Why creating consistently is so important

December 27, 2012December 27, 2012 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

I’ve been thinking back over the past year and remembering the awesome clients I’ve worked with.

If there’s anything that’s repeatedly reared its head this year for my clients, it’s been the issue of making creativity so BIG that it feels scary, 0verwhelming, and like there just isn’t enough time to take it on. Almost everyone I worked with had a belief that went something like this: “I can’t [write, paint, dance, draw — fill in the blank] unless I have more time available to me. So I need to completely overhaul my life in order to focus on my creativity. But completely overhauling my life isn’t possible right now. So I’m hoping that by next year I’ll be able to let go of something so I can focus on my creativity.”

What I’ve found so interesting — because these beliefs can certainly come up for me as well — is that it’s the beliefs themselves that make the idea of creating feel so hard, not creating itself.

When we make it so big we feel like we need a ton of time in which to do it, we ensure that it will never be done, because we know on some level it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever have huge blocks of empty time available to us on a regular basis. And when we tell ourselves we need more time in which to do it, and we don’t make that time or don’t see that we can have it, we put off our creative work (I prefer to call it creative play). And when we put something off, we create resistance.

The very act of putting it off (when something deep inside us knows it’s vital that we do it) creates stress around the idea of doing it — our minds spin out stories like, “Well, if I’m putting it off, it must be because it’s terribly hard and scary and BIG, and wow, that feels really frightening, which makes me just want to put it off more.”

We don’t often question thoughts like these. But they start to wield a huge amount of power over us, because these thoughts create feelings, and our feelings create our actions (or lack of actions) in the world. Often, our most powerful thought around our creativity is “I’ll do it when I don’t feel so overwhelmed and uncomfortable around it.”

But the reason we are overwhelmed and uncomfortable around it is because we make it so BIG.

Since September of 2011, I’ve been a participant in Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. (We like to call it simply The Writer’s Circle). I’ve also been co-coaching the Circle with Jenna for about a year now. In the Circle, we focus on writing a little each day, building our writing habit over time, with group support.

What I’ve learned over my time in this group is that:

1) Writing consistently (even if I’m not always crazy about what I’m writing — and believe me, I’m often not) feels a lot better than writing once every couple of months. When I create regularly, I remind myself of what matters to me, of what makes me me. When I put off creating, I can lose sight of why I create. I create because I have an instinctive drive to make meaning, to understand myself, to understand the world. I create because it’s fun (which isn’t to say it’s not challenging! But I love a good challenge.).

When I put it off until I have “more time,” I get confused about why I do it in the first place. I start to think it has something to do with money, with success, with notoriety. When I actually do it, I’m reminded that it has little to do with this things. It’s an act of adventure, a quest for discovery.

2) When we make our creativity really BIG — as opposed to integrating it into our daily lives in small, sustainable ways — it becomes something outside of ourselves, something to grasp for, something we believe will make us complete if we can only get to it. (Julia Cameron calls this turning our creativity into “Art with a capital A.”)

The truth is, creativity is always inside of us. It’s part of us. The “me” that lives my daily life and does mundane things like doing the dishes is not a completely separate entity from the part of me that sits down and writes. In fact, sitting down and writing is, in some ways, not that much different from doing the dishes. The hardest part is starting. Once I begin, I proceed one sentence — one dish — at a time.

When the parts of us that create and the parts of us that do the dishes are friendly with each other, and not strangers, they work together oh so much better, and we show up in the world as more integrated beings.

3) We all — whether we are seasoned writers, or writing our very first poem, whether we are published writers or not, whether we make our living from our writing, or not — struggle with clusters of the same (or similar) issues. It’s incredibly heartening to realize that that issue you’ve struggled with in isolation, sometimes for years, is not just shared by others, but is deeply understood.

If you’d like support in creating a more regular writing habit — whether you’ve been away from writing for years, or you’re just starting out — check out The Writer’s Circle. Our next session begins December 31, and tomorrow, Dec. 28, is the last day to register. New members can save $30 on their first session with the coupon code NEWYEARWRITE. We’d love to have you there!

Image is “Artist Box 2” © Andreea Stefan | Dreamstime.com

Making Room for Everything

December 17, 2012December 17, 2012 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

Twenty years ago, my father gave me a copy of Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews. I devoured this book. I was fascinated by the words these writers used to talk about their process, and about their relationship with writing. In some ways, I cared less about what they wrote than I did about what writing meant to them, its connection to who they were, and how it made meaning for them.

One interview stood out for me the most, and that was with the Irish writer Edna O’Brien, author of many novels and short stories. I returned to this interview again and again. Edna O’Brien was so herself, so full of contradictions and so open and accepting of them. The interviewer mentioned Philip Roth’s rumored habit of writing 365 days a year, and asked O’Brien if she shared this habit. O’Brien said that, actually, she did not write 365 days a year, because she wasn’t “that kind of writer”.

