🧑🎨🖌️🎨🖼️A Month Focused on The Creative Life
This was the second month we explored a monthly theme together on Daily Drafts & Dialogues, and it proved to be an exciting and rewarding month.
We’re still getting a steady stream of new subscribers each week, and post views and reader engagement rates on posts have continued to tick up, offering further proof that monthly themes are the way to go moving forward and that last month’s debut rates were more than just an anomaly.
I’m also starting to see familiar faces in the comments and chats, which makes me believe we’re really starting to build something meaningful here together, as writers and readers and curious people who crave purposeful and inspiring engagement about what we read and write.
I want to take a moment to thank you, dear readers and subscribers, from the bottom of my heart, for becoming part of this journey! I couldn’t do this without you, nor would I want to.
Seriously, to all of you who like, comment on, restack, share, and subscribe to this work, I can’t thank you enough. Without your ongoing support and participation, this new journey would be a lot less engaging and interesting, and definitely a lot less fun. And I can’t wait to see what you share next!
In August, we were able to unpack a lot about ourselves and the creative lives that work for us through the drafts we wrote, the dialogues we engaged in, and the books we read together. Which is why I want to make sure we take an additional moment to recap and reflect on what we unpacked before we move on to next month’s theme: The Stories We Carry. Especially because The Creative Life theme covered so many things that are central to who we are as writers and creators and the lives we want and need to live every day and is certainly worthy of a few additional moments of consideration and reflection.
What follows is a high-level recap of our month exploring The Creative Life together on Daily Drafts & Dialogues.
I hope you find it useful and inspiring, and that you remember to bookmark it for whenever you need a personal and practical resource for navigating the creative life you truly want, as you never know when you might need such reminders and exercises in the future.
Again, thank you so much for being here and becoming part of this growing community. I look forward to your next comment and chat reply as we close out the month and begin a new one!
💬👥Our Dialogues About The Creative Life
In August, we first discussed: Do writers need to protect creative time like an appointment?, as we were exploring how to make space for our creative lives.
Surprisingly, your answers to that question were almost unanimous, with nearly all respondents agreeing that ‘Yes, creativity needs boundaries.’ AND ‘No, creativity should stay flexible.’ meaning that respondents ultimately agreed that ‘A mixture of both.’ is necessary, with the outliers’ responses leaning heavily toward the importance of maintaining a writing routine that has a consistent schedule.
By engaging in dialogue, we soon realized that the real question worth tackling that week was not whether we should make appointments for our creative time but HOW we could intentionally make the space and time we needed for the creative lives we want, which generated the step-by-step DIY guide in How to Make Space and Time for Your Creative Life.
Next, we discussed: Should writers have quantifiable creative habits?, which initially received consistent yet confusing responses. Because while a majority of you agreed that yes, writers should have quantifiable creative habits, you also included something to the effect of “but only if that works for them” in your responses. Which means that even though quantifiable creative habits work for most of us, we also assume there may be times when those habits interfere with our creative freedom and the creative lives we truly want.
However, our discussion led us to better understand when quantifiable creative habits help us and our creative lives and projects, as well as when they might hinder our creative lives and projects. And the result of that discussion can be found in the ten ideas and strategies included in How to Balance Quantifiable Writing Habits with Creative Freedom in Striking the Right Balance with Quantifiable Creative Habits.
After that, we discussed: Is doubt a normal part of the creative process or a sign something isn’t working?, as we explored ‘the messy middle’ of our creative lives and drafts.
That dialogue question only received scattered responses and engagement, though many of you did respond to the follow-up questions I posted: What do you do when you are in ‘the messy middle’ of a draft? How do you overcome your doubts? To which most of you responded in unanimous ways, with most respondents saying something to the effect of: You take a short break, then keep writing.
In a roundabout way, then, most respondents did eventually agree that ‘yes, every creator doubts,’ but that they should keep writing anyway despite their doubts, which prompted an extended inquiry on my end, because then I wanted to know exactly HOW writers should actually deal with their doubts when they arise during the creative process so that those doubts are intentionally mitigated instead of further instigated. And this led to the creation of A Writer’s Guide to Surviving Creative Doubt and ‘The Messy Middle’ which covers the 5 Types of Creative Doubt, 10 Tips for Surviving ‘The Messy Middle’, and a Step-by-Step Process for Navigating ‘The Messy Middle’.
If you wanted to join any of those dialogues when they were first published but didn’t have the time then, they’re still up and ready for your comments!
