I once heard the brilliant writer Maggie Nelson share something another brilliant writer, Adrienne Rich, said about life and process, and it fundamentally changed me.
Rich said when we are doing anything of substance, we must make space for god to enter in.
I took Rich’s idea to be about the miraculous, mysterious energy god symbolizes to each of us — unconditional love, magic, awe — and less about god in the context of any specific organized religion. I like the word wow for describing this.
When it comes to this essential yet challenging question of how we make time for creativity or anything that really matters to us, this one idea has worked better than any productivity principle I’ve tried to make myself follow (and I’ve tried a lot).
So. To make time for our creative intentions we need more
time management
Flow hacks
Productivity apps
wow.
When I share Rich’s idea with someone, I watch it breathe peace into their body. It’s an idea that feels simultaneously comforting and expansive because when we make space for wow, we are making space for benevolence, genius, and magic, but we are acknowledging that we are not wholly responsible for the magic (what a relief).
So our responsibility shifts from trying to control a thing we can’t actually control (god, creative genius, the wow), to making the space for it to come in and through us (our nervous systems love a clear focus!).
Making space is one of the creator’s most sacred and important jobs.
No one teaches us this, though, because our culture needs to sell us the idea that we are behind and need to catch up. I have read all 50,000 of the books in print on time management because I thought my job was to WIN AT TIME. (read: be more productive, faster, and the dazzling woman who is DOING ALL THE THINGS). And following all those time rules written mainly by men who didn’t seem to have many caregiving responsibilities was how I would be victorious.
But what I was really seeking was a way to once and for all cure myself of my nonlinear sensibility, so that I could finally make sense in a world I felt I did not belong in.
All that managing and optimizing and hacking doesn’t make space for the creative woman I want to be, though. It just makes more space for the tiny terrorist who lives in my head.
We can’t use the tools of the matrix to get better at being in the matrix, because creativity doesn’t thrive there. And with the rise of AI, our most alive, original, messy, sweaty, imperfect, beautiful human creativity has never before been more of a sacred resource in need of protection.
If we want to become our most creative selves, we need to get out of the matrix.
We need space for the wow.
The space of wow is benevolent and present, but without urgency.
Spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says: time is life and this blew my mind. I grew up believing that time was the boss of me, and chronically unhappy with my performance as its employee. But what if time is nonlinear, messy, and multi-dimensional? What if time is a dance partner, a mother, a place to experience the fullness of all that is?
This changed the way I approached creative work. Creators need to work with time, but our creativity is debilitated by the tyranny, shame, and urgency that come along with the culture of industrialized linear time.
If both time and me are nonlinear then we are not behind and we can be collaborators.
Can you imagine with me, for a moment, how much precious energy we will get back if we can unsubscribe from excessive time pressure in our creative process?
Creativity is catalyzed by heat — a production schedule, a book deadline, a creative appointment, a child’s playdate — but shuts down with too much pressure.
If you, like me, feel you have learned everything you need to learn about time pressure, consider joining me in my pursuit of time courage.
To make space for wow in this culture, we need time courage. With time courage, we let ourselves wander and rest. We follow creative rhythms and timelines that work for us even if they don’t look like what everyone else is doing. We allow quantum possibility, unfolding over extraction, and the depth and aliveness that can only come from the radical idea that our timing is inherently right.
My beloved husband would want me to remind you that this is a creativity newsletter and time courage is not applicable to everything and specifically not when you are trying to check-in for a flight.
Invitation #3: Make Space For The Wow
It’s the time of year when we think about goals and progress and where we want to be in December. So we start looking at our time, and how we are spending it, and things can start to feel crunched and contracted. Time is so emotional. Underneath our conversations about kids’ morning routines and writing hours and meeting schedules are some of our deepest human longings.
Here are five prompts to open up more time, space, and wow:
1. What patterns of time pressure are showing up in your life or creative process?
2. If you had unlimited time courage and the resources to support it, what would you stop doing this season? What would you start doing, keep doing, or do more of?
3. Growing up, what did you learn about time? What beliefs and rules about time and creativity would you like to shed? What new ones would you like to adopt?