She also said that part of her process was moping. “Did Philip Roth say that he moped?” she asked.

I loved this. Permission to mope! I was twenty-one at the time, and for years I’d been trying to get rid of the part of myself that was mopey, the part of myself that actually needed time to just be with whatever I was feeling. Because no one in my life had ever given me permission to just feel bad, and to take that time. And, up until I read that interview with Edna O’Brien, I wasn’t able to give it to myself.

I didn’t know it could be okay to allow myself to feel like crap, let the feeling be there, and trust that this feeling would move and shift, as feelings do. I’d always been taught to get rid of that stuff — if I allowed myself to get in touch with it at all — and to move on from it as soon as possible.

Which hadn’t worked very well.

Because sometimes I need that. I need to putter around the house with these feelings and just give them space. I need to allow them to be, instead of engaging in the inner tug of war that happens when I feel a little mopey and I tell myself, “You don’t have any real reason to feel that way!”

As a creativity coach, a frequent refrain I hear from clients who feel sad, tired, or drained is, “I know I shouldn’t be letting this get in the way of my [writing, artwork, coaching — fill in the blank].”

We have this idea that “creating” means doing — all the time — and we’re somehow “lesser” writers or artists or coaches if we’re not always doing something that looks like creating. We get into either/or: I’m either doing it, or I’m not.

We don’t see the whole of our process — we might not even be aware of the whole of our process. The root system of a tree plunges deep, deep into the earth — but we only see the leaves, the trunk, the branches. And in winter, we don’t even see leaves.

What if we included all of ourselves in our process? What if we saw all of our emotions as helping our creative process, rather than hurting it?

In attending to, making space for, our own emotional core, we feed our creativity, over time.

We may have days that look like puttering, or moping, or just curling up on the couch, and not much else.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t creating. We’re just in the unseen part of our process. We’re just underground for a while.

The holidays are a good time to remember this. We often feel frazzled, disconnected from ourselves, due to extra activities and the “stuff” the holidays can bring up for many of us. What part of your process are you in right now? Can you give yourself permission to be there, or at least, to notice where you are? Can you make room for whatever’s coming up?

Happy Holidays to my beautiful readers, clients, and friends.

And here’s a great opportunity for more permission-building insights: My friend and mentor, the wonderful writer and coach Jenna Avery, is offering a free teleseries on Creative Productivity, starting this Wednesday, Dec. 19! You can check it out and sign up, here.

Image is Ice Tree © Brent Hatcher | Dreamstime.com

Practicing Reverent Curiosity

December 6, 2012December 6, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

“Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or ‘way’, an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world.” — John Gardner

On Thanksgiving Day, I was hit with a bad cold. I spent two days pretending the cold wasn’t actually there and that I could go on functioning as if I were well. By the third day, I had to admit that I really was sick — and this meant I had to let go of my need for that thing I fondly call “momentum.”

I like the feeling of momentum. I like the idea that I am moving forward. The trouble comes in when I start to believe I can truly control exactly how things move.

When I returned to working on my novel after being sick, I felt disconnected from what I really wanted to say, at a loss with the story. My characters seemed like they were doing silly things, just marking time, moving around the rooms of my pages for no purpose.

Yesterday, during a group writing sprint with other members of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle, I went to the page with the same feeling of stuckness and confusion about my story that I’ve had lately. “This is terrible!” a familiar voice inside me piped up. “You have to get over this! You need to make this story work!” (No pressure, or anything.)

When, as a coach, I work with a client who’s stuck, I often use metaphor to help them see their situation clearly. I asked for a helpful image to come to me, and the image that bubbled up in my mind was my cat, when we have a vet visit scheduled and he’s caught on to the fact that the cat carrier has entered the room. Once he gets under the bed, my mission is impossible: he knows he can hide there from me as long as he wants, because I can’t physically pick up the bed and get him out. And we’ve certainly had incidents where I’ve chased him around the house, and sometimes I end up standing the cat carrier on its end and stuffing him into it while he braces his back legs on its sides and writhes furiously. I hate this. And, of course, so does he.

There was this one time, though, when my cat snuck under the bed and I just didn’t have it in me to figure out a way to get him out and stuff him into the cat carrier. I set the carrier on the floor in the living room and sat down in a chair. I called the vet and told them we probably weren’t going to make it to our appointment.

The vet’s assistant was completely laidback about this. “Come on in if you catch him,” she said, laughing.

I sat quietly in my chair. Really, chasing my cat just didn’t seem worth it. He wasn’t ill; it was just a routine check-up since he’s getting into his senior years.

