Is time really the enemy of creativity?
Time is a rusty, weighted locket hanging from the ribcage of the creative.
It scrapes along bone as it swings. Constant and painful. Urgent and impatient.
Inside this locket, a scrawled note placed delicately on crushed velvet. It reads: RIP creativity.
Your eye flicks up to the top right of the screen. Twenty minutes remaining of that precious creative time you scraped out of the arse-end of the day. Twenty minutes is not enough time for anything!
You’ve not been able to drop in properly, such were the myriad other tasks pulling focus. The content you’re supposed to be producing (heaven help you), the business to promote, the work to complete, the food shop, the dog that vomited on the doormat (christ, not again Rex), the bin juice spillage etc etc etc forevermore.
Time is gnashing and braying. Snapping at your ankles. It demands the opposite of creation - constriction, parameters. It demands you bend yourself to fit its rigid container. Time is anxiety. Time robs us of itself when we want it most.
So you give up.
Sigh. Maybe shake a weary fist at how little time you had.
And maybe it also feels a little like relief? Time, after all, was the reason that you could not do the thing. Not you.
But maybe this time thing is just a beautiful cop-out?
Time was a get out of jail card. Then you didn’t have to face the fear you didn’t even acknowledge was there. About your creative practice. The underlying thing that this excuse of having no time actually covered over. The fear of actually being with your art. In it. Fear that it will be in some way shit. Time becomes the excuse not to bother going there at all.
Perhaps there’s a perfect conditions narrative too. Not quite enough time, oh no definitely not enough uninterrupted time, not 3 hours of pure focus, not x or y or z or the 10 million other time-based excuses we can find to put it off.
Then there’s my personal favourite way to blame time. The old time squeezed me so hard that everything else HAD to take priority.
And underneath all of this - is a dim feeling of letting something down. Not just yourself. Something within you….
The swirling feelings above have been present for me all week. Setting up a business, launching a new copywriting brand, so I’ve been writing writing writing as intensely as the day is long. But writing for the business and the content and the website and the damn legals - and definitely not for my art.
Yesterday, I sat down to edit a flash fiction story I submitted to a competition in January that didn’t make the list. As soon as I sat down, a work query came in. And the intention to be with the creative writing unravelled in front of me. Instantly.
I then dutifully told myself all the necessary excuses.
But I had a choice. I opted to avoid my writing - if I am completely honest here.
(Noooo, it was time, Bec, tiiiiime!)
Ultimately, I’ve had a rather annoying realisation.
Yes, time is a ball-ache. And yes, I’m really trying to turn a blind-eye to it more. A post-it note over the digital clock on the laptop. Letting ten minutes be enough. Not allowing the constant stress of being chased by the tickedy-tik-tok death march of the clock to overwhelm me.
But more than that, I’m trying to de-tangle all the multiple excuses that get tied up with time, as the reason I am not writing. Time becomes the knotted root for these other excuses and we need to give it a serious shaking off.
Creativity is an infant carried around in our gut and in our cells. A patient, quiet, wide-eyed infant, just waiting and yearning to be tended to.
And ultimately we also carry around the low-key terror that we are going to let it down. That we are going to waste a life looking elsewhere, getting everything else finished first. Not doing the thing - not just because of time - but because we didn’t trust ourselves enough.
And this wonder-filled innocent that is our creativity deserves to breathe fresh air! But it might never be given the opportunity to. And that is heart-breaking.
Creativity isn’t abstract.
It’s a slow, unassuming, sweet creature. Given the loudspeaker, it could come out with the most beautifully prophetic, wildly colourful expression in all of us. There’s a constriction in my throat when I think about it. It makes me want to cry. Because I never give it the speaker. Well, not enough anyway. I never just give it space to have a good old play.
The infant doesn’t need hours of us. It’s not asking for a completely clear schedule. Not asking for a precise and arbitrary 13 hours of silence. No interruption in order to exist and breathe. It just needs regular, meaningful connection. Not three distracted hours - ten minutes of love. Singular attention. Play and exploration. Not answers. That’s all it’s ever asked for. Its needs are not as complicated as we make out.
All the infant wants is for the locket to stop swinging for a while. For everything to quieten down. To still a little.
And for us to finally look down and see it.
Thrash is a rebellion against fast-paced digital culture that leaves no space for idle moments, daydreaming and creating.
It’s for creatives with an edge trying to find each other across the digital abyss. If you’re GAGGING to get back to your creative centre, come join us.