The Act of Creation is the Reward: The three things I'm doing to revitalize and redefine my relationship to my Artist Self

If I write it, will it make it true?

I can hardly believe fall is in full swing, but here we are, more than a month out from Madwoman coming into the world. I am still processing all the beautiful moments on tour, am really behind in posting about them, and sort of savoring being on this side of things now. The book standing on her own out there feels amazing, just knowing that there’s not really anything else I can say—that everything is in the book, and the book welcomes the reader, always. Thank you to everyone who attended an event, or wrote to me, or shared the book with a friend, or left a review (please consider leaving one on Goodreads or Amazon if you have a minute! It goes a long way). You are all a part of this journey for me, and I am so grateful for the beauty inherent in this artistic exchange. If you’re in Portland on Oct. 27th, please join Genevieve Hudson and I for a generative night of reading and writing at Up Up Books at 5:30 pm. All book sales will benefit the Raphael House of Portland, a wonderful organization offering services to survivors of Domestic Violence.

I think as the season is turning and I can feel winter approaching, I’m really desiring cultivating a deep practice again with my new project and have felt sort of outside of my normal practices for the past few months, which I’m trying to just be gentle and be like, yeah, because you had a book come out, and that is no small thing! But also, I feel the alarm bells going off within me, letting me know that time is up, it’s time to get back to work.

I’ve been reading a really stellar memoir called The Motherlode by Sarah Hoover, who is an amazing writer and art historian, and married to an artist. There is a scene where he is quoted saying that the reward for good work is more work. And I chuckled reading that because I think many of us can relate, probably. The act of creation itself was always the reward.

But it’s easy to lose sight of that. I think before I ever published a book I’m sure I thought that publishing a book was the ultimate reward, or maybe being reviewed in the NY Times, or I don’t know, insert whatever external marker of success you can think of here, but this experience publishing my third book has taught me once again, that the reward is the act of creation itself. It’s all the days I spent writing the book, dreaming of the book, worrying about the book, wondering what it was about and then figuring it out. That dance with the self. That’s it. That’s the high I chase.

So I’m coming into a time now of going inward again. For the past few weeks I’ve been saying that but having an extraordinarily hard time doing it. I’ve had to really get back to basics, so today I thought I’d share the three things I’m doing to shake off distraction and move into a place of concentrated art making once again.