Within fifteen minutes, my cat emerged from beneath the bed and tentatively walked into the living room. He saw me sitting in the chair, looking quite harmless; he approached the cat carrier and sniffed at it. Then he began to investigate the carrier very thoroughly, with a kind of reverent curiosity. It was like he wanted to fully understand this instrument of his impending doom.

I realized that I was treating my story the way I treat my cat when I just want to get him to the damn vet. I stuff him into a box and endure his plaintive meows, feeling like a world-class jerk. Because I want to fix things. Because I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing. Because I’m driven by a kind of urgency.

Obviously, sometimes my cat needs to go to the vet and we do engage in this routine (though I’ve gotten quieter and better at doing sneak attacks, so neither of us struggle as much these days — usually).

But does this pattern work with my novel, with my characters?

I was stuck and overwhelmed because I was invested in the idea that my story needed to be “fixed,” that it contained a problem that needed to be solved. There are certainly plenty of books and advice out there that can tell me how to “fix my novel problem.” And some of them can be very helpful, at certain points in the process. But I realized yesterday that approaching my story in this top-down way, as if it was something I could fix from the outside by forcing it into a box of my choosing, was disconnecting me from anything the story had to show me, from letting it reveal itself.

When I sat back, relaxed, and made the choice to approach my story with that reverent curiosity my cat is so good at, I discovered a fascinating thing: I got really interested in my story again. I wasn’t trying to make it be, or do, anything; I was just interested in it. That all-important question, “What is it about?” welled up in me, and I realized I knew exactly what it was about. I also realized that this novel does not want to be as long as I’ve been thinking it should be. It just might want to be a novella. It knows what it is; and I’ve been so set on “fixing it” that I’ve lost touch with the thread that connects one scene to the next.

My story started to move again. I wrote beyond the 0ne-hour set time of the group sprint, I was so caught up in it. Hallelujah! I understand my story better. And why did I get into this writing in the first place, if not to better understand?

Can I approach my life, too, from this space of reverent curiosity? Can I step back, breathe for a moment, and give my life the space and kind attention it needs in order to be what it wants to be?

Work With Me: I love helping writers and artists who are feeling stuck. Check out my one-on-one coaching, here.

Image is “Wonder Cat” © Eden Daniel | Dreamstime.com

Support, Part 2: Reaching Out of the Vortex

November 18, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

In my last post, I talked about how things that look, sound and smell like support may not actually be support. And I mentioned that dark, swirling, sucking vortex I can get into when I need support but I’m not sure how to get the kind I need — or maybe I’m not even sure what kind of support I need to begin with.

So, if we find ourselves in the vortex, how do we get out?

First, remember that being in the vortex is only scary because we believe we shouldn’t be there and we need to get out, now.

As Byron Katie might say, we should be there because we are there. Being there is just another opportunity to look around and learn.

Second, there are two parts to support — self-support and support from others that feels supportive. (Hiro Boga commented, brilliantly, in a recording I listened to on her site recently, that it’s not support if it doesn’t feel supportive!)

So, when you’re swirling in the Vortex of Need, ask the wise part of yourself: What might feel truly supportive right now? And see what bubbles up. (It’s really important to ask your inner wisdom for this information, and not the part of you that is spinning in need and angry or sad or desperate that it’s not getting its needs met. This part of you does not need to be burdened with questions right now.)

Usually, I get a response that is very simple. It might be to call a particular person I trust. It might be to tell any one of my private, virtual support networks that I’m feeling like crap. It might be to do the dishes, watch a movie, take a nap, open a particular book. It’s never about the long-term– it’s always a very small, specific thing I can do in this moment.

Thinking too long-term can make getting the kind of support we need feel completely overwhelming. It’s not possible to know what kind of support we’re going to need next year, or even next week. We can only know what we need in this moment.

So, what if it feels hard to get in touch with our inner wisdom? What if it’s crowded out by the voice of need? What if our inner wisdom suggests calling Suzy, but even though we know we deeply trust Suzy, we’re so far into the vortex that, in this moment, calling Suzy feels unsafe?

This is where the self-support piece comes in. Sometimes, I need to practice self-support before I can reach out for support from others. This is one of those steps that often gets left out. “Reach out, ask for help, have courage,” we’re told. But there’s an intermediate step that gets skipped over, and that’s kindness.

Can I access that space within me that is exquisitely kind, warm, and accepting — toward myself? It’s often easy to generate this type of kindness toward others, but what about turning it inward, toward me? This means having total reverence and respect for whatever it is I’m feeling. Giving it permission to be there, and legitimacy, and validity.

We often skip completely over this step, and then wonder why, when someone else does offer support, it doesn’t “land.” Usually it doesn’t land because there’s still a part of us judging and beating ourselves up for feeling whatever it is in the first place — for needing to begin with.

