Surviving "Holiday Creative Drift"
Tips for keeping one foot in your creative life!
The holidays are upon us, and although I’ve scaled back over the years on decorations and festivities — mostly because my dog eats literally everything — I welcome certain rituals and traditions, especially if they involve family. With a high school senior at home, this season feels even more precious. I also had the chance to celebrate an extra meaningful Thanksgiving with family and friends in Seattle last week. I am deeply grateful for our opportunities to celebrate together.
And yet, at the risk of channeling my inner Scrooge, every year I also wish I had a word to describe a particular feeling that writers can get around this time of year. In the run-up to Thanksgiving, straight through to New Years (and maybe beyond), to-do lists start to swell and send us drifting from our projects. It can be hard to keep a foot in our dream worlds, or string any words together at all. The holiday season, with its jingling, jangling bells, and its complex expectations, clamors for our attention. Whether the season is joyful or sad, filled with people or with quiet, our creative lives can languish.
We can give ourselves over to the holidays, embracing the chance to reflect and recharge. Nothing wrong with that! Even so, we still might feel frustration, anxiety, even despair . . . especially if deadlines loom. Internal pressures mount. The end of year “best books” lists come out — and maybe we’re not on them, because maybe our books are nowhere near done or they entered the world rather quietly. New Year’s Day clamors for fresh resolutions—yet the goals we set back in November recede into the past. Sprinkle in a little doom and dread related to the general state of the world, stir in a dollop of worry about what’s waiting on the other side of the holidays with the new president taking office, and creative work, for many of us, can feel impossible.
So what would be the word or phrase to capture this sensation of enjoying aspects of the holidays yet longing for our creative work? Google sent me to anhedonia, nostalgia for a time or experience that you never actually experienced, but that’s not quite right. Even if our creative worlds are fictitious, we do experience them, often quite vividly. There’s the German word fernweh, or “farsickness”: a longing to be somewhere we’ve never been, or in a distant and unknown land. Fernweh feels a little closer to the truth, if our creative project feels like a place to us and we are drifting from it. And yet, it’s a bit too ambiguous, still not the word I want.
I confess, I’ve been playing with ChatGPT recently in order to better understand how Artificial Intelligence might help or hinder creative processes for writers. When I tried to articulate the feeling of being pulled into two directions specifically during the holidays, ChatGPT instantly offered up the following phrases: creative limbo, artistic paralysis, inspirational drought, blocked longing, creative disconnect, and “the gap” —though ChatGPT also admitted that “none of them are perfect.” It offered to coin a new term.
Intriguing. I’d intended to work harder and coin my own term, but why not accept the help? I was blocked and tired. Here’s the list ChatGPT gave me in a split second:
“Holiday Drift”: the sensation of being swept away from creative work by the current of seasonal demands.
“Merriment Block”: a festive variation of writer’s block, where the joy and chaos of the holidays obstruct creative flow.
“Tinsel Tension”: the emotional strain of juggling creative goals with holiday responsibilities.
“Creative Claus Trap”: feeling stuck as Santa’s seasonal to-do list eclipses your writing dreams.
“Yuletide Yearning”: the ache of longing to write while the holidays claim your time and energy.
Whoa. I kind of liked all of them. They all spoke to me and seemed clever. Although, the closer I looked at these fresh-minted phrases, the less I liked them. Kind of like when I take a closer look at the image I asked for to kick off this newsletter. (Don’t worry, my ChatGPT trial subscription ends next week, and so will this experiment!)
Here’s what I did NOT ask ChatGPT: what are ways in which we can overcome this feeling or keep one foot and part of our brain in our creative life? I came up with my own ideas, based on things that have worked for me, even as recently as last week. I offer up these three exercises to keep your mind humming!
Be a Time Traveler. If you travel, attend events, or visit family or friends, keep your eyes open for portals into the past — your own past or a bygone world. I love looking for recent past portals that aren’t obviously historical, but that set the clock back and jog memories; memories contain seeds of stories. Ask yourself some “what if?” questions. If you’re working on a story, try to view it through a character’s eyes, wondering what they would think, feel, or do. For example, while wandering through Seattle’s Pike Place Market, I stumbled across this time travel portal: a wall of bus and ferry schedules. On paper! There are apps for these schedules now, but this wall instantly took me back to all those years when I grabbed bus schedules and actually studied them, relying on them to convey myself around the city. I also wondered about the empty slots on this wall; my mystery-plotting mind could imagine someone planting clues or encoding messages.
I also stumbled into the old bookstore I used to work in at Seattle’s Pike Place Market many years ago. The bookstore (now called Lion Heart Bookstore) has gone through several owners since then, but the layout and all the fixtures are exactly the same as they were in the 1990s. It’s uncanny. The same bump on the floor that I used to trip over? Still there. I swear some of the books remain face out on the shelves from where I placed them back in the day, even though this busy store does brisk business and the books do get sold! I had to put my hands in my pockets to fight the urge to start organizing and cleaning things, so well do I know every crevice, every shelf, of that shop. That impulse got me thinking: what if I wrote a story about someone who did exactly that? Who jumped back into an old job as if no time had passed? What would happen next? Maybe I’ll never write that story, who knows, but it’s a seed of an idea to stow away!
