On clearing space for creativity
Even when conditions seem impossible
As I look back on my most creative seasons, I notice one surprising and counterintuitive commonality: they were almost always unfolding in parallel to some of my toughest seasons as a caregiver. In this post, I want to talk about what I’ve learned from that, for folks moving through similar seasons, and to share some resources from other creative people who are doing the same.
Some specific examples:
I wrote a series of essays on caregiving for Roswell Park Cancer Hospital in my ‘20s while my brother was going through chemotherapy there. It helped me to feel I was shining a light on the often-overlooked experiences of young caregivers, while also documenting in great detail the profound love and respect I held for my brother.
I dug out my first “urban farm” in the backyard of my apartment in Queens while I was knee-deep in unpaid grad school fieldwork. It kept me grounded and gave me a sense of accomplishment during a time when I was commuting all over town and did not yet have my own classroom.
I developed some of my favorite educational programming (sold-out classes at The Brooklyn Kitchen, a food & gardening camp for kids that took us to some of the coolest rooftop gardens in NYC) while I was battling infertility. These projects gave me a sense of fecundity and connection to something bigger than myself, as well as an opportunity to re-learn how to better tend to my body and environment, during a time when I sorely needed it.
I turned to gardening again as a creative outlet for healing the dual traumas of teaching during the pandemic and experiencing late pregnancy loss, which hit like a one-two punch in early 2022. The time I spent walking in and writing about nature literally re-wired my burned-out brain for healing.
I began this writing project during what was meant to be a one-year sabbatical following those experiences, when my son began to show signs of needing special education services. Writing on Substack offered me a creative lifeline and a community of like-minded writers, while I temporarily put off returning to paid work in order to figure out how to close the gap between what he needed and what our local “village” could provide.
In each of these creative caregiving seasons, there were no traditional how-to guides that told me how to do this. When you are not struggling simply with the willpower to begin or the discipline to forgo an extra hour of TV, but with the crushing demands of 24/7 care work, with a child who won’t sleep or a sick loved one who keeps falling out of bed in the middle of the night, it is in fact incredibly frustrating to encounter chipper writing guides that claim you simply need to “Get up earlier!”
“Get bent!” I have often thought, in response.
It is true, however, that some of our best works of art can come during some of our most desperate seasons, when carving out the space feels not just hard, but impossible.
Let’s talk more about how.
Looking back on my unlikely spurts of creativity in those difficult seasons, it is clear that I sought out life-giving creative projects as a way to experience a sense of spaciousness, to feel seen and heard, and to help others feel seen and heard, during a time when things felt tight and claustrophobic and terrifying.
This underscores the fact that there is not One Right Way to do writing, but really, two polarities, with a lot of room in between.
The Platonic Ideal — a writer who works in solitude, in an office lined with musty bookshelves, and in tranquil silence. They sit down to work at the same time every day while someone else tends to their domestic needs, or they live alone, the better to focus purely on their art. The writer recedes from life in order to contemplate it from a distance.
The Raw and the Real — a writer who uses creativity to survive and to respond to the noise and the chaos of real life, while writing at the kitchen table, with someone calling their name from another room. They work through the interruptions or incorporate their existence into the way they shape the work, as Virginia Woolf once suggested. The writer is never really alone, but uses the profound realities of needing and being needed to make art that lets other people know they are not alone.
To me, the former figure feels like a gentleman farmer, walking his manicured lanes and breezing through his glass-paned hothouses and experimenting with imported rare orchids. The latter reminds me more of my wily wandering immigrant ancestors, who tucked seeds into their pockets and planted them anytime they expected to spend a few months on the same patch of ground.
For those of us who are grieving, overworked, postpartum, under-supported at home — who are closer to the latter polarity than the former — we need permission to embrace the notion of creativity as subsistence farming, of planting seeds whenever and wherever we can.
We also need better guidance about how to go about making art under seemingly impossible conditions, because reading about how others are using their temperature-controlled greenhouses to cultivate their orchids isn’t helpful when all you’ve got for light is a single window that faces a brick wall, or a patch of hard-packed clay covered in weeds — weeds that need clearing before you can even begin.
Below, I share perspectives from people who are doing just that: balancing care work with creativity, doing it for the love of the art, doing it in difficult circumstances or supporting others who are, clearing their weeds in brave ways, and making me feel less alone in the process of doing it too.
“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
— Doris Lessing
On not letting how others write “jack up your flow”
writes here about juggling his ongoing writing projects with other important, non-delegatable aspects of his life: driving an ambulance, being a good boyfriend. He echoes the themes from above: creativity comes down to doing the thing, when you can do it. He also invites us to question who benefits, and who is left out, when we gate-keep the “ideal” conditions for being a “real writer”: The same institutions and writing gurus that demand you adhere to a schedule that isn’t yours will insist on delineating what makes a real writer. At my MFA graduation, the speaker informed us we were all writers now and I just shook my head. We’d been writers, all of us, long before we set foot in those hallowed halls. We’re writers because we write.
