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Eddie Hood
Well, let's talk about creative energy today. If you've ever tried to create something, whether writing a novel or planting a garden or even raising a child, I think being a parent is absolutely a creative act. You've probably felt exhausted at times, and I'm exhausted right now. I spent a lot of time and energy building the podcast on the YouTube channel, and that has gone pretty well in terms of my energy level. But a few months ago, I decided to write a novel. So this is my first attempt at writing a novel. But what I found is that I've been giving myself to that process fully. All of my emotions, all of my. My attention has gone into this book, which has been a really wonderful thing. But a couple days ago, I sort of crashed and burned, and I have gotten out of rhythm with my podcast and my channel, and I had this sort of awakening moment of, oh, my gosh, I am completely creatively drained. And so I want to share with you today what I'm doing to try and refill that creative cup. And hopefully it will help you if you're in the process of making something yourself. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hi, friends, this is Eddie Hood. Welcome back to the Readwell Podcast. All right, pretend you are this beautifully designed Read Slowly mug, and let's say you are filled with a really tasty morning coffee. Perhaps it is the deep read coffee. Yeah, this is a commercial. Or maybe is the pros coffee that you can get from Edgewater Bookstore. Yep, I did that. Here's the thing. You have a limited amount of coffee in you, or we'll call that creative energy. Okay. If this cup is you, there's only so much in you each day. And I have found for myself that when I wake up in the morning, I typically have a refilled cup. And I can spend that creative energy throughout the day. But there are days when that cup is just completely empty right out of the gate. And I've been trying to figure out why. Well, there's a few things that have hit me. So my plan today is to go over with you the four things that have been draining my creative cup and how I'm filling those up. I'm going to also talk about some of the books I've been reading Lately. So if you want a few book recommendations, stick around for that. And I'm absolutely going to share a few of the books that I turn to when my creative energy is down. So the first thing that causes this sort of lack of creative energy in my life, it's just that I'm not taking care of myself physically. It's always the case where a few days into perhaps not sleeping well or staying up too late, I'm like, what is going on? And I realize, ah, I'm not sleeping well, I'm spending too much time binge watching some random show with my wife at night. Who knows what it is? But that starts to really accumulate for me. And I can still function at my job, I can still function as a parent, I can still function when I go to the gym, but I cannot function creatively. For me, I have noticed that creative energy seems to be the most demanding of the energies. If they are different things. I think that's because when you sit down to do your job at work, usually there is a sense of what you should do, right? There's a task list you follow, or your boss gives you something to do, or the customer orders something and you create that thing. When you're a parent, you obviously respond to the child. And trust me, I have four kids. It is an exhausting thing raising kids, but it's a different kind of exhausting, right? My kids, I love them, but they can drain the mental energy from you and the physical energy. But my creative energy is still very much there with my kids now when I go to make something. So again, I'm currently writing a novel at the moment. And when you sit down at a blank page, there is no direction as to which way I should go. And so I end up having to, if I write well, pour myself into the paper. And that is, for just some strange reason, very, very challenging. So if it's not going well, it's almost always because I haven't been taking care of myself physically. Okay, so here's the fun one. I've noticed that if I am this coffee cup full of this great coffee, right, and it represents my creative flow, then I have a requirement of consuming things to fill up my cup. And I have a need to process things or create things, thereby emptying my cup. And I've noticed that if I get that ratio wrong, that it's sort of like weighs on my creative being. I don't even know that's a thing, but it definitely pulls me down. So if all I do is consume information, whether I'M on social and I'm just kind of flipping through, which, by the way, never fulfills me. I'm not going to say it's not fulfilling because some people, I would argue, probably get very fulfilled by just scrolling and relaxing. But for me personally, it doesn't really help me relax and it doesn't fulfill my creative energy. It just sort of takes up time for me. So that sort of consumption doesn't help, which is why I typically turn to books. And I've noticed for me, taking that information and then turning it into something new, in other words, all I'm doing is consuming books. Then that also drains my creative energy because I sort of cram my head and my life and my heart with all of this great information. And then I start to feel guilty about not doing anything with it. And that guilt sort of, I don't know, drives me downward. And I don't