A couple of months ago, I posted about building creativity into a habit and how that involves dedication, consistency, and perseverance. It included the possibility of working at something as often as possible, even daily if you could manage it. I wrote all about how to get yourself to be a consistent creator and how that can be incredibly beneficial when you’re trying to make your creative outlet a career.
Consistency is a really great way to build up your speed in getting things down onto paper (or set into stone however it is you’re creating), it really does aid dedication, it helps you persevere, reaching your goals faster. And when you’re creating, who doesn’t want to reach the end faster? Finishing a project is surely what almost all of us aspire to, and being consistent helps us get there in a much more timely manner than if we weren’t consistent.
However, you also need to go about it in a healthy way, both for your own sake and for your project’s sake. So where is that middle ground between dedication and health? It’s different for everyone, every single person has different limits, different needs, different rules about what counts as fun and what counts as torture. I see plenty of authors lamenting the pain of incomplete manuscripts or late nights writing in a frenzy. For some, that’s torture, and for others, that kind of torture is part of the fun. Everyone has a different balance to maintain, because it’s always about balance, but how do you know when you’re taking a break because of burnout or when you’re pushing yourself to be consistent and it’s actually making things worse? It’s very difficult to tell, isn’t it?
For me, I know I’ve been pushing myself too hard when I start simply skimming through my projects. I’ll open up document after document, just reading things through, contemplating what’s coming next, and then skipping to something else. I won’t actively start planning, I won’t even do any editing, I’ll just get stuck in a rut of reading what I’ve written until it’s time for bed. It doesn’t do any consistency I’ve built any good, but there’s only so much you can force yourself to do something before you have to acknowledge it isn’t going to work. Habits are hard to start but also hard to break, so once you’ve leapt over those hurdles, hopefully some time away won’t break the consistency you’ve built. It becomes a habit, but it’s a habit that you have to maintain in a healthy way, otherwise you might start to resent what you’re creating, and that’s the last thing anyone wants.
A habit becomes unhealthy when it’s all you can think about, when it becomes a chore you resent, when it’s obsessive and, ultimately, having a negative impact on the rest of your life. There’s nothing wrong with being dedicated to a project, to making sure you commit to the time you’ve set yourself to work on something. I think being obsessed with your projects has its positives, but only when it isn’t the only thing you think about, when it doesn’t keep you from working on other things, doing other hobbies, meeting up with friends and family. You do need discipline, this is true, it’s hard to reach the end of something if you haven’t disciplined yourself along the way, but I think if a project of yours is the only thing you’ve got going on in your life, then you’re not existing in a way that’s going to be beneficial to your health, which takes away from you and, ultimately, it takes away from your project too. I know there’s this idea of the tortured artist, and you can absolutely explore unhealthy topics and create stories set around trauma and difficult deeds and all this can be incredibly cathartic, especially if you are perhaps suffering from something and one of your outlets is writing. But if that’s the only thing you’re focusing on, you’re going to start missing out on other things you need. No project or creative outlet is worth your health, and that’s why having healthy habits is a massive part of creating.
This balance between consistency and healthy habits is a tough one to find and, as I said above, it is different for everyone. Some people need more breaks than others, some people have to work on multiple things at once to get things finished, some people are able to sit and write from sunup to sundown whilst that would drive others delirious. Finding your balance is important, but don’t push yourself to extremes to get there; you don’t need to find out just how unhappy you can be whilst creating to see where your limits are.
Breaks are vital. I know that sounds frightening, particularly when I was talking about consistency not all that long ago and I mentioned how breaks can be a surefire way to upset some of the consistency you’ve built. But I know that for manuscripts in particular, if you’re working on them nonstop, they’re never going to reach their full potential. When I come back to a manuscript after even just a few weeks, it’s so refreshing, and it’s really helpful. The time away allows your mind to sit on other things, and you can come back to pick up on plot holes, or grammar errors, maybe spelling mistakes too. Time away can even allow your mind to simmer and you might just get the epiphanies you so desperately needed that you couldn’t come up with when you were in the depths of writing and editing.
There’s ways to keep that consistency going in a healthy way too. Maybe I’m just telling myself this to make me feel better about how many projects I have on the go at all times, but I genuinely think one way to keep consistent whilst keeping my habits healthy is to have a few projects on the go at once. That means, when I need a break from one manuscript, I can jump to another and keep up my consistency whilst also stopping myself from going mad as I look at the same paragraphs over and over and over again.
There’s other ways as well, keeping yourself disciplined even if you’re letting yourself take a break from writing. Whilst on a break, you could dedicate that time to other things that help you as a writer, such as reading, exploring the world, researching, plotting. Better yet, sometimes a break completely can be healthy and helpful too. If you’re a writer, try painting or dancing. If you’re an artist, try knitting or singing. If you’re an actor, try sewing or woodworking. Something like this can help keep you disciplined and creative whilst allowing you to step back from whatever it is you need a break from. It can obviously be frightening to take a break from something that has become a habit because you don’t know what you might come back to if you lose some of the consistency you’ve built, but it will always be better to be a healthy creator than one that’s so frightened of losing progress that all the progress you end up making isn’t the best it could be. If you do lose some of your consistency, you can always build it back up again, it doesn’t have to be lost forever.
Our habits have to be healthy so we too can be healthy. I know I can write well when I’m deep in my feelings, but the strength in a manuscript comes when you can be objective, and it’s very difficult to be objective when you aren’t practising healthy habits. So test your limits, test where your middle ground is, but don’t push yourself too far, because the further you go, the further you’ll have to come back.
Robyn x
R. A. Howard 