…Particularly for writers who aren’t straight, cis, able-bodied, white men, shame and the sense that we don’t belong, don’t deserve to sit at this table, have our voices heard, can permeate the process. Nothing will hinder a writer more than this. Anaïs Nin called shame the lie someone told you about yourself. Don’t let a lie jack up your flow.
Releasing comparison, perfectionism and people-pleasing
If the above passages resonate with you, you may also enjoy this piece by Sonal Champsee of
. In it, she tackles the tendency many of us have, as my Gen Z students would put it, to “do the most for no reason.”Comparison-itis, perfectionism and people-pleasing are high-maintenance habits we can’t afford if we have limited time to create. Conscientious folks and people drawn to care work often have these rocks to clear, as they’re closely tied to our sense of self-worth. We want to be the best at caring! But we end up spending so much time maneuvering around what
calls “The Kitchen Gods and The Friend Gods” instead of clearing a space for our own Callings. Or we end up engaging in what James-Olivia Chu Hillman calls a performance of care rather than a practice of care.
All of this can lead to a so-called creative life that’s filled with things we don’t actually like to do, or no creative life at all.
Champsee writes that if us conscientious folks want time to create, we have to think more critically about how much care is “good enough.” I.e.:
What if the things on your plate are more along the lines of, saying yes to every classroom volunteer opportunity, saying yes to helping every friend who needs a favour, saying yes to every unpaid extra work ‘opportunity’ at your job? What if it’s your own internal desire to make every meal entirely from scratch, to grow all the food you consume from seeds you started yourself, to go to every protest and rally for various causes? These are things that you have committed to, true, and may also be things that are deeply important to you, but they are also things you don’t have to do.
As someone who loves making every meal from scratch and protesting, these are hard pills to swallow. Which brings me to…
Choosing our best seeds
Tiffany Dufu is a nonprofit leader who nearly fell off the career ladder she’d been ascending when she became a mother, because she found herself overwhelmed by her newly ballooning to-do list. She recounts the tensions that arose during this time in her book, Drop the Ball.:
“I used to be the queen of domesticity, a Good Housekeeping cover model in the making. I was also an ambitious professional. These two identities had always been on a collision course. But I was oblivious to that fact until after the crash.”
Dufu felt she was capable of making the most impact by continuing to lead and mentor folks in the nonprofit sector and “raising conscious global citizens” — not embodying the Queen of Domesticity. So, she focused her energies around this, eliminated tasks on her to-do list that did not drive her life towards this goal, and recruited her partner — who lived on the other side of the world at the time — to pick up more of the slack.
Dufu’s a generous, funny writer, but her main point is as serious as it gets: we must get clear on what we came here to do. This makes it easier to tap into the fierce protective energy it takes to bring our best creations into this world.
The entire book is worth a read, but if you’re time-strapped, I loved this recent post by
, on how she’s applying Dufu’s work to finding her own best offering, which is:I want people to remember me as someone who illuminated the value, beauty and messiness of science. I also want to be someone who helped people use that science to lead better lives and build a better future.
You can see how, armed with a similarly clear-eyed statement of purpose, it might be much easier to go back to the list of tasks Champsee lists above — protesting, making food from scratch — and assess whether each of these helps you get closer to your creative purpose, or further away.
Clearing out the ivy: structural issues and sticky marriage moments
Once you’ve figured out which seeds you want to plant, and which you don’t, there is still much work to do to carve out the space. I see structural constraints — expectations and obstacles that fall disproportionately on some creators and not others — as the invasive ivy of our creative gardens. From the gender and racial pay gap to the impact of trolls on marginalized people, these things can strangle creativity, they take a long time to clear, and we often cannot do it alone.
I’ll also be blunt and say that some of the toughest structural entanglements we face, if we are creative caregivers, are also creeping through our closest relationships. We have to be brave enough to dig them out.
For example: My partner is a good egg, committed to equity, and a creative person himself. And yet — we have still had to have many uncomfortable conversations in our home about sharing the mental load of parenthood so that we both get roughly the same amount of time to be creative. We continue to have these with other people in our lives who, like many Americans, see his male leisure time as a birthright, and mine as a luxury. Often, the same people who paradoxically see his participation in the direct feeding and clothing of our child as optional tasks, but the selling of his extraneous time and energy to for-profit companies as non-negotiable “real work.”
Eve Rodsky’s two books on this, Fair Play and Unicorn Space, as well as the Fair Play card deck, have provided us with a helpful framework for pushing back on these cultural pressures as a team. If you’re unfamiliar with Rodsky, here’s a quick primer on her key ideas:
All labor and time that contributes to the home — paid and unpaid — should be considered equal. Stay at home parents and CEOs alike both deserve to have what Rodsky calls “the right to be interesting.”
It is easier for someone to “own” a task from beginning to end — what Rodsky calls Conception, Planning, and Execution (CPE) — than to split things up ad hoc. Example: If you are in charge of “sports,” you are in charge of everything from the first soccer season sign-up to the last laundry load of dirty jerseys. This frees the other partner from ever thinking a single thought about “sports,” so that they can think about something else. Like creating something.