Be a nature detective. Wherever you find yourself, pay attention to plants or wildlife. Be alert to nature in unexpected places, and how humans interact with it. What do you see, hear, smell? Can you touch or taste something from nature? Ask yourself questions like these: How did this creature or this plant happen to get here? Who or what might threaten its existence? Who or what helps it thrives? Is there a story here? What story does it want to tell? Does this remind me of something else ? If a character in my story experienced this, what would they think, or feel, or do? This Thanksgiving, I enjoyed the sights, smells, sounds, and even tastes of an urban garden in Seattle. Even in late November, there were unexpected birds and blooms. I began to wonder about bird feeders high up on balconies, and the ways that hummingbirds and seagulls shared air space. I thought about the people who might invite wildlife into urban spaces. I pictured the garden as a place of enchantment, and pocketed all those story seeds too.
3 . Be a story collector. Stories are gifts. Granted, some people tell stories better than others. At a holiday gathering, you might get cornered by a bore. Or you may hear stories on repeat. Even so, if the content doesn’t grab you, you can pay attention to how stories get told. Where do people begin? Where do they backtrack and give context, or introduce the other players? Interject and ask questions for clarification; maybe there are more layers or characters or new insights to be found. Listen for unusual turns of phrase, charming expressions, recurring themes. And be open to getting some great stories, too. You’ll know one when you hear it. Someone I met recently shared that she was the former English teacher of a famous dancer I admire. The delay of the “reveal” — and her whole buildup of clues (“he sat at his desk with his legs wrapped behind his head!”) — was delicious! I could tell it was an oft-told tale of hers, but I was a fresh audience and took it all in.
Stories are gifts people give us. The way we listen is also a gift. These are valuable exchanges. I recently took ten Uber rides, and every driver wanted to talk about something — every driver had a story to share. I may lose the details over time, and they’re not my stories to tell word for word, but they may inspire me later: the feeling of disappointment one driver had over a lover’s cancelled plans stayed with me, as did the love a different driver had for the rescue dog riding illegally in her front seat. Ten rides, ten stories, ten gifts of ideas, all while I thought I was rushing around.
So what would you do with an extra arm?
I mentioned I’ve been playing with ChatGPT at the idea-generating phase. I’ve been curious if AI can help writers quickly visualize a scene, which might help to jumpstart a writing session if we’re feeling stuck. This is not so unlike making a Pinterest board with found images that evoke settings, characters, and moods; if anything, it’s faster.
Below is the first picture I ever asked for, to help myself envision a character in a story I might write. From the language in my request, ChatGPT got some details right: the house plants, the books, the large grumpy cat. It also gave her an extra arm. Now, maybe she’s just multi-tasking. Maybe she’s going through a bit of Holiday Creative Drift, and this is how she gets stuff done, by sprouting an extra arm. After that, my creative explanations run thin. I mean, it’s really just not a great image. It feels static, and does not help me to imagine what came before or what might happen next.
Since that first experiment, I’ve learned you can phrase requests to ChatGPT differently, and get endless revisions. Yet hey don’t all land right. Here’s a revised version of the “holiday art” I used at the beginning of this newsletter. It’s completely different from the first image, and even odder. It doesn’t build on the first work in the way a true revision might. It’s just a whole new image. And why does the person typing outside apparently have no head? And who is descending in a swirl of ribbons -- could it be a muse? An elf? (I am so confused!) This image in no way matches what was going on in my brain, nor does it spark many fresh ideas. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe another person would view this as intriguing surrealist art.
I guess there are several reasons why I’m not rushing to embrace AI in my own creative process. For one thing, I am concerned about the environmental impact, the cumulative carbon emissions from all these questions, and all this art and writing we commission from it. I’m also concerned about the spiritual impact. AI has its uses, but for idea-sparking, it’s not for me. I don’t wish to speed up or short-circuit my creative process after all.
Our human minds are powerful. We can exercise our creative muscles, even as an act of resistance. We can do this daily, even as we go about our everyday lives. Even when we’re so, so busy and pulled in different directions by all two — or three — of our arms.
I hope you find lots of creative sparks and illuminating insights throughout this holiday season. And may you find momentum if you’re working on a project now, or the gift of a fresh idea to carry with you into the new year!
I agree that it’s very hard to stay creative in these holiday times with all of the pressure that comes to bear either from without or within. When I get too far away from my project, I develop a condition I call creative anxiety. The only cure for that particular disease is to go back and hang with my characters, even if I don’t write a word that day.
Here's my suggestion for a word that means "the sensation of enjoying aspects of the holidays yet longing for our creative work"—but not specific to the holidays. It's the Welsh word "hiraeth," and it describes a feeling of the presence of absence, or an acute awareness of something missing in your life. It's a uniquely Welsh word, and has no direct translation in English.
What a great topic for this time of year! It IS hard to stay creative during the holidays. (It's hard to stay sane during the holidays!) I do long for the quiet of January and the chance to sink back into my own created story-land.