The beautiful thing is that when I practice this type of kindness toward myself, I am put immediately in touch with my inner wisdom. There’s nothing like kindness to lift me out of the vortex of need. In fact, reminding myself to treat myself with exquisite kindness points out the places where I’ve been harsh, or where others (not meaning to) have triggered my own harshness toward myself. But it’s hard to see the harshness when I’m living by its rules. I need to shift into kindness in order to see it.

So, the quick version of this process:

1) Accept that you are In the Vortex of Need, and it’s totally okay. You should be there because you are there.

2) Ask your inner wisdom, what might feel truly supportive right now? See what bubbles up. Take action on whatever comes.

3) If you can’t access your inner wisdom, or if what bubbles up from your inner wisdom feels too scary, practice kindness toward yourself. Deep, radical, kindness. Notice what shifts in practicing this. If it feels hard or awkward, imagine the kindness you’d feel toward a struggling friend, or your cat or dog — someone you find it really easy to be deeply kind to — and direct that kindness toward yourself.

The quick and dirty version:

Skip to number #3 and keep doing it. From deep, radical kindness, all Vortexes of Need dissolve and transform into Foundations of Support.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you reach out for support. What makes it feel easier?

And: Wednesday, Nov. 21, is the last day to sign up for Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’m both a participant and a coach for this group, and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re looking for support in creating a daily writing habit!

Image is YELLOW VORTEX © Carsten Erler | Dreamstime.com

Understanding our Limits: Self-care and Creativity

September 17, 2012September 18, 2012 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

The foundation of a healthy relationship with our creativity is self-care.

And yet, creators know that the act of creativity is also part of our self-care. So how do we negotiate the needs of our physical and emotional selves, and the needs of our spirits?

When I was in my twenties, I thought that all the good feelings I got from creativity meant I could override and ignore pesky things like getting enough sleep, eating well, and having relationships that felt reciprocal and nurturing. I thought I could be this wildly creative being and forget the fact that I am a physical being with physical needs that are not going to go away just because I ignore them.

This turned into a vicious cycle which went something like this: let me create more because it helps me feel bigger and better and then I’ll have more energy to pour into my relationships and I won’t need as much sleep or to slow down and pay attention to what I’m eating and whether or not I really have enough money to support myself. Okay, now I’m really wired and tired and my relationships aren’t very healthy and I don’t have enough money; but let me create more because it makes me feel good and then I don’t have to think about these other annoying things that are part-and-parcel to living.

This was a form of grandiosity, though it took me a while to understand it. I didn’t want to believe that I had limits, that I was a physical being with a body that got tired and emotions with messages like, “I’m burning out here.”

I did burn out on this way of life at about age twenty-five. I ended up in the hospital, dehydrated, with an unbearably sore throat and an enlarged liver and spleen. (“You don’t actually need your spleen,” the doctor told me. “But it’s nice to have it.”)

It took me a couple of years to transition into a different, slower, deeper way of living. At first I thought this way of life would be boring; I kept trying to go back to my old way of burning the candle at both ends and ignoring my physical and emotional needs. But my body wouldn’t let me.

This was the beginning of transforming my definition of creativity and what it means to be “a creative person.” I still created, regularly, but over time I saw that I did it because I wanted to, because it felt good — I stopped using it as a means to avoid the aspects of life that I had previously considered too “mundane” to deal with.

I also realized that I had a deeply held belief that if I wasn’t actively creating something — something tangible in the form of words on paper or paint on canvas or what have you — I had no value as a person. I was so wrapped up in this “doing” mentality that it took me a while to realize that, for me, “creating” had become completely entangled with proving my own worth as a human being.

What I now know is that creativity is a natural extension of my human experience. Though it’s vital to have a regular habit or routine of creating, it’s also important to recognize that I don’t make creativity “happen.” It’s a natural part of being; a regular habit of creating is simply a way of building a container to give our creativity a form and a shape. (If you want to test me on this, try not creating anything for a day and see how impossible it is.)

That’s why, now, when I work with creators, I’m committed to helping them accept not just the natural ebbs and flows of the creative process, but their own personal, internal and external ebbs and flows. When I work with someone and hear something like “I need to be writing eight hours a day,” I ask, why? Because you really love writing all the time and it brings you joy and purpose, or because you believe it’s giving you worth and value to be constantly doing?

It’s so important to examine what we believe and how it drives our actions. What I know for sure is that if I drive myself too hard — even in the name of creating — I will wear out my body, and it’s this body that, ultimately, carries out my purpose on this earth.

The fascinating paradox of all this is that when I build into my life the care for my body that it truly needs, I accomplish more of what I deeply want to accomplish — not less — and I feel better about what I do.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. How do you balance self-care and your creative projects?

If you need a reminder to listen to your body, hang out with animals. When they’re tired, they rest.

