Identifying Your Creative Needs
A wise mentor, (Liz Wiltsie) once said, “most people don’t even know they have needs, let alone know how to get them met!” She was talking specifically about the needs we have in relation to our daily life and work environments, but I think she’s keenly aware of how it fits into every part of our life.
Since I work heavily in the creative realm, it prompted my inquiries into what kind of needs we have as creative individuals. Is it different or similar to the needs we have in other areas of our lives? (Spoiler alert: yes and yes).
With years and years of research, personal experience, and working with hundreds of creatives, I realized that there are a specific set of needs that creative individuals have and that they are just as important as the needs we identify in other parts of our lives. This became abundantly clear to me during COVID as “normal life” shifted, evolved, and naturally, so did the way we approach creativity.
Though I believe there are way more than the five main areas of creative needs that I’ve identified, these are the five that have shown up in my studies over and over again. To me, they are the biggest and most difficult set of needs to navigate but that’s why they’re so important to focus on. In my experience, if you can identify your needs in these five areas, state them, and attempt to get them met, you have a higher probability of being and staying creative.
Need #1 — Mental Health & Well-Being
As we know, our mental and physical health affects everything in our lives and the truth is that when we’re not at our best, mentally, we can’t give our best, creatively. If you’re like me, then you know all of the “common” aspects to maintaining mental health and the general advice given about those aspects. It may sound like “exercise!” or “meditate!” or “go to therapy!” While all of those things are valid and have a place, I think there are other aspects that no one talks about. No one talks about them because if they did — changes would have to be made. So let’s talk about them.
Your mental health is influenced heavily by your capacity. Let’s think of your capacity as a battery charger. On any given day, your capacity level changes, and under normal circumstances (aka NOT a pandemic, NOT an abnormal election, NOT global fatigue, etc), you might be able to say to yourself, “okay, I have an average capacity level of X.” But under abnormal circumstances, that capacity level decreases. Now throw in your own personality and limits, and you have a pretty unstable amount of capacity. Let me illustrate (literally and figuratively).
My “general” capacity under normal circumstances (about 85–90%)
My capacity during this pandemic and election (minus any personal factors) (about 75%)
My capacity during the pandemic and election + showing up for career responsibilities + showing up for friends and family and “people-ing” (down to about 40%)
The capacity I have left for anything else in my life (25%ish)
As you can see by my example — there’s very little capacity leftover in a day to do anything else. This capacity battery hasn’t even touched on the household responsibilities or other needs I have (eating, hygiene, laundry, dishes, etc). This also doesn’t account for someone who has children and all the various amounts of responsibilities and care that places on capacity.
So when you look at our capacity levels and how it affects creativity, yeah, it makes a huge difference. You may not be able to physically see it — but your mental capacity plays a huge role in your mental health and therefore, your creativity. Want to be more creative? Refuel and recharge your capacity. How do you do that?
That’s up to you but it usually means making a change. Setting a boundary. Identifying and stating your needs. Like saying, “I need 10 extra minutes at lunchtime to just write/think/play/dance without any interruptions.”
Example: I’ve learned that in order to have a successful creative session, I need my capacity hovering at least at 50%, so that means I need less of what drains that capacity on the day I want to be creative. For me, it meant restructuring some of my meetings and calls so that I could retain some of that precious capacity to apply to my creative work.
Need #2 — Environment & Atmosphere
Your environment and creative atmosphere have a huge influence on your ability to create. Here’s a two-part experiment if you’re wondering how big of an impact environment and atmosphere have on your creativity (and to see which kinds of environments work best).
Part One
If you can, open a window, even if it’s for a few minutes. Now, try to be creative. Notice how many times you become distracted by a noise or movement that catches your eye. Notice if you start to stare out the window and stare off. Notice if you start spying on your neighbor who may or may not be hiding a dead body (wait, is it just me that does this?)
Sit in your living room, family room, or whatever room has other people or distractions in it. Try to be creative. Is the TV on? Did it draw your attention away? Did the cat knock something off the table? Does your spouse keep asking you a question? Are the kids running around screaming like banshees?
Sit in an enclosed quiet space (if you don’t have a spare room, try the bathroom for example). Try to be creative. Does the quiet disturb you and make it hard to concentrate? Notice the difference quiet and seclusion has for your creativity vs. distraction and noise. Some people work better with it, most work better without it.
Part Two
Pick a spot to be creative and “mess it up” if it’s not already. Let some papers loose. Place multiple pens/pencils around you haphazardly. Add some pet or child toys to the area to really set the scene. Now try to be creative. Does the mess/clutter bother you? Does it distract you? Maybe it actually comforts you and makes you feel in the “zone.”
