Showing Up

(image courtesy of Yerson Retamal via pixabay.com)

How do you build a creative life?

How do you get everything done? And earn a living?

It’s both easy and hard.

You show up and do the work.

You show up even on the days you don’t feel like it. That doesn’t negate taking days off and/or vacations, like you would in any professional situation. But you choose and plan time off, and you work ahead before you take that time (because it is unlikely you will catch up after).

You want this to be the way you earn your living? Show up and do the work. If you have a day job and want to be a full-time creative, then you treat your creative work as your second job until you’re in a position for it to be your only job.

I was able to make a living in the arts since I was 18 because any day job NOT in the arts served only one purpose: to support my work in the arts. When the day job got in the way, I found a different day job that did not. Most of the time, day jobs were temp jobs in between shows. I’d land a paying theatre gig; I opted out of temp jobs for however many months.  I consider my three year stint working for an art book publisher in New York while working shows at night as part of working in the arts. Those three years taught me a lot I then used in my writing, and helped me learn the business, which has been a huge help.

When I worked full eight show weeks on Broadway (and often worked as a day player on TV shows shooting in NY on my dark day), I still wrote. I wrote early in the morning, before I left for the theatre (I often had day work, so I’d be at the theatre by 9 or 10 AM on matinee days and 1 PM on days with only an evening show), or when I came home late at night, if I was behind. Working in the morning, even then, was a stronger choice for me; I had more creative energy.

I spent decades living in a perpetual state of exhaustion.

It was worth it at the time.

When I started aging out of the physicality of backstage work, I put more of my attention toward the writing, expanding into various freelancing, so I have a mix of novels, short stories, serials, plays, radio plays, articles, copywriting, content creation,  coverage work, script doctoring work, reviewing, teaching, and all the other bits and bobs that make a freelance life.

Most people don’t acknowledge that even at the top tier of working in theatre or film, even when you’re on a W-2 with a production company,  it’s still freelancing. You’re going job to job, contract to contract. A show can post its closing notice at any time. A TV show gets cancelled; once the film is in the can, you’re looking for work again, even if you’re at the level where work looks for you.

In other words, I have NEVER had job security, and I’m okay with that. Sort of. Well, I’m used to it.

The reason I kept landing work is that I showed up and I WORKED. When it was time to move away from production work backstage and on set, I built on the early morning/late night showing up at the page. And I kept showing up at the page.

I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month several times over the years. I’ve hit the 50K in 30 days every time I did it. Because I showed up and did the work. Not every novel started was finished (some are in statis; one, which was written during the Nano period in which my grandmother died, is retired, because I can’t even look at it).

This past April, I participated in the Dramatists Guild End Of Play project, and I wrote a new full-length play. 115 pages in 23 days. The seed of the play was planted in a workshop hosted by the Williamstown Theatre Festival in June of 2022. I knew I needed a chunk of time to work on it steadily, and End Of Play provided that supportive framework.  I usually wrote 3-4 pages a day. Some days were 5 or 6. The last day I pushed and wrote 15. But 3-4 script pages a day is manageable.

A steady pace does not give the dopamine hit of marathon writing sessions. But it steadily builds pages with less burnout. Showing up every day keeps you in the headspace of the project while building stamina for the writing process. As you get deeper into the work, it flows better. You’ll still hit days when it’s hard, but they get easier to overcome. When I’m resistant to the day’s work, I find the first 400 words the hardest, and then I settle into the flow.

In MAKING A LITERARY LIFE, Carolyn See talks about committing to writing a thousand words a day, five days a week, for the rest of your literary life (barring vacations and illness). That’s four pages in standard manuscript format. It’s do-able. You’re writing a book in a genre that usually runs 80K? That’s 80 workdays to write the first draft (and then you build in however many months for revisions, while first drafting your next project at 1K/day).

Some books don’t want to be written in 1K chunks. I’ve had stories which demanded a pace of 500 words or 800 words. I adjusted to what served the piece. But the dailiness of showing up made it possible to finish.

I find I need to write the serials in complete episodes. Some of them are under 1K; some might run to 1.5K or a little higher.

During END OF PLAY, FALL FOREVER was my first project of the day on the computer (I wrote earlier in the day, before the sun was up, in longhand). Then I’d draft an episode of the serial Legerdemain. Then, I’d build the rest of my workday around that – maybe an episode of ANGEL HUNT, maybe work on a short story, maybe some editing. After that, client work.

I often talk about writing my first 1K a day early in the morning, before I’m “tainted by the day.” Then I switch to the other projects that need attention that day.

This is my job, as well as my passion. This is how I keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I show up and do the work, like one does for any job. I don’t show up, my family and I are out in the street. That’s a powerful motivation. Playwright Arthur Miller, with whom I was lucky enough to work early in my production career off Broadway, encouraged my writing, and told me that I would never fulfill my potential as a writer if I didn’t rely on it to pay the bills.

The world has changed since Miller’s career was at its height, as has the business of writing. But, as someone who DOES rely on it as my career, not a side hustle or a hobby, I approach the work with a different perspective, which forces me to fuse the practical with the creative. That fusion makes each element stronger.

Most days, I’m pretty eager to hit the page and keep going on the work. The more steadily I show up, the more excited I am for each day’s work (albeit there are tough days in there).

If you’re constantly reluctant to show up and do the work, maybe this isn’t really what you want and need to do. Maybe you need to explore other disciplines, and see what flares your creativity with a stronger passion.

The piece won’t write itself (We’re not taking an AI tangent here). You have to show up and actually do the work. What you have to say and how you say it is unique to you. If you don’t create it, no one else can experience it, either. And what you have to say is worth it.

[Sidenote: This past Monday, I was lucky to be one of the 50 playwrights out of the 1300+ End of Play participants chosen for a table read of the draft. The actors were wonderful. It was a great experience. I have a LOT of revision to do, but it gave me a lot to work with].

How do you convince yourself to show up every day? Do you use sticks or carrots? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.