Image is LOUNGING CAT © April Turner | Dreamstime.com

Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

August 29, 2012 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

A few days ago while logging in my daily progress for Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle, I had one of those light-bulb moments where I got something, not just intellectually but viscerally.

One of the questions we group members respond to daily asks us what negative thoughts we noticed that came up around our writing. Time and time again, I find myself writing some variation of this: “My writing isn’t exciting or important enough. It’s not active enough. There’s not enough drama. No one will find it interesting.”

I’ve examined these thoughts for quite a while now. Are they true? Yes, sometimes my writing lacks drama. Sometimes it could be more active. But all the time? No, these things are not always true. As for “it’s not exciting or important enough” and “no one will find it interesting,” well, that’s all subjective. I’ve certainly gotten enough feedback on my writing by this point in my life to know that quite a few people have found it interesting. And, as any writer knows, the most important thing when it comes to writing is that you, the writer, are fascinated by what you’re writing.

But this particular day as I logged in these thoughts once again, cringing at their familiarity, I got it. BUSTED! I said out loud, practically snorting my iced coffee.

These thoughts about my writing are my particular form of resistance.

Here’s how I know this: There have been days when I’ve known, without a doubt, that what I’ve written has been exciting and dramatic. To me, anyway. My whole body felt engaged as I wrote; I could hardly tear myself away from the page. These days don’t happen all that often. When they do, they’re wonderful, but that doesn’t usually completely quiet my inner critic.

On these days, when I logged in my progress, what negative thoughts had I noticed? “This writing isn’t serious enough; it’s too active; it should be quieter and deeper; it moves too quickly.”

Yep, when my inner critic knew it couldn’t convince me the writing wasn’t exciting or active, it just went ahead and criticized the writing for not being other things.

Here’s what I realized: My inner critic just wants to protect me from putting my writing out there for scrutiny. So it dredges up anything it can find “wrong” about the writing that I just might believe. When it knows I won’t buy into the idea that the writing isn’t exciting or active enough, it criticizes the writing for having these very qualities.

My inner critic wants to convince me that unless I’m sure my writing is all things to all people, I shouldn’t put it out there — it’s not good enough yet, it’s not ready. And it’s a lose-lose proposition, a double bind. It’s like not showing up to the party unless you’re sure you can be every kind of guest. Since you know you can’t be, you don’t show up at all.

So I’ve finally gotten it: “Not exciting and active enough, not important enough” or any variations thereof, are my “usual suspects” when it comes to my writing. They’re my go-to thoughts that exist solely to keep me from having faith in my own stories, from investing them with enough importance to go all the way with them, to truly own them.

Noticing these thoughts — my usual suspects — allows me to round them up, corral and question them. In fact, I’m getting so used to them I don’t even always have to question them anymore. I just notice them and say, ah, there you are again.

One time when I was in grad school, a well-known writer visited one of my writing classes and was asked her best advice for writers. “Know what kind of writer you are,” she said. She said she loved Dickens, but she was never going to write like him.

And I’m probably never going to write action-packed thrillers that pump you full of adrenaline. It’s not the kind of writer I am. Luckily, I don’t have to be every type of writer. Knowing that — finally getting it at a deep level — frees me up to trust in the writing that is mine and mine alone.

Do you need support in creating a daily writing habit? Tomorrow, Aug. 30, is the last day to sign up for the next session of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’ve been a member of this group for going on a year, and I’m also Jenna’s co-coach. It’s a tremendously powerful way to become aware of what keeps you from writing, and to get group support while you do it. Check it out here!

Image is ANTIQUE BLACK TYPEWRITER PAINTED WITH LIGHT
© Dariusz Sas | Dreamstime.com

Creative Ebbs: Not the Same as Stuckness

July 30, 2012 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

If you think about any relationship you’ve ever had, you’ll notice that there were phases to the relationship. Sometimes you were sitting on the couch shoulder to shoulder eating cookie dough ice cream and watching Netflixed episodes of “The Office” (British version, preferably) and you couldn’t stop laughing and finishing each other’s sentences. Other times, you were kind of quiet and it was just nice. Other times you went rollerskating and you couldn’t stop falling down, in a good way.

And then there were those times when there was just nothing to say. Phone calls felt heavy; there were lots of long pauses, and not the good kind. You got on each other’s nerves without meaning to; previously endearing odd little habits began to seem like dealbreakers.

Maybe in your younger years, the not-so-good times felt like sound reasons to end the relationship; but as you got older and had more experience, you began to see that it was important to ride them out because the ice-cream-on-the-couch times could always come back.

You have a relationship with your creativity, too. And it needs to be accepted, nurtured and protected just like any other relationship you care about. But a lot of times (and what I see happening most often with my clients) is that we either neglect this relationship or ignore it — or, at the other end of the spectrum, we push it so hard and try to control it so much that it withers or hides from us.

