Feeding the Muse

About a month ago, I talked a bit about being frustrated when being off the usual routine means finding time to write becomes difficult. However, sometimes these periods can be as helpful as they are frustrating. Even though writing might not work out the way you want it to, you can still feed the muse.

At times the best thing you can do is take a break from your work-in-progress to do something else creative. It can give you a fresh perspective and breathe renewed life into your sense of creativity. This is one reason highly creative people tend to have more than one outlet for said creativity.

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As we reached late spring, drafting Icarus became much more difficult. I'd grown fatigued with the story and increasingly tempted to focus on other projects. It's a phenomenon I've noted since I began writing for fun way back in fifth grade. About halfway through drafting a story, I'd get burnt out on it and excited about another one or painting or music. I'd set it aside for a while, work on that other thing, and then I'd go back with renewed zeal.

I've been trying to train myself out of this habit in recent years to improve focus and cut down on the time between books. While I stuck with drafting The Icarus Project longer than I ever did with earlier manuscripts, eventually the insanity that was our June won out. While trying to stay out of C. L. and the girls' way in the mornings, I finished a couple crocheted blankets, and I've been working on a couple of paintings that have sat in an old chest waiting to be finished for years.

I'd forgotten how restorative a break to work on another form of creative expression can be!

As I've gone back to drafting Icarus, it's easier. While it's been simmering on the back burner, bits of tentative ideas were fleshed out. My interest in the topic is renewed from the short break after months within that world, and I feel the creative muscle is strengthened from the different exercise it's received in recent weeks.

Do you have multiple outlets for your creativity? If not, why not? Think of different mediums like exercises to prevent mental carpal tunnel or a palate cleanser of sorts. If you constantly use the same methods, you'll burn yourself out. Different ways of creating use the same areas of the brain in different ways, thus "feeding the muse" by working with the body's urge to seek out novelty while keeping those pathways active and thriving. Then after a bit of something new, the same old, same old doesn't seem so dull.