Creating a Creative Space

Okay, I know that was a whole lot of C's in there. What can I say, I'm a sucker for some good alliteration. I might have an alliterative addiction, honestly.

What I also have, consistently, is a need to make my environment 'perfect' before I start creating. Almost as though I need it to be picturesque before I can dive out of this world and into another one. Some days, I just know that I need to smudge my office before I get started. Other times it's that I need a cup of hot coffee sitting next to my laptop encouraging me to 'write epic shit,' or I'll get distracted.

Maybe if I find that perfect routine, that one course of action that will get me into the zone each and every time, I won't suffer from that thing we creative types - writers, artists, musicians - fear the most. The block.

There is an overwhelming amount of research out there as to what kind of atmospheres drive creativity the most. Everything from the kinds of ambient noise you should listen to (are crickets chirping more inspirational than whales wailing?), the temperature of the room you're in, the kinds of distractions you allow yourself in your space, even how cluttered your physical space is.

This isn't something that applies to just an individual level either; companies trying to draw workers in a competitive market have to prove that their work environments foster creativity, and thus positivity, or the view of their culture will suffer. That breaks down to collaboration feeding the culture, and requires that the company (and the people within it) live that culture every single day.

So there's the rub.

If you do something once, you have to do it the same thing every single time to put yourself in the same mental space. Your creative culture has to be the same every day, just like operations in a positive company have to look the same with every new project. You put yourself in the right mindset, with the right music, at the right temperature, and in the correct lighting, and you'll slip right into the zone and get ideas. Not all of those ideas are going to be good I would imagine, but a bad idea has the potential to be a good idea, whereas no idea will never be a good idea.

But I disagree. I don't think that's it at all. Writer's block is a holding pattern, and a holding pattern can't always be broken with another holding pattern. Even if that is the one that trains your brain to work the way you want.

If my office is filled with background waves, low lighting, and a hot cup of coffee every time I sit down at my laptop or my notepad, eight out of ten times, it's going to work for me. The other two? My coffee gets cold.

And there's a missing piece. All of a sudden, my perfectly trained brain has hit a hurdle. Can I force myself over that hurdle, or do I have to go get a new hot cup of coffee before I will be able to accomplish anything? I limit my own creativity if I can only be creative in the perfect atmosphere.

Maybe I do get distracted from the story I'm writing because my boyfriend is on the phone wandering in and out of the room. Maybe the car driving by the open window in my office is playing a song I haven't heard in a while and now I have to listen to it. But what if my boyfriend says something that makes me laugh, and that takes what I'm writing in a different direction? What if that song reminds me of a place or a person from years ago that completely changes my train of thought?

Creativity doesn't only exist in a perfect environment. Rigidity and consistency are the enemies of creativity.

Give yourself the space to breathe, and don't force yourself to start with perfection. It perpetuates the idea that the things you create have to be perfect in order to fit in that space, and we all know that is just not true.

Curate your creative space. Just don't be too constrictive. Or consistent. No cage, no cost, just colorful crazy.