Reading · Breakthroughs & Blocks

Hey there, Bec here

Last week Chris wrote about the benefits of constraints for creativity and while there’s lots of robust research to back up the theory of constraints, I find it all a little bit punishing.

There’s something about the word that puts me off, so I checked the Cambridge Dictionary. It offered two definitions for constraint, the first was: ‘something that controls what you do by keeping you within particular limits’ and the second felt even worse: ‘unnatural behaviour that is sometimes the result of forcing yourself to act in a particular way’. I then scrolled down to the American definition: ‘something that limits the range of a person’s actions or freedom.’

There’s enough in my life that controls and forces me to act in a certain way. Creativity is my escape. I don’t want to be limited - I want to be expanded; I want freedom to explore and create. Yes, I want the moon on a stick.1

You might be thinking, it’s just semantics, but as a writer, words matters to me. I have an alternative, but before I offer it, I’m going to tell you about my skirting boards.

I’ve lived in this house for *checks calendar* 19 years. For the whole of that time I have disliked the distinctly 1970s vibe of the orangey-pine varnish on the skirting and floor boards in my bathroom. I put off painting it, because it’s hard work. After two decades of delay, I rolled up my sleeves and got to stripping it back this summer.

While it was fiddly and annoying to crouch under the basin, it took no time at all. Across a week in short 20 minutes bursts, I managed to strip, sand, paint three layers of undercoat (sanding and washing between each), gloss, then touch up the wall paint. Even with my perfectionist tendencies, it was pretty straightforward and could have been done years ago. As ever, I am reminded that the tasks I procrastinate on, like DIY or writing my next book, take far less time and effort than they do in my imagination.

Is writing like painting skirting boards? No, not really. Painting is what Teresa M. Amabile of Harvard Business School calls an ‘algorithmic task’, which can be done step by step to reach a clear outcome. It might require effort, be hard and fiddly, but it is predictable.

Writing and other creative tasks are, according to Amabile, heuristic, which means they are open-ended with an uncertain outcome. However, both painting skirting boards and writing benefit from having a structure to get you started and support you to keep you going.

In the week I was crouching under my basin armed with a sanding block I was also hosting our Breakthroughs & Blocks 7-Day Writing Sprint and writing alongside our sprinters. I worked with Chris on a project to draft a proposal for our next book. Chris Smith shared some of that experience in his post about constraints.

Both of my projects for that week were contained rather than constrained. It reminded me of Ursula K Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction where she argues against the traditional ‘killer story’ of the hero which is about conflict. Le Guin proposes stories as a container ‘a thing that holds something else.’ She wrote: ‘it is a human thing to put something you want, because it is useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag.’

I much prefer Le Guin’s prehistoric gatherer as the source of stories than the spear-wielding one of traditional evolution and storytelling. And while it might just be a word, I prefer my writing to be contained than constrained. I want to be held not limited.

‘I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of a novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings.’

Ursula Le Guin

Containers hold our projects too. A week with a daily commitment to show up, short bursts of activity however annoying and fiddly, and a clear outcome gave me the support I needed to move my long-delayed tasks on.

There are many ways to create a container for your writing. It could be time bound, like my 20 minute sanding and painting sessions, a pomodoro, or a writer’s hour. It can be small or big - held in a week, a month or a 100-day project. Other containers can be the form you chose like a poem, an essay, a script; it could be the place you write in or the people who create with you. You could set a target such as a sentence, a scene or 500 words, or find a deadline to share or submit.

What could hold your words, your project or time and space? I’d love to hear.

Keep going, Bec

Find the right container for your writing

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