Gin Diaries No. 4
Gin Diaries No. 4
On hitting a creative slump, and creative 'practice'
And that's it: after months of intense work the book is delivered.
Since the middle of October I worked on it in one way or another every day — and I mean pretty much every day. Some of it, particularly at the beginning, was admin. I lived in my emails, listing distillers, arranging samples, hashing out a table of contents.
The actual writing began not long after. Most days I woke up with a clear writing goal that needed fulfilling, and externally imposed stakes to make sure I met it. From about mid-December onwards the writing became all-consuming. I poured out hundreds, sometimes thousands of words per day. I wrote passages on gin in my dreams.
Now, suddenly, that pressure is gone. You'd think it would be lovely. Instead I'm left feeling listless, cast adrift on a sea of “now what?“
One strategy to counter these post-book blues is to refill the well. As Julia Cameron explains in her book The Artist’s Way, I have just spent a long period drawing on my internal creative reserves. Now I need to replenish them.
That could mean consuming culture — books, exhibitions, music. It could also mean visiting new places, speaking to interesting people, or doing new things — particularly if these relate in some way to what I want to write about, i.e. drinks.
Hopefully it will be a little bit of both. I intend to take some time off to make up for all the days worked over the holidays at the end of the year. Then I want to visit more brewers and distillers, prop up more bars, and perhaps sniff around an orchard or two.
Another solution suggested to me on Mastodon was less direct but just as good. It involved a subtle change in thinking and a fresh way to relate to my work.
Painters have studios where they work not just on one picture at a time but all sorts of projects. I like to imagine these overlapping to different degrees. Some are studies not intended to be shared, but which contribute towards the creation of a larger or more important piece of work. Others are separate works in their own right.
(This seems like a broad-brush depiction — no pun intended — but bear with me. It only needs to be true of some painters for the analogy to work.)
In this situation, the artist works primarily on their studio. Anything they happen to put out into the world is just a by-product of their real work, which is the act of creating in their chosen medium — their practice, if you like.
I like this idea for a few reasons.
First, it brings more value to the work that goes on around the “work” — the “work” being the completed projects that the world gets to see. For me that might mean anything from the notes scribbled in my notebook all the way up to a finished draft via any number of intermediary pieces of writing: diary entries, notes about drinks or drink producers, notes about writing itself, essays, blog posts, newsletters… you get the idea. It’s easy to see only published books or articles as my “work” and all of the rest as… I don’t even know, “miscellaneous” at best and at worst simply a distraction. All of this other work contributes to my published “work”, even if only indirectly. So I should recognise its value.
Second, it stops me from investing too much of my self worth in any one project. Instead of being dragged high or low by the fortunes of one particular piece of work — which are unpredictable and beyond my control — I can put my faith into something steady and enduring, over which I have direct control.
I’ve been doing this for a while already, albeit in an inchoate, unconscious sort of way. Towards the end of 2021 I adopted nulla dies sine linea as my motto. In other words, I would not let a day pass without writing “a line”. I chose to interpret that as a minimum of 300 words, which strikes pleasing a balance somewhere between inconsequential and achievable. Most days I’ll write more, but what matter most is that it is never less. I’ve stuck with it since I began and it’s already a deeply engrained habit. I didn’t miss a single day of 2022. I don’t intend to for 2023, nor any other of the years remaining to me.
Third, having more than one project on the go means I can avoid slumps like this by moving onto something else right away. And it also gives me permission to pursue other ideas even if they are not yet ones that seem profitable. It also gives me freedom to explore ideas that are not linked to my usual beat, which means in the long term I can broaden and deepen my skills as a writer rather than deepening just one farrow in the wide field.
I remain on call with my publishers for a few more weeks to field any queries and supply proof corrections. After that I will take that time off to focus on refilling my well. Until then, I can take some pleasure knowing that the delivery portion of my advance has now been released.