how to create when you’re crunched

As a dad of four young kids, it’s a given that my time is usually full to the brim. When I’m not at work, I’m supporting the extraordinary efforts of my long-suffering wife to raise up our kids in the way they should go, that when they are old they will not become sociopaths. This means that depending on the date, my evenings are as full as my days. When they are not full of children, errands, social events, or catching up on tasks around the house, you might find us melting into exhausted parent puddles on the couch to the Stranger Things theme.

All this to say, I’m recently finding it very difficult to carve out space to create.

Since 2016, when I first embarked on the writing adventure that has brought me to this blog post, Linnea and I have sought to make space for me to write. At first this was a once-weekly writing night at an Irish pub down the street from our Brookfield two-bedroom. Once the kids were in bed, I toddled on down to Irish Times and snagged a corner booth. I would order a beer, slide my computer onto the sticky tabletop, and get to work on whatever writing project was sitting across from me at the time.

Three hours and two beers later I would pack it up, having accomplished what I could and never enough.

Since moving to Indiana I was able to amp up my writing time to two full days a week. On Monday and Wednesday I’d perch in the spare room at my very own writing desk, have lunch with the fam, then go grab a coffee and spend the afternoon at the library pecking away at whatever project was next. I was becoming prolific: sending out submission after submission, writing piece after piece, taking gig after gig, brainstorming huge future projects… and I always knew that this wasn’t going to continue forever. Even though I was enjoying being a creative whirlwind, it wasn’t paying off financially. For the vast majority of creators, it never does. For those who actually make it work it takes years upon years to get to the point of solvency, if that ever occurs.

Someday in the distant future I may be paid enough to create full time, but for now I am working full-time at a great company. I’m grateful. But the amount of time I have to pursue creative endeavors continues to shrink.

Since I love brainstorming ways out of problems, I thought this post would be a great opportunity to share some rousing and innovative ideas for creative people with about an hour to their name, like me. Ten ways to carve out time for busy creatives. Five sure-fire methods to create quickly. Top three tricks of the trade for creators in the crunch.

But I couldn’t come up with a single one.

When the “crunch” begins to crush you

The truth of the matter is that, not too long ago, I was sitting in my car outside of Taco Bell watching the rain, and wrestling with whether I should just call it quits.

It isn’t just the lack of time. We’ve been exhausted for a while now, what with Louisa still squalling every few hours through the night and the boys both being especially taxing and needy. We’re tired, so when we do have time, our stores of gumption are depleted. And lately when I’ve gone to the “creative well,” I’ve come up dry. I look at what I’ve written recently and I’m not happy with it.

See, the “crunch” I’m referring to is not just lack of time. We make time for what we love, and if we are inspired and motivated, it doesn’t matter how much time we have. Rather, I’m referring to those times in life where all of the factors come together — your responsibilities, your lack of time and motivation, your growing to-do list, your dwindling health, your exhaustion, your inability to create anything but crap, your inability to see what you create as anything but crap — all of these come together and begin to crush you.

It’s discouragement, and it’s no game. At these times in my life, I find myself most open to spiritual doubt.

Like many creators of faith, I feel a deep calling to create things that honor God and make Him known. When I just can’t seem to fulfill that calling, I find myself accruing guilt and uncertainty. I begin to wonder if I missed God’s actual calling for me. I look back and question decisions that I was so sure God had brought me to. My sins are magnified – maybe they’re getting in the way? I’m just not good enough, skilled enough, holy enough…

I have plenty of ideas on how to make time to create outside of the crunch. But when I’m in it, I need more than ideas. I need something that tethers me to truth.

You’re a prospector, not a prodigy

I recently received a timely quote from Ira Glass, sent by a dear friend. It’s a truly honest assessment of creative work:

Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be — they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.

And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.

And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?

Here’s some rousing motivation for you: continuing to move forward in your art (and in your parenting, or your marriage, or your life, for that matter) rates as one of the hardest things you will do. Sure, creating itself can come as easy as breathing. Sometimes you’re so inspired that ideas are bubbling out of your ears. But if you’re in it for the long haul, you slowly begin to realize that you are less like young Mozart and more like Tom Waits’ prospector in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, toiling away for weeks on end for the sake of a few chunks of gold.

In those moments it becomes less about what you achieve and more about what you will do next. Will you write the next song? Practice the next measure? Run the next rehearsal? Write the next chapter? Write the next sentence?

And really, saying “yes, I will” has little to do with your ability or your moxie. As artists, we receive the courage to move ahead by receiving God’s grace (i.e. your art does not define you in God’s eyes), and by resting in the support of our community (i.e. I can’t do this alone.)

Take the step

If I were to make a short list of what to do when you’re so crunched that you want to give up, here is what I might include:

1. Ask God to give you the grace you need for the next step (right now).
2. Eat a taco.
3. Write down your fears, doubts, and worries, and give them to God.
4. Sleep on it.
5. Talk to friends and family who know you and know what you need.
6. Listen to friends and family who know you and know what you need.
7. Take a day off and just spend time with God and in His Word.
8. Take stock of your priorities and rearrange them as needed.
9. Brainstorm ways you can make time to create.
10. Know that it’s going to be hard, and do it anyway.

If God has called you to create, do it. Maybe it’s making the commitment to write 100 words a night. Maybe it’s setting aside 15 minutes every day to sketch a single drawing. Maybe it’s choosing a half-hour in the practice room working scales. Maybe it’s letting go of something that is perfectly good in pursuit of something better.

As of tonight, I’m still not where I want to be. But I wrote this blog post, so there’s that. And tomorrow I will write again. And again. And again. Because when you’re crunched, it’s not about the end of the journey, and it’s not about accomplishment (if it ever was). It’s about taking three more steps, and two more steps, and one more step. It’s about the courage to build a habit, out of faith in and love for God and those around you.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have a taco waiting for me and a blank page I need to fill.