📚📖Books We Read About The Creative Life
We launched the Daily Drafts & Dialogues Book Club in August and read four great books together! They were all very different and allowed us to understand The Creative Life from more interesting and diverse angles.
📕For our Popular Pick, we read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, a multi-decade journey following two friends who design video games, charting the soaring highs of creative success and the bitter lows of creative jealousy and the creative life. It allowed us to unpack how to balance play and work in our creative lives, as well as how we decide to make space for ourselves and others in our creative lives, and why. More than anything, however, this novel shines a bright light on creative collaboration and the types of sacrifices and longing living a creative life can often entail, especially when our hearts and livelihoods are on the line in everything we do and create.
📗For our Real World Application Pick, we read The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, which includes the actual, unedited diaries of a literary icon, capturing her daily writing routines, intense perfectionism, and deep creative self-doubt. And there was so much material to cover and unpack in these journals that it inspired me to create a masterclass syllabus of Plath’s reading and writing work in Striking Matches: Sylvia Plath’s Reading and Writing Practice as a Syllabus for Fueling a Creative Life. If you want to read and write like Plath, or simply take your writing to the next level, I can’t recommend this syllabus enough!
📘Four our Diverse Perspectives Pick, we read The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez, which follows a Dominican-American author who literally buries her unfinished drafts in a plot of land… only for her abandoned characters to start taking on a life of their own. According to my initial notes: “By contrasting Alma’s necessary (and literal) boundary-setting with Filomena’s open curiosity, the first half of the novel demonstrates the ways in which navigating ‘the messy middle’ requires a delicate balance between knowing when to step back for your own creative and personal survival and when and how to listen to where the work wants to go on its own.” All in all, this novel really helped us go deeper as we navigated ‘the messy middle’ of our drafts and creative lives during week three of exploring The Creative Life in August, and inspired me to share Books That Navigate ‘The Messy Middle’.
📙For our Literary Dive Pick, we read Possession by A.S. Byatt, a Booker Prize-winning masterclass following two modern scholars who unearth a secret, forbidden romance between two famous Victorian poets through hidden letters. And we’re still working through how it captures The Creative Life by being structured around the letters, journals, and complete poems of fictional Victorian authors, and those academics who research them and their work throughout the novel. Essentially, by immersing ourselves in the complex layers of Byatt’s narrative, we’re reminded how cyclical and nonlinear the creative lifecycle is, and how it both precedes and outlives us. And how this creative lifecycle is also where we are able to discover and write the most authentic work we can while living the most creative lives we can, as it is embedded within the mysteries and passions that stir and inspire us, our lives, and our work, which are all interlinked.
✍️💭My Drafts and Reflections on The Creative Life
I learned a lot about the creative life I truly want to live this month, not only by engaging in our dialogues and book discussions, but through the drafts I wrote over the course of the month, which were responses to the creative and reflective writing prompts that went out each Saturday.
In my drafts this month, I was able to reflect on My Ideal Yet Practical Creative Life Scenario as I unpacked the meaning behind the conditions that make me feel most creative, which came after I wrote my poem, A Day Alive in the Lakeside Library, which was prompted by my reflections on where creativity lives for me whenever I imagine and envision it, as I explored how to make space for the creative life I truly want.
I was also able to explore the creative habits and ‘messy middle’ of some of the characters in my current WIP in Immersive Storytelling Mode and the ArXiv and Continuing Without a Trace, which allowed me to reflect on and better understand The Habits That Help Me and My Creative Life Most and What I Do When I’m in ‘The Messy Middle’, as well as reflect on the reality of building a creative life that works for me and my WIP in this month’s Drafting Diaries: The Creative Life.
In my two final drafts that explored The Creative Life this month, I was also able to reflect on What I Hope My Writing Teaches Me moving forward, as I prepare for what comes next in my creative journey, after exploring what I think my future self would say to me now, and vice versa, in the flash fiction piece I wrote, “Did we ever…?”, which was as fun to write as it was informative.
All in all, I would say that what I am feeling after engaging in our discussions about The Creative Life and writing drafts that prompted me to explore how to live the one that I truly want is: humbled and inspired.
I also want to sincerely encourage you to complete some of the prompts in August’s Drafts posts, which explored The Creative Life, if you haven’t already, because you might just end up surprising yourself in some unexpected and reaffirming ways you’ll never forget. Truly, completing some of the prompts in the following posts, as exhibited above, allowed me to understand the creative life I want to live in positive and humbling ways I never saw coming.
