This post is part of our “What keeps you writing?” series where I ask writers from our Vagabond community what keeps you writing and creating. Even when, well, life unfolds all around you.
This week, I’m very excited to share a bit of wisdom from a writer and illustrator, Ellen Bratsche.
Ellen has celebrated a major creative victory this year--the birth of her daughter! I’m amazed by the way she keeps creating with a newborn (sometimes literally) in her arms.
I also really enjoy having Ellen in our creative community because she always reminds me that it is possible to tell a story with pictures, doodles, and illustrations...or that when the words won’t come, you can start with a drawing first.
You can find Ellen’s illustrated flash fiction, Birds of the Water at the Vagabond Voices publication on Medium. And you should definitely check out her beautiful children’s book, Das kleine Buch der wilden Tiere which allows children to flip the pages and create fantastic animals using Ellen’s illustrations. Well you kind of have to see it for yourself…
We’ll take a look at how Ellen stays creative in this post, and the lessons you can all take away from her example. Whether or not you currently have a baby on your hands…or some other important life commitment.
And no, she doesn’t do it by waking up at 5 AM to write sleep-deprived in the dark...
Keep your writing relevant to your life and what matters right now.
Do you think that writing about something that matters to you—right now— could keep you motivated to keep creating? When I asked Ellen what creative projects she’s working on currently, notice that they are projects that center on her life and her purposes.
At the moment, it’s a way of journalling for me — using real-life situations, but exaggerating or changing them in some way, mixing different experiences/merging them into one.
My husband and I also keep a ‘memory book’ where we draw and write about moments we want to remember. And it doesn’t always have to be literal — we sometimes add ‘surreal’ elements to a story because our goal is to capture how a moment felt to us.
In my opinion, writing creatively and drawing are better ways to capture moments than taking a photo. (Especially as the act of taking a photo can be enough to disturb or even destroy the moment — even our baby stops whatever she’s doing to look up when there’s a camera directed at her).
Remember, staying creative is not an all-or-nothing endeavor.
Have you ever felt like doing a little less or taking a break meant somehow not doing enough?
The more I write alongside other writers and creatives, the more I realize that we just have to keep going—in the long term. This means we need to figure out what tiny little thing we can do…repeatedly, as a habit. Staying creative as a lifelong endeavor means you find what you can do right now and do that—without guilt.
If you’ve got important commitments on your hands, consider also Ellen’s smart idea of having easy-to-use materials ready and on-hand when the opportunity to create presents itself.
Here’s what Ellen had to say about what habits and strategies help her keeps creating when time, energy, or bandwidth are in short supply.
Allowing myself to take a break and not create for a while if I don’t feel like it. And when I want to write, I’m trying to be flexible, especially now with the baby. If she falls asleep next to me, I’ll type on my phone.
I also placed my journal and a pencil in the living room. So whenever she’s happy playing on her own for a few minutes I can use that time to journal. The same goes for drawing — I’m using watercolour pencils now and a brush pen and have them close by, so I can start and stop any time.
Apart from that, knowing my priorities (Baby and sleep first) and adapting my expectations of what I can get done accordingly helps to not fall into an ‘all or nothing’ kind of mindset.
When writing, creating, and self-expression are part of your self-care regimen…you tend to keep it up!
What keeps you motivated to keep writing or expressing yourself? I asked Ellen that question and here was her answer:
That it’s such a good way to capture a moment and it’s also become a need… I feel better if I express myself, even if it’s just for myself.
I wonder if you’ve ever felt the same way I do about writing for self-care. Or any other form of creative expression. When you do something because it makes our day that much better…or our lives that much better. And when you keep at it…you end up growing as a creative.
Sometimes ‘just’ writing for yourself is the best thing you can do.
What keeps YOU motivated to keep writing or expressing yourself?
Thank you for reading this writer profile from our Vagabond community. I know that writing alongside others all these years has taught me so much about the creative process.
I hope that by continuing the conversation about what keeps us writing in our creative community, we can share a bit of this process with you.
And that maybe, you’ll share a bit of your creative spark or process with us…it’s one of those incredible things that grows when we share, after all.
So how about you? What keeps you writing when life happens?
Let me know in the comments.
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