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When creating a garden, you need time for planning, site selection, amending the soil, setting up irrigation, planting, weeding, and all sorts of other tasks! Sometimes you need to set aside a chunk of time, but for many tasks it can be a few minutes here and there.
Creating is the same way. There are occasions when we need to set aside a large chunk of time -- forming your clay into a vessel, for example, is usually best done in one sitting -- and other times we can use little dollops of time here and there -- making notes on the vessel design that comes to you unexpectedly.
The important thing to remember about creative time is that we're actually dealing with two types of time. One is relatively inflexible, and the other is very flexible.
When we are actually producing our project -- putting pen to paper, or paint to canvas -- we need time that is devoted solely to our project. Preferably it is relatively free of distractions, and preferably we have a chunk of it available. This is the type of time that most people are thinking of when they lament a lack of time to create.
The other type of time is when we are actually getting creative inspiration on a project. This is the kernal of a story, the flash of insight for a painting, or the shape of a vessel. This type of creative time is often actually timeless, and it can occur as easily while we are occupied with a physical task as while sitting in our creative space "creating" -- more easily, perhaps. What it requires is that we are cultivating our creative mindset and holding that in our awareness. We can be doing anything -- brushing our teeth, showering, driving, vacuuming. The problem is that if we are not using our creativity in our daily life, if we are not keeping that sharp, then these ideas are more reluctant to show up. Or we miss them entirely.
When they do show up, we need to honor them by taking a moment to make a note or a sketch -- in other words, we need to honor our creative insights, we need to listen. When we do this, insights are more likely to keep showing up. When our subconscious believes that we are ignoring it, there is no incentive for it to keep communicating with us.
If we are cultivating ideas for our creative projects all the time, and recording them, then when we sit down to create, during our creative time, we are ready to go, not trying to come up with "ideas."
Sometimes, of course, we do both. Sometimes our creative process just works that way. When we're in the middle of creating, new ideas come to us, things change.
If we're not living our lives with the focus of creating, then when we sit down to create, we're trying to force inspiration to appear on a timetable, rather than recording the inspiration that's already shown up. If we do this often enough, eventually we begin to view our creative time as unproductive, unsatisfying, or stressful, and eventually we may give up creating all together. Priming the pump by keeping a creative mindset as part of our daily lives allows us to quickly get into the flow of creating when we get to our creative time.
To cultivate a creative mindset, try using that magical time when our mind is unoccupied by other tasks to invite creative ideas to appear. Collect these ideas together, so when you get to your creative time, you have material ready to go.
Next time, we'll discuss ways to "find" creative time in your schedule. In the meantime, check out the audio meditation Zenspiration! in the sidebar to your right. |
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