Accept that your relationship with your creativity has seasons, cycles, ebbs and flows. You can — believe it or not — trust these ebbs and flows. Most of us are afraid to trust them. We love the flow, but the ebb, not so much.

So I won’t talk about what to do when you’re in creative flow. Most of us love that place. I’ll address the dreaded ebb (though you shouldn’t dread it — it’s really simply the yin to the yang that is the flow).

A creative ebb is a period in which nothing much feels like it’s happening creatively for you. It’s not the same thing as feeling stuck — stuck has to do, usually, with your fears around what you’re creating, or when you’ve reached, say, the middle of your novel and you have no idea what happens next and nothing you try feels right. When we’re stuck, it’s important to bring our fears to light and give them voice so we don’t dig our wheels further into the mud.

An ebb is a bit different. You might feel it for a few days or weeks after you’ve had a period of unusually high creativity. I used to create and sell these little paintings, mostly of cats. The way my process worked was I’d get a very clear picture of what I wanted to paint in my mind, often when I was out walking, and then I’d come home and get out one of my little canvases and the image would flow out onto it, usually quite similar to what I’d envisioned.

For a period of time, I did about three of these paintings a week. And the more people bought them the more I wanted to create them. But after about nine months or so of this, the ideas gradually stopped coming. I didn’t rush to my canvases the way I had. The art I created didn’t feel as inspired to me. Some of it wasn’t selling.

I was at an ebb. How do I know it was an ebb? Well, luckily for me, in this case I’d thought of this artwork as pure fun, not at all my “life’s work” or “serious art” — I didn’t have any of those ideas attached to it that can create stuckness because we make it so big and important. So when the “flow” stopped happening, I didn’t freak out. I just kind of noticed. By now I was about to move into a new home anyway, so I focused on that. The part of me that did the paintings rested.

And within about six weeks, I was ready to go again. I starting getting new ideas and now I was incorporating collage into the paintings. I began selling them again and I got my first overseas customers.

Creative ebbs don’t necessarily last for weeks. The ebb can occur, on a smaller scale, on a daily basis, when you do your writing in the morning, say, and it goes amazingly well but by evening you’re wiped out. That evening time is what Julia Cameron calls “filling the well” time. Although it’s true that the more I create, the more creative energy I tend to have, it’s also true that a prime component to our creativity is this resting phase, whether that’s a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days.

So what do you do when you’re faced with a creative ebb? Ideally, not much of anything — putter, water plants, daydream. But I know that doesn’t sit well with you if you make your living through your creativity, or if you’re on a tight deadline. In those cases, let the resting, “be-ing” energy be there as much as you can, while keeping up a regular creative habit. Sometimes this looks like doing the minimum that needs to be done and calling it a day.

Whatever you do, don’t demand of yourself that you reach for the creative high you experience when you’re in creative flow. That, my friend, is a sure-fire recipe for getting stuck.

Allow the ebb. The ebb is your friend. When the flow returns, you’ll reap the benefits of the ebb and see just how much richness that “fallow” period has brought to your creativity.

Announcement: This Thursday, Aug. 2, is the last day to sign up for the next session of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’m Jenna’s co-coach, and I’ve also been a participant in this group for nearly a year. It’s a great way to develop a regular writing habit and get group support. Check it out here!

Also: I’ll have openings for new coaching clients starting in mid August. If you’re feeling stuck or scared around your creativity, or it seems like life just won’t stop getting in the way, feel free to set up a free consultation with me.

Image is MUD FLATS © Slidepix | Dreamstime.com

Creating: There’s No Right Way to Do It

July 16, 2012 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

A friend of mine recently attended her first ever writing class. She was really nervous. She didn’t know if she’d “fit” there. She thought maybe she wasn’t brilliant or wacky or temperamental enough to be a writer.

She showed up, and things were going along okay, and then the teacher said this: “If you’re not willing to reveal everything about yourself, you have no business being a writer.”

Ouch. My friend felt like a hermit crab retreating into its shell. It had been hard enough just getting herself to the class, and now here’s someone in a position of authority saying that if she doesn’t put it all out there, she has no right to write.

Here’s the thing:

When we begin something new, we are tentative. This is normal. Feeling tentative does not mean we are not serious or that we “won’t make it.” We need to start small, and stretch ourselves a little each time we begin again. And little by little, we become less tentative. We take bigger risks.

When we create, we are exposing pieces of ourselves. We are saying, in essence, this is what fascinates me, this is what I struggle with, this is what I really care about. And that can be hard. That can be terrifying. Particularly if we’re just starting out. And even if we’re seasoned creators, we continue to explore new territory and there’s always an element of fear in that.

Starting small and feeling tentative about it is so much better than not starting at all.

And this is exactly why we need to start small if we are really, really afraid. If you get vertigo when you stand on a chair, you don’t climb up a bell tower and look down (well, unless you are Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, but you get my point).

