Many clients I work with are writers. Screenwriters, television writers, journalists, novelists, and people who sit at desks staring at screens all day. By the time I start working with them, they might be experiencing feelings of frustration and concern that lead them to wish they could fast-forward through the writing process to the end result, that satisfying feeling of having written.
Writers don’t always start out feeling like that. Those first bursts of creation at the start of the journey as a writer can be inspiring and exhilarating. The process of harnessing this inspiration, capturing it in words, and the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the process can be deeply satisfying. We often get positive feedback that makes us feel good about ourselves. We might savour looking back on the trials and tribulations along the way to being able to hold a script or a book or an article in our hands and marvel at the fact that we created something tangible out of thin air. These feelings are the reasons we keep doing it. But somehow that changes over time. Why does that change? How does repeating the process of writing something, the cycle of ideation, execution, assessment, and relief, lead to a slow degradation of the inspiration and pleasure we start out with? I don’t know, but I do know that the result of this degradation is what we call burnout, and it’s something many writers experience at some point in their lives. It can last for a long time or it can come and go quickly, and all the shades of gray in between, and it’s something that is often discussed in therapy.
Burnout is a form of resistance. Resistance is the feeling we get when we don’t want to do something, especially when we feel like we have to do it. This kind of resistance is often viewed as something for us to fight through, something to overcome, and we think that by breaking through this resistance, we will ultimately be rewarded with success and feelings of accomplishment. Think of the marathon runner who reaches a point where they want to quit, but push themselves to keep going and finish the race. I can appreciate this approach, but I also think of resistance not as something to overcome, but something to guide us. Instead of a barrier for us to fight through, it might be a never-ending slog that, after fighting against for a long time, we eventually wish we had quit trying to overcome much earlier on.
I once worked with a screenwriter who was experiencing some serious burnout. He was stuck in the middle of a draft of a screenplay and hating every minute of it. The act of writing was painful, but even more painful was the time spent away from the script when all he could think about was how much he didn’t want to sit back down at the computer and keep trying to write his way through the resistance. The only respite came when he picked up a pencil and started to doodle. This client had always liked drawing, and kept a sketch pad near his desk, and the way he talked about how he felt when he was drawing sounded positive. He enjoyed it, it made him feel good, and he felt like he was good at it. I wondered if maybe he needed to put away the screenplay and focus on the drawing. “But I’m a screenwriter!” lamented the client. “Yes, but clearly your screenwriting fields are fallow,” I replied. And this is where the concept of creative crop rotation came up.
Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across growing seasons. This practice reduces the reliance of crops on one set of nutrients, along with the probability of developing resistant pests and weeds. Creative crop rotation is the idea that in the pursuit of one type of creative endeavour, the creative fields can grow fallow, and by rotating through different creative endeavours we can keep the creative fields fertile. The difficulty is in giving ourselves the freedom to grow different crops. But I’m a screenwriter! But I’m a novelist! But I’m an illustrator! It’s easy to see ourselves only in the role our career defines us as, but it’s the freedom of pursuits outside these definitions that can keep us fresh.
So this client put away his screenplay for a week and spent that time rotating through other creative outlets. He drew. He doodled. He sketched. He also exercised. He walked. He stretched. He also cooked. He cleaned. He took naps. And as he did all these things, he wasn’t thinking about that damn screenplay he was having so much trouble with. By stopping his fight against the resistance, he allowed his creative fields to refresh themselves. And sure enough, one day as he was doodling and not thinking about his screenplay, he had an idea for the screenplay. He put down his sketchpad and picked up the keyboard and found himself writing without resistance. The writing flowed, it felt natural, and in two days he got the work done that he had spent months struggling with.
Think about this if your creative work has hit the wall of resistance. Yes, you can try to fight through it at first, and it might work, but if it becomes a protracted struggle, if you start to feel burned out, put the work away and pick up something else. It doesn’t matter if you can’t draw. It could be anything. Any other activity that you feel good doing. Something that takes focus and attention, and take the focus and attention away from your area of burnout. Something different from what you’ve been struggling to do. By practising creative crop rotation, you can overcome resistance and avoid burnout.
