3 Keys to Sustainable Creativity

Why you should stop trying to produce a bestseller

- Kate Maria Pennell

Whether we are an entrepreneur, a writer, or a documentary filmmaker, these titles can seem the very badge of honor that we aspire to with our work. Yes, aiming high can help us apply ourselves to our chosen art, but there is a shadowy side to going for such specific targets and being motivated by bestowed prestige. And it’s probably not what you think. I’d like to share with you three keys that contribute to sustainable creativity and, in due course, success.

KEY 1: BEING IN YOUR RIGHT MIND

I’ve written before about writing drunk and editing sober; writing fully intoxicated with our ideas as they fill up our senses and then soberly editing them in the cool light of day to refine them. These are two distinct parts of the active creative process and, I would say, something for which we use two very different parts of our mind.

The cool, critical mind allows us to select and choose and change our work in order to improve it. It is vital and plays an important role in us producing our creative work to a high standard. Unfortunately, it’s good friends with Ego. It is also pretty obsessed with order, full of its own self-importance, and focuses on the product, rather than the process, as the defining criteria in order to assign value to our work.

Quotes such as, “We are instruments, more than authors, of our work,” from the beautiful soul of Julia Cameron, will cause it to start to sweat and hyperventilate. Control and quantifiable productivity are its preferred modus operandi.