Now tidy up that same spot. Clear off the papers, put the pens and pencils back in their places. Remove the toys. Now try to be creative. What happens now? Does the tidiness allow you to focus? Does it distract you to see so much…cleanliness?
Now add some sort of comforting decoration. A candle perhaps. Maybe a picture frame. Maybe a hot mug of coffee or tea. Now try to be creative. What happens now? Does having something familiar and comforting make your space feel cozier? Does coziness make you more creative?
The point of this experiment is NOT to say that one way is better than another— it’s to illustrate that WHERE and HOW you choose to be creative in relation to your environment and atmosphere matters. If you’re someone who needs background noise, then locking yourself in a quiet room won’t serve you well. If you need total silence to be creative, trying to work at a coffee shop or in your living room is also not going to serve you well.
Learn what you need to be creative and you’ll have one of the keys to consistency.
Need #3 — Inspiration & Openness
It would be great if the creative muses adhered to our preferred schedules and appeared when summoned, but that’s not the way it works! Creativity favors momentum. But in order to have momentum… you need to get started. That’s often the hardest part of the entire thing. And what often blocks us from starting are a bunch of bullshit lies we tell ourselves (and often believe). “I’m not good enough.” “I have nothing interesting to say.” “I’m not creative.” “I don’t have time.” (See #4 for this one).
So if getting started is an issue for you, you may need to do some work around dismantling one of your blocks. Sometimes, that means identifying a small need that can have a big impact. Example: I need at least five minutes of pre-creative time to write out all the lies I’m telling myself before I can be creative. Once I get it out of my system, I’m usually good to go.
But there are other things to consider outside of those starting obstacles. Here are some questions to discover what you may need to encourage and support your inspiration and openness to create.
When you intend to be creative, are you open and willing to receive inspiration?
Are you compassionate with yourself when the muses are quiet?
Have you told your inner critic that you’re allowed to go at your own pace, in your own time?
Have you accepted that in order to be great at something, you must first be willing to be bad at it?
Need #4 — Priorities & Organization
#busy is the themed hashtag for all of us these days, but the truth is that if we are committed to ourselves and our creativity, we must make it a priority. That doesn’t mean carving out hours upon hours of time, though. It does mean setting aside a realistic, reasonable, and doable amount of time to put yourself and your creativity first. If your creativity is important to you, this is a non-negotiable. You cannot produce anything without putting in the work.
After years and years of experimentation and learning what I needed as a creative, I’ve finally found that while I prefer to have an hour or two of creative time, it’s not always doable. What is doable is twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five minutes of uninterrupted, quiet space to be creative. And listen, twenty-five minutes is NOT a huge ask in terms of others, either. If you’re a parent or someone who has very little time, I hope that someone in your life can afford you twenty-five minutes (at the very least) to be creative.
Organization is a slippery beast because it can take so many forms. I’m not going to give you a list of ways to be more organized or why you should — I’ll just say this: whatever method or approach you use to keep yourself and your creative project organized is one of your creative needs. If you need a new notebook for every project and that helps you stay on top of things — go for it. If you need to write a 45-page outline describing each step of the project — go for it. If you need to add sticky notes to your window — go for it. I don’t care what you use for organizing as long as you find a method/approach that suits your needs and keeps you on track.
Need #5 — Mindset & Approach
Contrary to popular belief and all the MFA programs that say otherwise, there is never just “one” way to do things. This is especially true in creativity because, by its very nature, it does not adhere to “rules.” However, there are similar kinds of approaches to creativity, though modern society often places emphasis on a few rather than exploring the many.
This will most likely be the section that I get the most pushback on because I’m going to diverge from traditional advice here. For some writers, the Butt-In-Chair and forced creation does not work. We’ve all heard the phrase, “you don’t wait for the muse to show up, you put your butt in the chair and you write.” And that’s fantastic advice for rational/logical writers or creators — but there are many kinds of writers and creators and they don’t actually benefit from this well-intentioned but often wrong advice.
The last thing a struggling creative needs is someone telling them that they’re doing it wrong…or that they “need” to do it this way or that way. No. Just no.
You get to choose what you need creatively. You get to state the rules. No one else.
So when it comes to your mindset and approach, discovering how you want to be creative will determine what you need.
Example: I’m an intuitive writer and I’m not motivated by extrinsic goals. So someone telling me “I’ll give you $500 if you finish your novel by November 30th!” will not make me write any faster nor will it make me write any better. However, if I woke up from a dream that felt so real, I could relive it over and over and suddenly have the desire to find out more about the character from it, that will motivate me.
This example is meant to show you that one of my creative needs is acceptance of my process rather than trying to fit myself into a box that doesn’t work for me and doesn’t fulfill my creative needs.
Interested in working through your needs in a digital workbook? You can find this template on Gumroad as a pay-what-you-want product.
