Creative rest

 

We talked about consistency, habit making and ways to keep writing in our lives. But we can't forget it's also important to know when to stop. We're not machines; we need to rest.

By "rest" I don't only mean getting enough sleep. Sure, it's also important, but what we're going to talk about today is a bit different kind of rest.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, in her work on the Seven Types of Rest, mentioned creative rest alongside psychical, mental, social, sensory, emotional and spiritual rest. According to her, we experience creative rest when we allow ourselves to appreciate nature and overall beauty around us. Creative rest specifically fuels our imagination and our capacity to generate new ideas.

Creative rest can be:

→ Time in nature – like taking a walk in the woods or sitting by the lake

→ Enjoying other people’s art – visiting a museum, reading a novel, watching a film, listening to music you aren’t analyzing

→ Unstructured play – doodling, crafting, daydreaming, experimenting with new media or styles 

→ Stillness and silence – removing the constant noise of productivity and tuning into your inner creative voice

Creative rest is NOT:

→ Doom-scrolling social media – overstimulation is not rest; it’s distraction

→ Binge-watching series to avoid emotions – this might offer mental escape, but not renewal

→ Consuming content to compare yourself – “research” that spirals into self-doubt doesn’t feed creativity.

→ Working on a different project – switching genres or mediums can be refreshing, but if you're still in performance mode, it’s not true rest.

As a writer, it’s easy to fall into the trap of always trying to be productive - you wonder how many pages you've written, how many more scenes you should include, whether or not the word count is high enough. This mindset doesn't help with creating - it can actually do the opposite for us. Under pressure and numerous expectations creativity eventually dries up. This is just as true for illustrators, dancers, photographers, or any other kind of creators - not just writers.

Writer's block is an issue that most of us knows well already. If you focus too much on PRODUCING, and not enough on CREATING, your writing because a duty, a chore; that's when creativity dies, and your hobby becomes something you can despise. It's really important to rest and recharge.

But how do we rest without abandoning our writing?

→ listen to your body. When your excitement dies out, thinking of your characters no longer makes you smile and you approach creating as in "I have to do this" - those are all signs you should get some rest

→ schedule creative rest. Plan little trips to museums and bookstores, pick days where you'll focus on your well-being only, treat yourself with a nice movie evening

→ create without a specific goal, without a task to complete; create just because you crave it

→ allow yourself to have a boring day. Having free time doesn't mean you need to fill it up with activities right away - just existing is enough.

→ read. Reading is a nice way of resting, and you never know where you'll find inspiration. After all, there's this unspoken rule - the more you read, the better you write.