How to Make Creativity a Habit
I’ve been thinking about what it means to keep going.
Creativity of any kind can nourish your soul and feed your body. It can strengthen your sense of self. But many of us struggle to stay consistent with it, which is why The Artist's Way is so popular and sometimes considered as impactful as grad school for artists.
Many of us attempt The Artist’s Way and fail. It takes serious dedication and adjustment to your daily routine. You need to prioritize it over other things to fit it into your schedule. You are meant to be challenged, which is probably why people find it transformative. It takes some serious grit.
Grit (personality trait), noun: a positive, non-cognitive trait based on a person's perseverance of effort combined with their passion for a particular long-term goal. This perseverance of effort helps people overcome obstacles and drives people to achieve their goals.
Grit, is also a book by Angela Duckworth. I read it during an Art Direction class at ArtCenter. It made me feel terrible about myself. I felt I didn’t have any grit at all. I jump from hobby to hobby and have wandered down a few career paths. I never stuck with anything long enough because I always began to question if it was “right for me”.
But in reality, I was using other people’s successes as a comparison to my own.
Consistency is one of my favorite qualities. I am making it a goal to build up my grit.
I made myself a simple, creative goal list for the summer:
Create something new in my art journal every day
Share and sell the t-shirts I made last summer.
Re-engage with Substack. (hello…)
I’ll work on all of these with attention and care until my baby arrives. And when he’s here, I’ll check in. I want to show up every day and prioritize my creativity, without needing traction or “success.” I’m doing this for myself, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Perfection is boring anyway.
Of course, now that true motherhood is just around the corner, I worry about losing the drive to prioritize my creativity. But if I don’t do it now, how will I ever hold onto it when I’m caring for a tiny baby? To me, it doesn’t make sense to wait and see, so here are the steps I’m taking.
How to build creative grit:
Keep your goals short and simple.
Don’t overcomplicate this. Make it attainable. Don’t add too many ingredients. I know we’re people with vision, but take this one step at a time. This is how you build confidence. My friend Abby is a good example. She started a weekly Substack of micro essays to publish her fictional memoir. It’s simple, but impactful.
Create an environment that inspires you.
Make it pretty. Make it soothing. Make it a place just for you. It could be a desk, a table, or the corner of your backyard. Somewhere that feels like you.
People matter too. Surround yourself with creative folks who enrich this side of you (not make you feel bad). Maybe start this challenge together.Show up daily.
Make daily goals that feel easy enough to achieve. Remove perfectionism. Maybe even aim for something intentionally bad or imperfect. It could be 15 minutes of drawing or writing, just some time that is for you. Block it off in your calendar. Showing up is the point.
Remain detached from the outcome.
Do this for you. Play. Experiment. Mess up. Success shows up when you let go of what others might think. One of my favorite ways to build this muscle is to blind draw. It’s meant to be ugly and silly. That’s the point.
Try new things, over and over again.
You’re not going to be great the first time. A community, a following, a body of work, a novel, a successful business, none of that happens overnight.
Confidence is built with repetition. Stick with it. When you look back, you’ll see progress.Give yourself a realistic but somewhat challenging timeline.
Start small. Say you’ll go for a walk every day for a week. Or be like me, and commit to drawing in your notebook every day for 3 months. Pick an amount of time that fits your life. Then check in. See how it feels. Push yourself a little further each time you feel like giving up. And if you fall off, try again the next day.
Creativity grows and evolves with time.
My mom is such a beautiful example of this. She nurtured creativity in both my sister and me our whole lives. We were raised around art, as she values history and imagination. But she didn’t start actively making things herself until her late 40s! It began with small steps like jewelry-making and classes at The French General.
Now she spends most of her time sewing, quilting, and tending her garden. She’s incredibly talented. But she doesn’t create for profit. She does it for pleasure.
She credits her environment for this creative surge. When she married my stepdad, she moved into a cottage-style home in the San Fernando Valley. Your environment matters.
Creativity lessons from my mom:
She creates for personal pleasure every single day
She’s never afraid to take a class or try something new
She finds inspiration in others, not competition
She’s curated a home and community that supports her creativity
Wait until I show you the mobile she made for my baby, with all our pets on it!
❤️
If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear how you’re nurturing your creativity lately, or what’s getting in the way. Just hit reply and tell me one small step you’re taking, or maybe make a comment on the Substack app (currently my favorite social media app… It’s as if Pinterest and Twitter had a baby.)
And if you know someone who could use a little creative encouragement right now, feel free to forward this their way. We’re all trying to figure it out, might as well do it together.
Love,
Lizzy
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