Overcoming Creative Drought This Holiday Season

The season is upon us—or rather, the Christmas season came early for me. This past weekend I attended a holiday theater production. There was the usual singing and dancing from Santa Claus and his elves, the shimmering Christmas trees, and a star hung above the stage. It was nice to see the actors enjoying themselves. It reminded me why a creative life can be so rewarding and help us connect with others. Outside the theater, the trees still held onto a burst of gold leaves, but already the holiday lights were strung on several houses tucked away on side streets. Another year is spinning by at lightning speed.

As Advent approaches, I feel like I’m in a season of drought. After more than a year of hard work on our Women’s Writing Circle anthology, Moments of Love, I keep wondering—what comes next? Droughts, as Julia Cameron notes in The Artist’s Way, are really a form of grieving, of loss. A writing project may have come to an end, and the fear lingers…what if I’m done? What if I can’t ever write anything worthwhile again?

I have a million reasons not to write: a knee pain visit to the orthopedist, a cortisone shot, a dentist appointment, and even trying out a new rug shampooer. Clean carpets that smell like soap and are two shades lighter in the sunlight when I’m finished.

Projects are on the backburner. There’s a possible novel about a woman’s obsession with a man who no longer wants her, so she sets out to destroy him. Another possibility is a time-travel story. A young woman meets the man she loves all over again, although this time things are different. There have been so many books written on every conceivable thing, including this, that I’m wondering if I should move forward with either.

The feeling of being overwhelmed and not focusing lingers as the holidays approach. As I wrote in a blog post in 2018, “We live in an age of feeling overwhelmed, where the daily diet is 24/7 news, carnage, disease, and disasters.” That sentence still holds true. Ours is an anxiety-producing world of change at lightning speeds, which encroaches on the fragile artist within us. There’s so much noise out there, too. Just look at Amazon, and something like a million new books have been published this year alone. Ninety percent sell less than 100 copies.

I remind myself that publication and the finished project are sweet, but it’s not how many books we sell, or how many reviews we get. Feeling a sense of purpose is the elixir for a creative heart. The creative life is a reason to get up in the morning. It ignites our own creativity and is, at the same time, a rather selfish endeavor. It is a journey of self-discovery, trying to figure things out.

Haven’t I learned over the years that small rituals end the drought by lighting a candle, retreating to that room of my own, and just writing?

Then there is supporting other creative people through our Women’s Writing Circle and our book signings. These are other ways “to show up on the page.” We support each other by sharing and critiquing our stories, offering insights and words of encouragement, such as “Job well done!” We bring empathy because these things are emotionally accessible.  

In these dark days of November, as we look to Advent, it’s a time of expectation, of anticipation that something wonderful will happen to keep the hope alive. And so, we light the candle and wait for what comes next.

What do you do to overcome creative droughts?