Everyday Creativity: Small Actions with Big Impact

what does everyday creatvity look like for you?

When I type the words “everyday creativity,” I settle into my seat and feel my insides calm a bit, because everyday creativity—for me—contains less of a stressful imperative than “writing every day,” or “making something every day.” If I can assure myself that I’m engaging in everyday creativity, the word creativity expands exponentially, and I ask myself: what am I making? What am I building? What am I doing every day that tickles my brain and brings something into the world? And in today’s newsletter, dear reader, I’d like to gift that perspective to you more fully.

I’ve lately been berating myself for not writing “as much as I should”—though if I think about it, the amount of writing I believe I should be doing daily can stretch into the infinite horizon. (If you’re interested in my class, Building a Writing Practice While Living with Limitations, you can find it here.) It becomes harder to refrain from beating myself up about it because I have a novel on contract that I’m currently revising. Riverhead, my publisher, has been extremely kind about the deadline, given that 2023 became Our Cancer Year, but I’m also highly aware that my last book came out in 2019, and with the slow nature of traditional publishing, I have no idea how much time will pass until I have another book out. (Why it matters to me is a matter for another newsletter; Justin Torres won the National Book Award for Fiction for his new book, Blackouts, this week after his gorgeous debut, We the Animals, came out in 2011, which has been a tremendous inspiration to me.) As writer Peter Ho Davies likes to say, Literature is not a sack race, and I try to instill that belief into myself and my students as much as possible.

As far as the novel is going: the new book's first part is essentially being written from scratch, and though it’s a revision, I’m currently churning out a good deal of new material. So I’m in the phase where the hen is still laying her eggs. I don’t know how hens feel, physically, when they are laying eggs, but I find it exhausting to write, as much as I also find it exhilarating.

This is, of course, everyday creativity. I am making sentences and paragraphs that did not exist before. But I don’t write every day (again, refer to Building a Writing Practice While Living with Limitations), and when I’m not writing, I try to engage in smaller acts of creativity in order to keep my imagination limber. Here are some of the creative acts that I do on a regular basis. I hope you find something that you find charming enough to tuck into your own pockets here.

• Take photographs. You don’t need a fancy camera, although an analogue camera can be quite fun for this. A phone camera will do perfectly fine—challenge yourself to take photographs of things you love, instead of pictures that remind you of Aesthetic Photographs on Instagram.

• Draw Tarot/oracle/etc. cards and journal about their meaning. I go in and out of doing this every day, but right now, I’m doing it daily—the two decks that I really love are the Playful Heart Tarot and the Green Glyphs Lenormand. Using a Lenormand deck is new for me, and reading this particular kind of deck involves a delightful amount of mental connection and storytelling. When I do my drawing for the day, I journal about what I think the cards are trying to tell me. When I draw from the Lenormand, C likes to do illustrations combining disparate elements and including the perceived meaning.

• Read something—and take notes while reading. It doesn’t have to be something long; it just has to be something that captivates you. Jot down some of the bits that particularly catch your interest. If you’re interested in learning my index card system for writing nonfiction, there’s a class about it in The Unexpected Shape Writing Academy.

• Cook something with deliberation. The bonus of doing this is that you’ll end up with something delicious. When I say with deliberation, I mean that you make sure to engage with the smells, feel the slick surface of a celery stalk beneath your fingertips, and take little bites as you go along.

• Listen to some music you’re currently obsessed with (or are at least feeling a good amount of love for) and doodle. You don’t have to be a brilliant artist to do this! Doodle to your heart’s content. Pretend you’re a high school student in a boring class and have a pen and notebook to entertain yourself.

I hope that these everyday creativity acts entice you to do something that involves making, even when you’re not doing The Creative Work™ that you feel like you should be doing. Sometimes doing a different kind of creative act can unlock the creativity you seek—I think of it like unclogging a drain to let the water flow.

What are some of the everyday creative acts that you love? Let me know in the comments!