Consistency

When we talk about creating, we often talk about our muse, how it strikes sometimes, how often we are struck by an idea and thrown into a creating frenzy. We talk about the ebb and flow of creation, how sometimes we simply cannot be stopped and other times how we couldn’t attempt to be creative even if we tried. We talk about weeks or months of nothing, sometimes even years, and then we talk about intense days of beautiful, magnificent creation; we all often acknowledge that being creative means being at the mercy of our muse.

But there is a way to train that muse, and that is by becoming consistent. Obviously, it’s not the easiest thing to do, building a habit of whatever form your creation takes is never going to happen overnight. But it is possible. Doing something as often as you can, even every day, it allows you train yourself to be creative when you need to be creative. It’s a wonderful thing when your muse strikes and you go on for weeks of creating, months of progress being made on your projects, it’s something no creative can take for granted. But then when things slow down, simmering before turning to nothing, it’s pretty much a form of torture. It can make you itch for more but you don’t know where to begin, you’re desperate to start creating again but you’re frustrated at every turn because you can’t force yourself to get on with what you need to do. Burn out is a big part of this, of course, being at the mercy of your muse can lead to wonderful months and it can lead to wretched months too.

Which is why training your muse to work for you is so crucial, particularly if you are trying to build a career as an artist.

Now, this isn’t to say consistency and training yourself to make creating a habit won’t lead to writer’s/artist’s block now and again, I think that is an inevitability with art. But training yourself to be consistent means that, whenever you put yourself in a position to start creating, you’ll be able to get the most out of it. Like I’ve said before, writing is really my basis for a lot of my information, but I think all the arts overlap here and there and we can all learn from each other no matter what form our creation takes.

If you can make yourself consistent, then you can start to wrangle your muse to work for you. There might still be days where your muse really resists and there might be days where you are struck by divine inspiration and you write from sunup to sundown, but building a consistent habit means that, in between those times of resistance and pure, unadulterated creation, you can always be making progress. Whenever you sit down and you task yourself with getting something done that will contribute to your projects, you’ll be able to do it. Some days might be more successful than others, but being consistent means that, no matter what, you are always pushing forward with your goals.

Right, so, how do you do it? How do you build consistency, how do you train your muse to work for you, how do you make yourself create in an habitual way?

The truth is, becoming consistent means… well… being consistent. It’s as simple as that, right? It’s one of those things that is as self-explanatory as they come; being consistent means being consistent. Getting there sounds simple, but it’s the start where things are troublesome. How does one start being consistent?

The way I first started when I was a truly consistent writer was that I was writing every spare moment I had, which then allowed me to feel the need to write at every spare moment, if that makes sense. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy really; I had free time, so I was always writing, and that then meant whenever I had free time, I wanted to write. That’s really how a habit of any kind is built.

But now I, like many others, don’t have as much free time as I used to. I’m no longer in any schooling, I work full-time, I have responsibilities, I have other hobbies, I have tasks I need to do every single day, chores that need to be done; the free time that I once had is gone, and I appreciate that there are many of us out there who don’t have much free time whatsoever. So how do you build consistency when you don’t have a lot of time to build that consistency?

A few of my favourite authors have mentioned this idea that you have as much free time now as you ever will, so it becomes about utilising that time. These authors have also mentioned that setting aside just a handful of hours in one evening and telling yourself that this is my time to create is how you get things finished. Ultimately, this is at the crux of trying to build consistency. Even if you’re a full-time creative, that doesn’t mean creation’s just going to happen for you; you might have all the time in the day to create, but it won’t happen magically, you still have to build at consistency and make it a habit. For those who have to find time to be creative, you need to work that little bit extra to make the most of the more-limited that you do have.

For those of us who do have other responsibilities, it’s about setting yourself time where you tell yourself this is my time to write, draw, craft, sing, and making sure you commit to it. Whether it’s two hours on a Wednesday evening, during your lunch breaks on Mondays and Fridays, Sunday afternoons, Thursday mornings, whatever time you can give yourself, give it to yourself, and commit to it. Eventually, what is a task then becomes a habit.

Ultimately, discipline is a massive part of this. Whatever time you give yourself, whether it’s your career or not, you have to commit, otherwise it just won’t work. You might be giving yourself three hours to write on a Friday afternoon, and if you do it sometimes but not others, then you’re not building a habit. If you’re a full-time writer and you’ve got your whole schedule planned out and each day you’ve given yourself a certain amount of hours to write instead of responding to emails and doing all the other administrative tasks that come with being a full-time author, if you don’t commit to those hours, that consistency won’t build, and the habit won’t form. It is so true that it does become a cycle, that where you give yourself time to write eventually it will become the time to write, your brain clicks into gear when it becomes a habit and so when you’ve sat down and you’re ready to write, you will be able to do it, but you have to make yourself do it first or it won’t ever work.

Obviously, you cannot beat yourself up when it goes awry. It is destined that something will come along now and again that will make you miss this time you’ve set aside for yourself, these things are inevitable. In the early days when you’re trying to form a habit, it can have an effect, though I equally believe it can be just as detrimental when you have a habit and you miss a day, but that doesn’t mean it has to immediately end the consistency you’ve built. If we think about consistency as a road you walk, missing a day doesn’t mean taking a step backwards or starting from the beginning, it just means that that week, you stood still, and that’s totally fine. You can start walking again next week, you don’t have to give up.

A couple years back, and I had my consistency down. Almost whenever I sat myself down to write, I could do it. I churned out thousands of words a day because I knew that first drafts were messy and it was fine to churn out words because I knew, later, they’d be edited. But I moved away, I got a job, I travelled, I was in the depths of editing, and my consistency thoroughly diminished. It’s made these past few months difficult because I can remember just how much I could write not all that long ago and I’m not there now, I’m once again trying to build that consistency. In terms of the road I’ve walked for this habit, I have taken a few steps back, and it’s a tough thing to acknowledge.

But I know that I can get there again, and I know that anyone can get there, because I was there once, and it was amazing. It takes hard work, it takes dedication, discipline, faith sometimes too, but being consistent is such a beautiful thing. We do not just have to be at the mercy of our muse, we can train it to work for us. Sometimes, it might fight back and sometimes you might lose some of your progress, sometimes you need to take breaks, but you can make it work for you and I have total faith that you can do it; it takes a lot of commitment but the reward will be so incredibly worth it.

Robyn x