When Creativity Loses Its Favorite Conversation

What happens when life punches your creativity in the gut?

I’ve recently had to discover my own response, but getting through it was not easy.

Have you ever met someone with whom you vibe and jive almost from the jump? Those folks are rare in our lives and they are worth holding on to.

Last year, I met one such person. I’ll just refer to her as K to preserve her anonymity (but IYKYK). She joined my company as a marketing writer and together, we were the only two writers for the company. Our cubes were right next to each other. I trained her in our standards which she picked up on very quickly. And on a nearly daily basis, we would confer with each other about company-related subjects and ask for peer reviews.

But we quickly realized just how much we had in common beyond the office stuff: movies, music, books, outlooks on life, the simple joy of watching birds outside our office window just being birds, etc. We developed a deep connection in a remarkably short amount of time. As I recently told another friend of mine who I’ve known since 2000: the same kind of strong rapport we’ve established over 25 years, K and I created in less than one. It’s a bit breathtaking when I stop and think about it.

One of the things K and I talked about was the stories I write. Last year, when I wrote the stories that went into Lucky and Unlucky in Love, after a lunchtime writing session, I would ask K a question about how a woman might respond to whatever I had just written. If I liked her answers—which was most of the time—I’d change my stories. The same thing happened earlier this year when I wrote my first novel-length romance.

Getting our work done while chatting about favorite books, movies, music, and whatever else crossed our minds was a highlight of my workweek. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, apparently, a lot.

For multiple reasons, K had to leave the company. When I heard the news, I knew some things instantly. Our five-days-a-week proximity would evaporate. The discussions of new TV shows or books or tunes that floated in our heads would now be more difficult and involve texting. I would have up to twice as much work to do at the day job.

But what I didn’t foresee was what her absence did to my creativity.

Let’s be honest: K’s departure was a disruption in my daily life routine. And not just the gentle camaraderie between friends. I got used to sharing thoughts and ideas about the stories I was writing. I got used to talking about how certain movies/TV shows/books are presented from a craft standpoint, gleaning little nuances from these discussions that I channeled back into the next day’s writing session.

The news that she was leaving knocked my writing momentum off track. I tried for a few days to keep the streak going, but reality collided with life. I was sad she had to deal with her stuff, sad that I wouldn’t be able to easily bounce ideas with her whenever they came into my head, and sad that we wouldn’t have that comfortable friendship where we just knew the other person was sitting in the next cube.

So I gave myself the grace to be sad. And part of that grace was to break the daily writing streak and not be mad at myself. That latter part used to not be easy for me. I used to beat myself up over the smallest, littlest, most inconsequential things. I think we all know that we can reserve for ourselves the harshest of words, and I didn’t spare myself.

But I do now. It’s taken years of work, but I’m much more kind to myself, especially my creative self. Because the creative self is that part of you that you need to nurture. It will grow, blossom, and flourish as long as it’s fed a nutrient-rich source of good thoughts and careful cultivation.

My creativity has already returned, but I let it lie fallow for a few days. It needed to process the new reality. It’s been two weeks now and my creativity has reemerged from under its blanket, ready to move forward. But it needed time.

And so did I.

It turns out my creativity wasn’t gone. It was just learning to keep one of its favorite conversations going, even without the person sitting in the next cubicle.