On the places I've found creativity when I'm feeling overwhelmed

How can I be creative when I’m feeling overwhelmed or exhausted or depressed? These are some of the ways I've created opportunities for creativity in my life recently

It’s Sunday morning at 7.03am as I write this as I want to ahead of myself before the week. I post a long piece of writing on here every Tuesday, which means I usually spend Monday writing about something which has interested or engaged or upset or amused me over the previous week, which I hope you will be interested by too - please let me know if there’s stuff you’d like me to write about: let’s collaborate! At the moment, I’m also writing a lot of first draft material for my new book, and first draft material is HARD material. Ripping it out of yourself and onto the page feels like real graft, second and third draft writing is also hard (if it’s going to be good, it’s all difficult) but there is a specific energy to writing a first draft which can be scary. After all, each day, you’re greeted with the blank page. I’m really interested in the emotions we all live through, and each of my books has, so far, been based around a different emotional state I’ve experienced, like grief, motherhood or home. And my writing is very confessional, and very honest and open. I find it impossible to be private, or guarded, and I am a very open person; in some ways, reading my books is like talking to me. I don’t feel any shame in my very human failings and desires, which means that writing like this doesn’t really require me to be brave, but I do think that writing, or any demanding creative work, requires bravery in the form of having to go back to the material again and again, and continue working on it. It’s demanding, and a lot of people give up because of the stamina required to sit with the self-doubt, the anxiety, even sometimes self-loathing, which creative work demands. In my experience, now starting my fifth book, writing a first draft often takes me into a place of self doubt, and definitely a lot of loathing too.

So the command to sit down and write for the day, and so “be creative”, can feel scary. And partly because I’m currently faced with this scary challenge of writing a first draft, and also because I want my life to feel interesting and surprising and meaningful, I’ve been finding new ways to massage and nurture my creativity, which I wanted to share with you. This is not a series of exercises in creativity, but instead an account of different things I’ve actually been doing in my life to expand my creativity and open up areas of my brain which I might not have explored before.