#0065: Time to Talk about Creative Time
How do you prioritize your creativity?
The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about time. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!
Though this newsletter is called 100 Rejections Club, that’s something of a misnomer. We cannot always be stacking up rejections to embrace or sending submissions to share. Because we need materials, we must learn to recognize the importance of setting aside space in our schedules to create. We need to figure out how to prioritize our creative goals.
🎶 Time, time, time
See what’s become of me 🎶
Make a Date
When I open my 2025 planner to some of the later weeks and months of the upcoming year, I can still see lots of open space. Sure, some annual or twice-yearly appointments already fill a slot or nine, the weekly green bin stickers (indicating cans to the curb) decorate the monthly spreads, but there’s plenty of time not yet allocated toward endless to-do lists. I’m going to continue to put my creativity on the calendar.
Inlandia’s 100 Rejections Club members have the option to join a weekly virtual meeting. Sometimes called Writing Alone Together, we gather at a set time of a set day. Though the zoom meeting has video off and audio muted, we make a date with our works in progress.
I’m also part of a small writing group that meets kinda regularly. (Sometimes kiddo duties or appointments or whatnot gets in the way; hence, we set weekly meetings in the hopes of actually meeting at least once a month.) When we gather virtually, we catch up then follow a three-word fiction prompt wherever it might take us for 15 or 20 minutes. Then we read our creations aloud and respond with kindness and encouragement.
🎶 Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme 🎶
Become Accountable
This year I’ve made a new friend, and we’ve recognized certain affinities. When she started to tell me of her historical fiction manuscript she’s written on and off, and I started to speak of my stutter-starting work in progress, we both came to the same idea at the same moment, blurting: Accountability. Let’s be accountable to each other.
We intend to define how we want to move forward on our projects before setting up our accountability parameters. Here’s some questions to ask: Why check in with each other? What should the check-ins look like? When do we want to check in with each other? Where do we want to do the check-ins?
As we hold each other accountable, we will see the importance of creativity in each other.
🎶 Seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry 🎶
Strategies
If dating your WIP and/or keeping account ledgers isn’t your style, what about streaking or getting classy or being unfaithful? (Did I get your attention?)
Try a streak
You may have read about writing every day, either a certain number of minutes or words as your daily goal. While that might be doable for some people some of the time? I have a gentler recommendation. Aim to work on your project 4 days/week. That way, if you miss the third day, all is not lost. Pick yourself back up on the fourth day with the knowledge you can still maintain your weekly streak.
Take a class
You may need deadlines to coax yourself to set aside some space for your project. If you take a class on the craft of writing, such as one of Inlandia Institute’s Winter Workshops tailored to your genre, you’ll have built-in deadlines. Another way to set aside some brain space for creativity is to take a course in something completely different from your WIP. The absolute best MOOC — Massive Open Online Course — I’ve ever participated in (several times) is the free Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”) course on the Coursera platform.
Cheat a little
Speaking of something different… Even the most devoted writer or artist sometimes needs something different. You needn’t always spend the creative time you’ve set aside on your one and only WIP. Go ahead and cheat on your beloved. When you switch it up, you allow your creativity to explore and stretch, which will benefit the main project.
🎶 Look around
Leaves are brown
There’s a patch of snow on the ground 🎶
Just as our rhythms change over time with the seasons,1 there are natural ebbs and flows in our creativity.
We will not always have lots of materials to submit. We might be waiting for months to find out if we receive a rejection. Circumstances change, forcing us to find new ways to carve out space for our creative goals. Try one of these options. Not working for you? Try another approach. Or improvise something else. That improvisation? Counts as creativity.
Be compassionate. Be kind. To yourself and to others.
Next time: Year-end reflections
Want to see more posts from this Seed Pod or join in on the fun? Head over to our roundup to learn more!
I’ve quoted lyrics from “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” written by Paul Simon and released, first as a single in 1966 by Simon & Garfunkel, then on their album Bookends in 1968. The Bangles did a cover of the song for the soundtrack to Less Than Zero, a 1987 movie (adapted from the debut book by Bret Easton Ellis) about an east coast college kid (Andrew McCarthy) who returns to LA on winter break to help an ex-girlfriend (Jami Gertz) with his high school buddy (Robert Downey Jr.), who is battling an addiction to cocaine supplied by a debonair dealer (James Spader). The characters’ names? Clay, Blair, Julian, and Rip… Because of the addiction theme, producers asked the Bangles to cut the line: “drinking my vodka and lime” (actually, one of several lines the group cut). Afterward, lead singer Susannah Hoffs said she sent Simon a bottle of vodka and bag of limes as an apology. I confirmed the release dates, the spelling of Ellis’s name, and the character names in the movie. The rest? Still in my head after all this time.
I think taking a class works best for me, has the most accountability.