like that. So I have this mantra in my community, which is to. On my mug here, it says, read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Those are sort of the three ideas around here. Yeah, read slowly, take notes as you learn. But you have to apply the ideas because if you don't, if you don't create something with that knowledge, you're going to lose that creative energy. Now, the other thing is if you're this coffee cup, and that's akin, of course, to just continuing to pour coffee into it and it just sort of spills over and is wasted, there's only so much creative energy you can put in before you do something with it. And the next side of this metaphor, of course, is the consumption as you drink this coffee and as you enjoy it. So if you go out and you're the kind of person that is only ever doing, all you do is create things. You're always taking on new projects. You're potentially doing more than you can handle. Too many irons in the fire. You're akin to the person that never reads or thinks or studies. You're just out doing all of the time. For me, that is also creatively draining. I'm not saying it is for everybody, just for me. I run out of ideas. I run out of steam. I run out of. Run out of inspiration. If it's just me thinking in the room. And I really benefit from taking some time each day with a journal and these books and sort of thinking through ideas that other people have chewed on to help me take bigger, more interesting steps with my own personal life. So, yeah, I have to get the balance right of consuming new information. And using that information to create something new. If I get that wrong, it just. I feel off somehow. And that doesn't really work out too well for me. Okay. The next thing I wanted to share with you that is really helping me in terms of refreshing that creative sense of spirit is all of the time in between the act of creation. So one of the things I've learned just by way of writing a novel again is that the most important part of that novel writing experience is. Is not the time I use at my desk where I'm typing on the keyboard and putting words on paper. The most important part of the novel writing process is, in fact, the 23 hours in between each writing session. Cause I only get to write for about an hour a day. But it's that 23 hours in between that I'm using to remember who I am as a human. Refill that cup, go for walks, pay attention to how other humans act, look at other art, appreciate life, smell the flowers and so on. If I don't do that, if I sort of walk blindly for those 23 hours and I just turn on the automation switch in my brain, it's kind of like running on that hamster wheel. Then when I come back to my writing session the next morning, I feel awful. It is not a good feeling to show up with nothing to make something with, right? You need ingredients to build the cake. So whatever you're doing in your creative life, I think a lot of us wish that we could just do our creative thing all the time. That our job gets in the way, that responsibilities get in the way. How great would it be if we could just do our novel writing or our gardening or whatever it is? But I think the truth is that we need that time in between the gardening or whatever to really plant something great. Now, the last idea I want to share with you is that I think the space of the environment that we create in really matters. And there is this beautiful concept in science called entropy, where there are several different sort of explanations of entropy. But one of the ideas that I latch onto, it's this idea that entropy explains how the universe is constantly moving into a state of chaos or disarray. It's the idea that the universe is expanding, right? That. That things are moving outward. And you can see this in your own personal life because if you weed your garden, then a couple days later there's new weeds, right? If you clean your kitchen, then I swear, 30 minutes later, there's now dead dishes in the sink, and you didn't put them there. But the house is all of a sudden dirty again. Life seems to have a propensity to move towards chaos. And we tend to spend our entire lives trying to rein that chaos in, to have some sense of control. Well, for me, I've noticed that the place I create matters, the room that I create in matters, where I write my novel does matter. And I really need to have a clean desk. I need to have my books put away. I gotta be honest, this place is not clean right now. And I think that's one of the reasons why my energy has just tanked. And if I'm going to show up tomorrow and have a really good writing session, then I probably should spend an hour or two today and get all of my books put away, get the carpet vacuumed clean off the desk so I can show up tomorrow feeling some sense of readiness to go, well, let's go over some of the books that I'm getting into just for fun. And then I'll. I'll share with you some of the books that I use when I'm feeling a little under the weather creatively. And hopefully they'll help you as well. Let's hear. So we've been reading Behave in My Book Club. This is by Robert Sapolsky. We're all of 20 pages in. We're only reading 10 pages a day. I'm encouraging members to read this one very slowly and then to talk amongst themselves about it. So I've only been reading it for two days now. Yeah, it has been fantastic so far and lots of good chatter. The idea here is that we're looking at how our