift. I think about writing almost every hour, and the importance of that is not lost on me. I’m more attentive to pockets of time, like this one right now, in which I can write with ease and enjoyment from the front seat of my prius.
I wonder if it was as simple as becoming curious and open. A few days ago, I did something I’d never done before: I wrote while my husband was in the room watching TV. I wrote with headphones on and music (with lyrics) playing. This is usually too much stimulation for my mind, but somehow it came easy. I was having fun. It felt as if some invisible pressure valve had been released.
This is what I want to share with you in this final note for this project and as you continue to work on your creative goals this year:
There is a pleasure to be found in creating, and strife is not obligatory or to be envied. You do not have to be exhausted or burned out. You do not need to force yourself to the page. You do not need to sacrifice your sleep or leisure or relationships to be worthy of a published book or a creative dream realized. This way of creating may feel counterproductive and different from what you were taught. But I hope you can remain open to the possibility of something better than forced art.
Goals and resolutions are helpful until they are not. There are groups and books and podcasts out there that can help you learn how to write every day or reach some lofty goal. I’m not knocking those. I’ve benefited from them. I often need those types of teachers to help me narrow my focus when the season calls for it.
But I’ve also found myself overwhelmed and angered by the idea that creativity must be measured. Release that pressure for yourself. You get to work on your creative projects how and when you want to. There is no playbook. Only you and your dream and a parked car on some night in April. Once you see that, once you notice that your dreams want to partner with you rather than be mastered by you, everything will change.
You will write because you want to write. You will paint because the colors beg this of you. You will drive with the windows down because the wind brings tears to your face while the AC makes your skin feel rotten. This will remind you that life is slow and time can be savored. Books can be reread. Stories can be worked on for decades and only shared with close friends, or no one. Not everything needs to be measured or produced or turned into a profit. These things are not bad, but they cannot be the reason. Not when the cost is the ability to play with words without wondering if anyone will buy them. Not when the cost is creating because we want to.
I have loved spending time with all of you these past few weeks. It means so much to me that so many of you chimed in and shared your own ideas and projects. I will be reflecting on this all for a long time and using it as motivation to continue writing my book and challenging the idea of “creating correctly.”
I am rooting for you. I hope you continue to create and try new ways and methods. Thank you for being a part of this little group. xx
Wow Kayti -this was great! I was at a yoga/meditation/sound bath on Sunday. We asked to ponder what we were neglecting or ignoring in ourselves the first word that came to my mind was writing. I want to make my creative writing pursuits more of a focus and instead of feeling pressured I feel comforted. So I know that something has shifted in my attitude toward my own creativity. We all realize that it’s about the process and not the product or end result.
This is so beautiful, thank you for sharing.