🌱👥Growing Our Community and Looking Ahead
We’re only two months into following curated monthly themes with weekly focuses on Daily Drafts & Dialogues, but so far, the responses to what we are building here continue to be overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, and I couldn’t be more thrilled!
Sure, the subscriber and engagement stats prove our steady growth, but the thoughtful daily comments and engagement we’re receiving are turning this smaller online space into a growing and thriving community. And I can’t wait to keep having meaningful dialogues and see more of what you’re writing in the months ahead, because we’re just getting started!
🫶THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE! 🫶
I can’t tell you how much this continued positive response to what we are doing here means to me, and how such engagement is making me more determined than ever to continue building and growing an online reading and writing space that you and I both deserve— a space where writing and reading meet through daily practice, thoughtful discussion, and shared curiosity. And I hope if you haven’t had the chance to subscribe already, that you will consider joining us in September. We can’t wait to connect with you!
🗣️👥💬SHINE AND THRIVE IN THE CHATS💬👥🗣️
In the month ahead, I want to keep focusing on increasing our engagement in the Drafters Workshop and Dialoguers Chat threads. So far, there isn’t a ton of engagement there, even though those chats offer spaces for us to really dig in and workshop what we’re currently writing (which may or may not be prompted by Saturday’s writing prompts posts), and where we can expand our dialogues and book discussions each week. It’s where this growing community will really shine and thrive, and so will you and your writing, so please don’t hesitate to join or share your thoughts and work there. We want to hear from you.
I know that sharing our work and ideas in a new space can sometimes feel intimidating or like we’re shouting into a void, but I am really looking forward to seeing what you contribute there. Whether you join a chat thread to share your responses to Saturday’s prompts or snippets of your other writing, ask questions to spur further dialogue, or want to use it as a space to connect with other writers and support their work, I can’t wait to see what you contribute!
Moving forward, we will also only have one Drafters Workshop Chat and one Dialoguers Chat per month, instead of having new chats each week. This way, it will be much easier to explore our monthly themes as we navigate them over the course of the month, and you won’t have to worry about missing a chat before you get a chance to join it, as future Drafters Workshop and Dialoguers Chats will also not be archived for a few months after they go live, which means you’ll have ample time to join them.
Until our next chat threads go live (at the beginning of the month), feel free to check out our Community Chat Guidelines to see how these chats are intended to support you and supplement your writing and reading goals.
📚September Book Club Picks📚
In August, we kicked off the NEW Daily Drafts & Dialogues Book Club! And we’re going to keep it going in September.
ℹ️Tomorrow’s post will include more details about how you can join September’s book discussions and what to expect. But for now, know that some Books posts in September will be centered around our book club picks, to enhance our discussions centered around September’s monthly theme and weekly focuses.
Having designated books to read together each month will enrich our monthly and weekly dialogues, as well as really allow us to dig deep and experience and examine practical applications of what we are reading and discussing in a way that is insightful to our own writing practice and creative lifestyles.
🔔You’ll see more details in September’s ‘Book Club Picks: The Stories We Carry’ post, which goes live tomorrow. But for now, be sure to reserve your copies of the following titles through Libby and your local library, or order them through your favorite bookstore, so you receive them in time if you want to read with us in September.
📕Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
📗Educated by Tara Westover
📘Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
📙The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
📖The Book of Love by Kelly Link
✨SEPTEMBER THEME: The Stories We Carry ✨
Next month, we will be discussing The Stories We Carry and asking ourselves the big question: Why do certain stories stay with us?
🚀This Saturday we’ll kick off September’s posts with five creative writing prompts and five reflective prompts that will get us started thinking about the books and stories that have changed us.
📝The Stories We Carry Writing Collection will also be available by mid-week next week, so stay tuned for that!
Inside this month’s collection:
✍️ 30 Guided Writing Prompts
💡 Craft Explorations and Tips
💭 Reflection Exercises
📚 Curated Reading Recommendations
📅 3 Month-Long Creative Writing Challenges
I can’t wait to see what our drafts and dialogues uncover next month when we unpack why stories matter and how they affect us and influence our lives and our writing.
And I’m truly looking forward to your next comment or chat reply!
Until then, happy writing and reading.
It’s not too late to go more in depth with The Creative Life Writing Collection.
This writing collection is designed to help you explore the creative life you truly want, inviting you to take a deeper dive when exploring The Creative Life with 30 guided writing prompts and craft exercises, reflections, as well as three options for guided monthly writing challenges for those who want to go even further than that.