Turning Anxiety Into Creativity
As the COVID-19 news around the world becomes steadily more serious, we wanted to share some tips and tricks to help you turn anxiety into creativity, and chaos into opportunity. It’s easy to let anxiety stop your creativity in its tracks, but instead of worrying about what you can’t control, try focusing on things you can control.
Writers do anxiety really, really well. The trick is to turn that anxiety into creativity.
Turning Anxiety into Creativity
Writers do anxiety really, really well. All too often it can be the great silencer of the creative person. Yet the things that scare us are often exactly the things that compel us to make art in the first place. The trick is to turn that anxiety into creativity.
Making art gives your life meaning. It feeds your soul and enriches your life in a way nothing else does. It’s inherently risky, but you do it for the thing that’s on the other side of fear. The joy of accomplishment, of overcoming obstacles, of bringing meaning to others.
You can’t take the anxiety out of life, but turning anxiety into creativity makes life worth living. Some things are beyond your control, but creativity, productivity, and marketing are three things that are completely within your power. So now is the time to go into hyperdrive on your creative projects, get strategic, and establish some good habits.
Whether you’re electively self-isolating, or your company has asked you to work from home, your schedule is now flexible. Outside distractions have been diminished. For now you don’t have to be anywhere, or meet anyone.
So take a step back and refocus. Think strategically about how you can emerge from this stronger. Granted, it can be a bit of an adjustment to stay focused and productive under these circumstances, but here at Good Story Company we’ve got your back!
Here are some ways to stay focused and creative in the coming weeks.
Focus your marketing efforts
Connect: With all the advice to practice social distancing, what everyone will be craving is a sense of connection. Communicating in a supportive, positive way online is the most effective way to present yourself online. If people like what you post, and the way you interact, they’ll check out your book without you asking them to.
Be responsive: If someone responds to something you post, it’s an opportunity to keep the conversation going. When others see how responsive you are, they’ll have the urge to comment, too. This kind of engagement is more valuable than you can imagine.
Now’s the time to take stock of your website. Make sure it has a Media page with a high resolution photograph of you, and a page dedicated to helping students complete book-related projects.
Get strategic about the type of posts you share, and the best time of day to share them. If you’re not sure what to share, create a series of posts designed to run for a set number of days, connected by a common theme or subject matter associated with your book. In this way you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. This kind of structure is a great discipline to maintain, and people will return eagerly for the next installment if your posts are of value to them.
Share a helpful list: such as ways to keep children occupied so writing moms can keep to their writing schedule, or ten escapist reads to take you away from all this
Provide a resource: like author Kate Messner, who has created Read, Wonder, & Learn, a rapidly growing list of authors sharing resources for learning anywhere, and Susan Tan’s Authors Everywhere YouTube channel, featuring various children’s authors with more videos being added daily.
If you’re an illustrator with a cancelled book launch, spread some joy by giving your local independent bookshop a watercolor Thank You card to include with each online order. If you’re a writer, you could include a personalized book plate, or a bonus scene, or a personal letter about what inspired you to write the book.
Start making content about your book that might fit into Common Core or teaching activities for kids learning from home.
Make it easy for parents and teachers to share your knowledge (and your book) if they’re teaching from home.
Investigate Canva—a great resource for creating shareable content for social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Don’t hesitate to collaborate with other authors to create content for the same age range or subject matter. Your books and activities can complement each other and lift the tide to raise all sails.
Focus your Creativity
If you haven’t done one yet, now’s the time to make an outline. This is a great way to see your book as a whole and spot any gaps in storytelling logic, or plot holes.
A lot of people are hoping to hunker down to write or finish a book during all this, and Mary Kole has created a new program of services called Story Mastermind to help you perfect your manuscript so it’s ready to submit after all this dies down.
Take that online class or webinar you’ve been promising to sign up for “when you have time.”
If you know how many days or weeks you’ve got for writing before you’ll be expected to go back to work, consider a realistic goal for what you can achieve in that time (a chapter a day, or a week, or a number of pages you’d like to get written) and set a schedule for how much you need to do each day to achieve your goal. Bonus tip: The NaNoWriMo site now lets you set goals and track your progress year round.
Focus your productivity
It’s easy to lose track of time and realize it’s lunchtime and you’ve spent the morning yo-yoing between obsessively checking the news and reactively watching America’s Funniest Animal videos.
Create a daily, timed work schedule for yourself. Figure out all the things you want to get done, and allot certain hours to those tasks. Giving yourself finite, structured time to complete a task helps to create a sense of urgency helpful to productivity. Be sure to add a completion column to your schedule—holding yourself accountable is a great motivator.
Set up a daily virtual write-in, schedule a series of timed writing sprints with fellow writers, or connect with an accountability partner by email at the start and end of your daily writing hours. Writing doesn’t have to be a lonely business.
Invest in a simple kitchen timer, turn off the internet, and set the timer for 15 minutes. I guarantee that after doing that twice you’ll find yourself turning it to 30 minutes, then an hour, and then forgetting to reset it completely because your story world has swallowed you whole and time has ceased to exist.
Lastly, make sure you get outside and breathe some fresh air. Tilt your face up to the sun for some much-needed Vitamin D to keep your mind and body healthy, hearty, and whole. Walk the dog. Wash the car. Till your garden beds. You don’t have to be housebound! A little exercise can boost your endorphins and reduce cortisol, helping you sleep more deeply and wake refreshed for another creative day.
We hope you find this guidance helpful and know that we’re here to help you in turning anxiety into creativity in any way we can. If there’s anything else that would be helpful to you, feel free to let us know in the comments below.
Get exclusive on-demand content from Mary Kole and the Good Story Company team about writing, revision, submission, marketing, and more, for writers of all skill levels, at Good Story Learning.