biology and our culture and our environment, how all of these things sort of interplay and intertwine in the decision making process. Why do we do what we do? It's an interesting conversation. I haven't read this yet, but I've been getting a lot of heads up on this. This is J.M. coetzee's the Disgrace. I don't know if I'm saying his name right. I should know that. I've actually never read his stuff before. This book won the Nobel Prize and it's the story of a teacher who essentially seduces a student and they have a relations. And now he doesn't really see that as a problem. But later on somebody who his daughter has an experience akin to that where she is taken advantage of. And now it's very personal because it was his daughter. And so he sort of sees the error of this misuse of attraction. Right. And how when it was just him, it was okay, but when people did it to his daughter, not okay. And how he has to sort of rise above these bad decisions and go from disgrace, as in the name of the book, to grace. So I'm looking forward to this. I haven't read it yet, so I can't recommend it yet, but I know a lot of people in my circle really like that, and I'm looking forward to it. Also, I've been getting into science fiction lately. Science fiction is not something that I historically have been into, but I've been looking for something that I could read that's just fun. I'm getting into Pierce Brown's the Red Rising series, I suppose this is called. These are not the kind of books I typically talk about on this podcast. But I want to point out that, like, just because I feel books are for, you know, enlightenment and education and for sort of spawning better ideas, we absolutely should be reading for entertainment and pleasure and just pure joy as well. And so I needed a series that I could just sort of get lost in and have a good time. So, yeah, I'm really excited about this one. And if you've read it, let me know in the comments below what you think. Okay. That's where my head's been in books the past few days now. These are the books I turn to when I need an extra kick creatively. I love the Austin Kleon series. They're just these little books. He wrote them a long time ago, not. Not terribly long ago. But the best one is show your work. And then he's got still like an Artist and Keep Going. And the idea of these really quickly, I think still like an Artist was the first one. This is like the idea that everything has been done under the sun. And your job as an artist is not to feel like you have to always create something new, but instead to just be collecting things and to merge new ideas into your ideas and so on, and to just not be afraid to get your hands messy in the creative act. These are really fun to show your workbook. This is really great because the art of creation gets better when you share your work with the public. So, you know, I'm creating a podcast right now, for example, and a YouTube video, and it will be aired and you're now watching it. Is this active creation perfect? Absolutely not. Could I spend hours and weeks making it better? I could, but it's better that I create something and put it out there and then get feedback from people who are watching or listening so that I can see what the questions are and make new content to address that. If you always keep your work to yourself, your creative work, then you don't get feedback from the rest of the world. And that can also drain your energy. Okay, the last one is Keep Going. I think this is just sort of a nice book that he finished up with here in this little series as a reminder that, like, creating things is really hard and it takes a lot of you, but it's also very rewarding. And you just have to know that if you're going to be a creative person, you're signing up for the long haul. And you just got to keep showing up and making the work and making the work and doing it for the sake of being creative, not for the sake of, you know, things that can't keep that momentum going for you. So, yeah, the subtitle Here is 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad, which is quite helpful. And then the last book I like to turn to all of the time. I've read this more times than I care to admit. It's Seth Godin's book called the Practice. This is a business book, but I think it applies directly to the creative act. Because here the idea is that as a business, you don't really know what your customers want. And so you have to sort of send it out and get feedback and you have to ship this work, right? And it's a process of communication. And the only way to create something great is. Is to be in conversation with the people who are consuming what you create. And so you have to ship it. You have to ship your work. You have to get the feedback, make improvements, and then ship it again. This just reminds me that I'm not going to get it perfect, right? And that it is better to just send the work out than hold onto it forever and be a perfectionist. All right. Hey, I hope you got something out of today's episode. If you're creating something, leave me a comment down below. Let me know what you're working on. If you're a painter, a novelist, again, a gardener, a parent, whatever it is, I would love to hear from you and see what you're up to these days. Anyway, as always, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. I'll see you next time. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well Podcast.