Establishing a “minimum standard of care” (MSC) ensures that tasks being done by one partner are done in a way that both partners agree is “good enough.” This reduces both the temptation to gatekeep tasks, or to engage in learned or weaponized helplessness, both self-defeating behaviors that eat up endless amounts of time that would be better spent creating things you like.
Rodsky’s card deck offers what we teachers would call “manipulatives” — physical representations of abstract concepts — that can help to further guide the conversation. It is not a “game” unless your idea of fun is very different from mine. Many of my friends have used these cards and for all of us, it’s been an emotional experience that unfolded over weeks. But it does help you to offload tasks that are nebulous and/or contentious. (Example: who is in charge of “making holiday magic” every year, a surprisingly fraught topic that I took on here.)
So… what if you don’t have a partner who is down for this? Or your partner is… somewhere in between?
with of , who recently wrote a book on divorce, puts a very fine point on it:“I think that [the quest to carve out more creative time by balancing the mental load] will not break a good relationship but it is going to break a lot of relationships… part of why I wanted to write [This American Ex-Wife] was to say two things: one, ask for what you need and what you want. It doesn't have to wreck your life. But two, if it does wreck your life, that's okay. Maybe your life needed to be wrecked, and that's a fine thing too.”
On tending our seedlings against all odds
Finding affordable childcare is also huge obstacle for me, and for anyone else who is a single parent, has a non-supportive partner, who does not have family around, and/or does not have the money to pay for help. The same could be said for those of us who care for elderly or ill family members. There are just going to be times when we simply cannot delegate or drop the ball.
Enter: audiobooks, podcasts and voice memos.
While I’m doing non-avoidable care tasks that require my hands, like driving to daycare pickup or unloading the dishwasher, I am often doing one of these two things.
When I encounter dry spells in my own creative garden, or if I’m just not clear on what seeds I want to grow next, I gather inspiration by listening to audiobooks and podcasts on topics related to upcoming posts or projects. (This is also sometimes all we can do during seasons of burnout: fill up our own cups first with other people’s good art.)
When I do think I have something worth planting, I send voice memos to my besties about what I’m thinking and reading. I’m invite their feedback and ask them to share their creative wins in turn.
My most important voice memo partners are also people engaged in care work — they’re busy teachers, they’re stay-at-home parents with a full slate of volunteer gigs, they’re the sole breadwinners for their families — so there’s no comparison-itis or Platonic Ideal Advice-giving. We’re just doing our part to keep each other’s little creative seedlings alive.
This is also how I’ve drafted many of my posts — by sending portions of said voice memos through the Transcribe app to generate docs, with my thought partners’ consent. (If you are neurodivergent, speech-to-text apps like this can also be a game-changer.)
Still not convinced? Let @standingjeansonly convince you that yes, other people really do want to do this with you.
On coming together in community
is best-known for her #1000WordsOfSummer project, and now, her lovely book. If you are looking for a couch-to-5K kind of experience to help you launch your next creative project, Jami’s newsletter is the place to start. (The next “mini 1000” runs from March 2-7.) Jami writes here about supporting many writer friends who are up to their necks in competing demands for their time. It really comes down to finding “the cracks and the crevices” unique to every life, with no two routines that look the same. She also writes about the importance of having a community and accountability partners to keep us going:
I don’t need to tell you this: writing is about ebbs and flows. And when it flows, it is a pleasure to experience, but also it is a pleasure to watch it happen in others. We must take inspiration from it, cheer on our friends when it’s happening.
I am here to cheer you on as well, as you make more time for creativity this year.
I know from long experience that in our more desperate seasons, it takes creativity simply to find enough time to rest. Sometimes it takes all the creativity we’ve got.
But if you’re feeling like I absolutely must create anyway or I’ll die — then that’s a fine, fertile place to begin. Whether it’s your first time or your fiftieth. This feeling drives some of our best art. Or at least, my best art.
This feeling of creative desperation can push us to begin singing and writing and painting again, even when our kids won’t go to sleep.
Desperation can drive us to create art that gives meaning and worth to our lives, and to the lives of others, that is not directly tied to how much money we earn or how many endless favors we do for others.
Desperation can push us to have the hard conversations with the people around us that we needed to have anyway.
Desperation can us keep us honest about using our hard-won time, wrested from all the people who think we are Bad Parents or Bad Partners or Bad People for being so selfish, to make deeply unselfish work that helps and heals.
What I am saying is that I know — oh, how I know — how often desperation can get in the way.
But it can also be the way.
I have to say this counter-intuitive framing didn't feel accurate to me at first, but having read the piece and sat with your perspective, I see what you mean. I have had seasons where I couldn't create a thing, and couldn't imagine a life beyond day-to-day survival. And I've had seasons which were busy and somewhat frantic but when I was beavering away toward a creative project. I'm thinking of the pieces I wrote on my iPhone commuting on a sweaty bus or all the time I spent doing mindless manual work while listening to podcasts that got my intellectual wheels turning. More than anything, I've learned that a completely empty day with nothing to do but create sometimes provokes a kind of writerly stage fright. Sometimes, creativity comes from being pulled along in the rush of life and seeing that there's a space to make something amidst the rush. Thank you for sharing. This post made me think.