I want you to know, as you read this, precisely the woman you are getting today. You are getting a woman who has typed sentences and deleted them for the last day and a half. A woman who attempted to write about resilience this week and failed, which is perhaps ironic or maybe just funny. A woman who spent the last thirty minutes at the beach with a coffee and the hope that three seagulls would deliver material. They did not. I haven’t been able to write this week because something else has been on my mind. The anxiety of ideas, or more accurately, a lack of them. I wasn’t going to write about this personal struggle until I read an article by Katie Heaney on The Cut. I realise now that there is a general malaise impacting the creativity of more people than expected.
In the article, titled ‘I Miss Having Ideas’, Heaney writes that while she has maintained her regular output of stories since March, she has felt creatively dead. “Ethically, I think that’s fine — nobody should feel obligated to channel Shakespeare when the country’s on fire and nearly 200,000 people are dead and the economy is cratering around us,” she wrote. “On humanity’s list of most pressing concerns, ‘I have no ideas’ ranks pretty low. But it is demoralizing, and depressing, to lose something that once consistently brought you joy and pride.” While limitation usually breeds innovation and our creativity often benefits from constraints, the constraints we are currently feeling do not quite apply. Associate professor of marketing at HEC Paris, Anne Laure Sellier, has researched the effect of restrictions on creativity and told Heaney there are ‘good constraints’ such as setting time limits on creative work, and ‘bad constraints’ such as stress. The underlying stress of a failing economy, mass unemployment and the general angst associated with a pandemic equate to something Sellier would call a ‘bad constraint’. “Stress has never been conducive to creativity,” she said. “If someone puts a gun to your forehead and says, ‘Okay, now give me a good idea,’ it’s very unlikely that’s going to happen.”
Stress feels like one part of the puzzle, but there is another. The restrictions on our daily life remove many avenues that deliver everyday surprise. If we walk into a bar, we sit at our allocated table. We can travel, but only so far. Most of us are still working from home, making chance encounters less frequent. That is, if we are allowed out of the house. There’s an element of intellectual stagnation that arrives when you cannot physically experience new things, be it standing in collective awe at a sweaty gig or meeting strangers in a crowded bar. While there is little resolve for intellectual stagnation, our depleted creativity can be improved by something else which may feel counterintuitive: scheduling in time to be bored. Not scrolling Instagram on your phone bored. Not trying to find a show on Netflix bored. Actual boredom. Manoush Zomorodi, author of the book Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, told Heaney that scheduling phone-free walks are a great way to let your mind wander. A long bath or shower can also help. During lockdown, Zomorodi’s scheduled boredom was found while waiting for the kettle to boil. Instead of using those three minutes to tend to her children or her emails, she stood still and let her mind wander. “Being bored doesn’t feel good,” she says. “But it’s important that you allow your brain to go where it wants to go.”
Whether you require ideas to function at work or not, you are probably still feeling the fatigue of October in a year that has been tumultuous to say the least. And when all ideas fail, when all energy depletes, endurance is really all we have to rely on. There are two pieces of advice I have returned to this week. Both are from interviews in The Paris Review and both address endurance in the context of writing, but I think the sentiment applies to every single one of us. When asked what advice he would give a young writer, James Baldwin said: “Find a way to keep alive and write. If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.” He added: “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.” Or as Joan Didion surmised, “There’s a point when you go with what you’ve got. Or you don’t go.” Endurance doesn’t always deliver brilliance, but each time you lean on it, it inches you closer.
Some related (and unrelated) recommendations:
Earlier this year, I spent the beginning of lockdown speaking with three wonderful women in their sixties, eighties, and nineties. Their stories are now part of a new book by Future Women called Untold Resilience. It is a timely and uplifting collection of stories from 19 women who have overcome extraordinary global and personal tragedy. Trust me, you want their advice right now.
Obviously, this article from The Cut about missing having ideas.
This interview with James Baldwin in The Paris Review which appeared in the Spring 1984 issue.
I highly recommend Aaron Sorkin's new film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, which is now out on Netflix.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo which I have been meaning to read for a year and finally got to. A wonderful work of fiction.
This article from The 19th on America's 'first female recession' which is extremely well researched and alarming.
Season three of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman is out now and features interviews with Dave Chappelle and Lizzo. Also on Netflix.
Waxahatchee's most recent album, Saint Cloud.
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