Some new writers are excited and motivated by the idea of “laying it all on the line.” And that’s terrific.

But if you’re not excited and motivated by that, if it scares the hell out of you, that doesn’t make you any less a writer. And you shouldn’t have to hide this fear because you’re afraid someone will tell you that if you don’t want to lay it all on the line, it means you “don’t really want it.”

And here’s another truth: The more you care about something, the more tender the subject, the closer it is to your very essence, the harder it’s going to be to write about — or, at least, the harder it’s going to be to share with others.

But this doesn’t mean that, if you’re not feeling ready to do that now, you have no business being a writer. It just means you’re not feeling ready to do that now.

Here’s a question I like: What might help me to feel a little more okay about starting?

Obviously, the idea that she had to be willing to reveal everything about herself shut my friend down. She didn’t want to return to the second writing class; she didn’t even want to write.

So here’s what we worked out together. We changed “I have to be willing to reveal everything about myself” to “I’m willing to reveal some things about myself.” This felt much better to her. And here’s another thought that felt true for her: “I have the right to be a writer because I have a deep desire to write.”

I tell this story because we create resistance when we believe black-and-white, all-or-nothing thoughts about our creativity. There’s no “right” way to create. You can be a “real” writer even if you are not putting one hundred percent of your inner turmoil out there for the world to see.

Here’s what I’ve found: I can usually do more and go farther than I thought I could. But I don’t find that out if I don’t give myself full permission to meet myself where I am. If I set up a challenge for myself that feels insurmountable (or, when it comes down to it, undesirable), I’m going to shut down.

So give yourself full permission to be a beginner (and we’re all beginning, again and again and again). If someone criticizes you for being “too tentative,” or “not serious,” say, “‘I am serious. I’m seriously tentative. I’m trying something new.” And then tell them they have to stop criticizing you. And this goes double if you’re criticizing yourself.

If a belief shuts you down, it’s not the truth for you. There are as many kinds of creators as there are human beings who have the desire to create. And we’re all motivated in different ways. It’s not one-size-fits-all, and thank goodness for that.

Getting out of analysis paralysis (or: what to do when you don’t know what to do)

July 1, 2012July 1, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

A couple of my clients, both writers, have been struggling with “analysis paralysis.” They’re ultra-verbal, extremely articulate, and live a lot in their heads. And they’re both also funny and intelligent and sensitive and downright awesome. And I don’t like seeing them in so much stress. So, of course, we wanted to find out how to move them out of it.

Both of them said they had reached a point where they just didn’t know what the hell to do about the particular bundle of issues they were wrestling with. Because there were a lot of issues, and they’d gone over every possible option a thousand times, and looked at it all from every possible angle, and nothing solved the problem. And now they felt totally stuck and spent.

And I so, so get it. In fact, I’d been in the process of curling up in that very same corner (the one I’d so handily painted myself into). And it’s always interesting to see what you’re going through mirrored back to you, but when it’s somebody else’s stuff, you have the ability to see it more clearly.

There’s a correlation between people who tend to be perfectionistic (me!) and “mistake-avoidant” (me!) and people who get stuck in analysis paralysis. We think there’s got to be a right option, a right path, and we’re convinced that we can somehow keep ourselves from ever having any regrets if we can just find it, so we go into the spin cycle of analysis. We try to “think” our way out of whatever is overwhelming us, and in the process, we overwhelm ourselves more by imagining every eventuality.

And in the darkest, heaviest times, this is the stuff depression is made of. Because every option we see has a “yeah, but” attached to it, and since we’re using the minds that created the issues in the first place to try to find our way out of them, we’re truly in a stuck-leading-the-stuck place and more thinking is absolutely not going to help us now.

For those of us who tend to be very verbal and in our heads, it is vital that we connect with our bodies when we are freaking out — though this is probably going to be the last thing we “think” we should do.

That’s why the last time I got massively stuck in analysis paralysis, I got up from my desk (where I was surrounded by words: email notifications, my open notebook, my daily planner) and went into the kitchen and did the dishes.

In fact, Byron Katie actually has a concept called “doing the dishes.” It means, just do that one simple thing that needs to be done. That’s all you ever have to do. Everything else is just a thought, usually a thought about the future or the past.

My clients and I came up with several ways to pull ourselves out of an analysis paralysis “emergency state,” all based on the concept of simplifying and getting into the moment. And because, if you’re in this state, it is indeed vital to keep things simple, I’ve kept the list to three things.

1) Do something that requires physical movement. Think manual labor (like my doing the dishes, or vacuuming), or taking a walk to the post office — no mental heavy lifting. (Again: you don’t want to get more verbal at these times — that’s part of the problem. You want to get into your body.)