4. If we could make a miracle for you — where could you use some space for wow? What is one small way you could give yourself more of this space?
5. What if you’re not behind?
This moment we are all in is calling each of us forth in new ways. To support this necessary business of making space and time for what wants to come in and through is a necessary one, here are 10 of the practices that have created real results for me, clients, and students. They are mainly a reimagining and reclaiming of time, not another management manual to get wrong or right.
10 PRACTICES TO RECLAIM MORE TIME AND SPACE FOR CREATIVITY:
1. Make space for the wow
2. Remember that you are nature — “nothing is hurried yet everything is accomplished” — Lao Tzu.
3. Create your own rules — no one else’s creative rituals and rhythms will work for you. Discover the rhythms that work in the season of life and creativity that you are in. Each chapter demands we move differently. Stay current with your needs, throw out everyone else’s playbook, and be a scientist of your process.
4. We need 7 types of creative space: Physical, calendar, emotional, energetic, inner, collaborative, and permission — When you feel stuck or stagnant, focus on one type of creative space and how you can make a little more of it, and less on expectation or result.
5. Wander more
6. Utilize the life-changing magic of creative containers — make heat, not pressure
7. True is better than perfect — and don’t edit while you create
8. Be honest with yourself about what stage of the creative process you are in — try not to make the marketing plan while you make the draft, don’t pressure yourself for the answer when you’re meant to be in the question, and remember that pauses and dry spells and winters are part of the process.
9. When possible, create before you consume or respond, and schedule meeting-free days for flow — I offer gentle rules about these practices when people begin working with me, because I have found them to be so profoundly effective.
10. Spend a little time every day creating without the pressure of a result — I’ve been doing 5-15 minutes most days for the last 10 years.
Do any of these speak to you right now? I am working on #1, #7, and #8.
And dear readers, this is such deep work. I am having a meta moment while I am trying to finish this letter for you by the time my kids’ tv show is over! But I am just trying to keep it hot without the pressure. The edge for me is to stay benevolent.
Why I love space for wow as the creator’s time management practice is because it looks different for each of us and we can’t get it wrong. We can use it even when we have no clock time (because work responsibilities and defying tyranny and caring for sick children and elders are REAL). Sometimes it might mean more boundaries with social media but sometimes it’s about gentle practice. Sometimes it’s about being less rigid with our schedules, but sometimes it’s about adding structure to get us to show up.
Let me remind us that god and wow do not require much space. They can slip in with a small opening. And I’ve seen just the tiniest space unlock miracles and unblock whole processes.
I hope you are taking a moment to acknowledge your progress and celebrate where you are. You are doing it. I believe in you, and the beautiful creative path that you are unfolding.
What if you’re not behind?
What if you’re doing it right?
What if it’s your time?
LOVE,
Liz
RESOURCES + ACTIONS:
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Reading: Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, Roxanne Gay’s OpEd “Civility is A Fantasy”, Liz Gilbert’s All The Way To The River
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The Committee For The First Amendment – this movement for free speech is relaunched from The McCarthy Era — you can join here if you are in the entertainment industry
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A must-read to-do list for how cis people can show up for Trans people right now from lawyer and activist Chase Strangio
3 Quotes on my heart and mind:
1.
“Nature has taught me so much about moving with the seasons, that we need to honor times of harvest and times of rest. That the frenetic pace of doing, doing, doing, without being present with each other and the season we are in, what is happening around us, is unnatural and counter to life. So it has made me realize how important community ceremony and celebration are to our efforts to transform the world. ”
— BRENDA SALGADO
2.
“We are socialized into systems that cause us to conform and believe our worth is connected to how much we can produce. Our constant labor becomes a prison that allows us to be disembodied. We become easy for the systems to manipulate, disconnected from our power as divine beings and hopeless. We forget how to dream. This is how grind culture continues. We internalize the lies and in turn become agents of an unsustainable way of living.”
— TRICIA HERSEY, REST IS RESISTANCE
3.
“I do have reasons for hope: our clever brains, the resilience of nature, the indomitable human spirit, and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action.”
— JANE GOODALL
Image Credit: Victoria Wagner — At Play in the Moon Shadow, 20202
