There was one idea I kept coming back to after my conversation with Megan Dalla-Camina.
We talk a lot about making time for creativity. We put it in the calendar, protect an hour, set ourselves a goal and then try to make something happen. But Megan made me think about what happens before the making.
She talked about sitting quietly. Walking. Reading. Meditating. Looking out the window. Letting an idea sit for a while before deciding exactly what it is.
She said something that I think gets to the heart of it:
I think it’s very hard to create when we’re moving at the speed of productivity.
How often do we fill every available space and then wonder why we can’t hear our own ideas?
Megan doesn’t have a rigid creative routine. Her approach is much more organic. When she’s working on a book, she creates structure around the project, but there is also room for ideas to gestate and change. Her spiritual practice has become increasingly important to her creative life, and over the years she has learned to trust her own inner listening more deeply.
That feels very different from the way we often talk about creativity and perhaps that’s what I loved most about this conversation.
Megan isn’t suggesting that we stop doing the work. She’s written four books, runs a business and is undertaking a PhD. She knows what it means to have deadlines and responsibilities.
She’s talking about something else:
The space around the work.
The listening before the doing.
The willingness to let something unfold rather than deciding too quickly what it has to become.
Why Megan doesn’t have a fixed creative routine
How her spiritual practice has changed her creative process
Why she allows ideas to gestate before turning them into a project
How she approaches writing a book from the first idea through to the finished manuscript
The inner critic and what happens in the moments before we begin
Why looking for the “next right action” can help when we’re stuck
Why she believes creatives need to trust themselves and protect their ideas while they’re still forming
What truth, stillness and space have to do with feeling at home in your creative work
I think I’ve become increasingly aware of how much of our language around creativity is borrowed from productivity.
We talk about getting the words down. Hitting the word count. Showing up every day. Building habits. Getting the work finished.
And of course, there is a place for all of that. Creative work does need to be done.
But listening to Megan talk about sitting and staring out the window, walking without anything in her ears, allowing ideas to gestate and simply seeing what wants to come through made me think about all the creative work that happens when we aren’t apparently doing anything at all.
We can be so quick to dismiss those moments.
I’m not writing, so I’m wasting time.
I’m not producing anything, so this doesn’t count.
I’m taking a walk instead of working.
But perhaps the walk is part of the work. Perhaps the sitting is part of the work. Perhaps the time when an idea is quietly taking shape is part of the work too.
I particularly loved Megan’s description of how her creative process has changed over the years. Her first book was written in four months, under a tight deadline. Her most recent book took much longer, with more time spent sitting, sifting and contemplating.
That doesn’t sound like less commitment to me. It sounds like a deeper trust in the process. And maybe that’s something worth thinking about in our own creative lives.
Where are we rushing something that needs more time?
Where are we filling a space that might need to be left empty?
And what might we hear if we stopped trying quite so hard to make something happen?
Until next time, keep building your own creative momentum.
x Meg
This podcast is a labour of love, and I’m grateful to be able to create these conversations for writers and other creatives.
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I’m always looking to feature Australian creatives from all disciplines, including writers, artists, performers, jewellers, dancers, musicians, gardeners and makers.
If you’d like to share how and why you do your creative work, I’d love to hear from you.
A special thank you to Yvonne Morton for the beautiful music that accompanies each episode. You can find Yvonne on Bandcamp and Instagram.
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