But busyness has a way of stealing creativity from you. Generative work, like art and writing, requires long periods of nothingness: it’s only in that wide empty space that ideas emerge. Long runs, hot showers, commutes that don’t involve harried Slack messages and listening to podcasts at 2x speed. Sitting at the edge of a dock, listening to the ocean breathe. Novels that make you daydream.
Saved by Ben Cuan and
I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.
When people ask Gaiman for advice on how to be a writer, his answer is simple: “Get bored.”48 Stephen King agrees: “Boredom can be a very good thing for someone in a creative jam.”
In many ways, you are defined by what you say no to. In design, they call this “negative space.” It is the part of the composition or sculpture that contains nothing. This negative space is what balances a work of art and gives it visual continuity. Similarly, music is defined as much by the silence as by what is actually played. Without the spaces
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