How To Stay Creative During Uncertain Times

Fragile, resilient. Perceptive, narrow-minded. Reclusive, convivial. As writers, we are all these things and more. We are the canaries in the coal mine, the watchers against the dark, the mirrors of society. But if we are empaths and mirrors, what do we do when society has a really bad day? Or a really bad week? Or months? Or a year?

If you were fortunate enough to listen to Rebecca Day’s session at the London Screenwriters Festival Online in 2021, "Where's your head at? Mastering creative uncertainty in 2021," you would have heard some strategies about new ways of thinking about yourself and your work. In particular, Rebecca discussed the crucial importance of mental health and wellness during times of unprecedented stress. It was a revelation to me.

The audience for this talk was specifically writers, but the message translates to all creatives. Interestingly, Ms. Day remarked that freelance writers are almost uniquely suited to cope with difficult times of uncertainty. The very precariousness of our career trajectory means we are more dogged and resilient than most. However, there’s a point at which even the most nimble freelancers can be overcome with bad news and uncertain circumstances, such as the events of the past year. It’s what we do next that matters.

Rebecca focused on provocative questions:

1. How do we avoid the evil of comparing ourselves to others?
2. How do we turn down the noise?
3. How do we combat unreasonable expectations of ourselves?

Like her co-presenter Lucy Van Smit, she urged writers toward greater self-care, with the caveat that without it, our productivity, and even our lives, could be in danger.

Lucy focused on humans’ physical responses to stress, with surprising findings from neuroscience about how our bodies and minds react and how to combat the reactions.

Tips on how to stay creative during uncertain times:

• getting sunlight early every day
• shutting off the phone and computer
• moving your eyes up to the sky
• focus on your breathing, take slow, deep breathes

All of these tips can directly help relieve stress and generate creativity. The most basic tip of all: to avoid “freeze breathing” (the behavior we manifested when we saw a predator in the wild) which can occur when we read emails or texts. Her remedy - if we consciously breathe slowly in and out, we can train our bodies not to “freeze breath” so often, thus greatly reducing our anxiety level.

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