2) If you only do one thing (remember, we’re focusing on simplifying here), let it be giving yourself permission to stop beating yourself up for getting into analysis paralysis and everything that has contributed to it. Really, that’s all. Permission to stop beating yourself up. You don’t even have to stop. You just have to give yourself permission to do so.

3) Let go of one thing in your physical space. Yes, get rid of it. Take it to the trash. (If you’re like me, and you believe that even empty boxes of Kleenex just might have feelings, be very, very gentle as you do.) And, since our intention is to simplify and not complicate things here, it has to be something you absolutely have been meaning to get rid of. Don’t get caught up in wondering if you really want to get rid of it, because then you’re right back into analysis paralysis. Then: Notice how it feels to have let go of that object, whatever it was. See if you feel just the tiniest bit lighter. If it feels right, you can continue letting go of things. (I did this with two drawers of clothing recently.) But only if it feels right.

What are your techniques for getting yourself out of analysis paralysis? I’d love to know.

This week:

I have two openings for new coaching clients in July. Are you a sensitive creator who feels stuck or overwhelmed? Contact me to set up a free consultation.

And: This Thursday, July 5, is the last day to register for the next session of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I am one of the coaches, and I’ve also been a participant in this group since it started last September. In that time, I’ve completed two previously unfinished novel drafts. If you’re feeling stuck or like you just can’t develop a solid writing habit on your own, I highly recommend you check it out!

Noticing you’re “in it”: what does perfectionism look like?

June 1, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

This is the final post in my May article series on perfectionism and how it interferes with our creativity — and how we can recognize it before it has its way with us! There’s plenty more on this site about perfectionism, as well as its partner in crime, procrastination — just click on the Categories listing on the right.

It can be tricky to recognize when we’re in the grip of perfectionism, because we often applaud ourselves for the very behavior it creates. I struggled so much with overachieving as a child that by the time I was fifteen years old, I burned out and literally had no clue as to why I did anything at all — all I knew was that nothing I did gave me the sense of satisfaction I wanted it to give me for very long. The why beneath what we do is important; in fact, it’s essential.

Perfectionistic behavior is fear-based. We’re acting to secure what we think we’d be lost without. We do more because we fear that if we don’t, we won’t have enough.

When we take action from a place of wholeness and authenticity, we act based on the conviction that we are already secure. We do more because we enjoy it, because it enhances our lives. We stop when we’ve had enough.

So, how can you tell you’re in perfectionism’s clutches?

You can tell by the way you feel. For me, that’s often urgent, anxious, overly driven (I feel I can’t stop or slow down), a tight stomach, clenched jaw, contracted body, slumped-over posture. I physically “clench up”, become smaller than I actually am. Sometimes I feel extra-irritated and want to snap at people.

(Can you imagine the extra burden we place on ourselves when we sit down and try to create from this feeling, from this place?)

Sometimes, though, I’m not necessarily in touch with my feelings or my body. I’m totally in my head, and although I know lots of techniques for getting into my body, I don’t always do them because my mind is telling me I don’t have time, or there’s no point (tricky, tricky mind!). This is when I can look to my behavior for clues.

For me, perfectionism manifests itself in the following behaviors:

* Going above and beyond just because I can; staying really, really on top of things (i.e. responding to emails immediately; setting daily goals that are way bigger than they actually need to be because my ego likes the way they look).

* Saying YES a lot, when I really mean maybe, or no. Often I do this to avoid conflict. Will saying no really create conflict? I can always say, “Let me think about that,” instead of “yes.”

* Finishing what I’ve planned to do for the day and then doing more, rather than, as we like to say in Jenna Avery’s Writer’s Circle, “declaring myself satisfied!” A similar version of this is sneaking “doing” into time I’ve set aside for “being.”

* People-pleasing and all its graspy little offspring. This can look like refusing to set boundaries around my time and energy, or affecting an “always smiling” persona so I don’t “upset anyone.”

* Cutting back on, or cutting out, fun activities until I’ve “gotten it all done.”

* Using the terms “should” and “have to” a lot.

Any of these behaviors are good pointers, alerting me that I’m “in it.” The value in noticing them is that when they go unchecked, I get further and further cut off from my true feelings, my true needs. Stopping them before they snowball can prevent the build-up that creates “the backlash” (a term I got from Cynthia Curnan, author of “The Care and Feeding of Perfectionists”), where I burnout, crash, and want to remain immobile for hours or days at a time because I’ve pushed and criticized myself for so long.

What behaviors alert you that you’re “in it”? Jot down a list of these (writing them down really helps you remember them) and the next time you notice yourself doing them, pause and course-correct until your actions stem from what you authentically want. It is so worth it.

If you struggle with perfectionism (or what can often be its flipside, procrastination), check out my one-on-coaching, here. I have a ton of tools in my arsenal to help you!