Fallow periods

On finding balance between effort and ease

Of all the things I’ve written in my life, I’d say about two of them were easy. They were short stories (you can read one of them here if you enjoy sad love stories about sewage) and in both cases they emerged almost fully-formed. Some sort of strange alchemy occurred and when I sat down with a notebook, out they came.

I’d love it if this was what happened every time I tried to write something, but obviously it isn’t. The idea that you have to find your muse and the rest will follow is a tired and potentially damaging cliché about creativity. Many a creative person, I’m sure, has sat about not creating anything because they’re waiting for this sort of eureka moment to arrive. I’ve certainly given up on a lot of nascent projects because they weren’t flowing out effortlessly, even though I know from my own experience that effortlessness is the exception, not the rule. Most creative pursuits, I would hazard, require a bit more of a struggle.

The struggle can be enjoyable, to a degree. I think the reason we describe difficult problems or tasks as meaty, as things to chew on or get your teeth into, is that there’s satisfaction in feeling resistance and then overcoming it. It satiates a certain type of hunger.

But there is such a thing as too much of a struggle. I started rereading my PhD thesis recently, because enough time has passed that I’ve forgotten most of what’s in it. No one finds writing a PhD easy, but I remember the first chapter of mine being particularly difficult, harder than all the others. I was trying to say something new by bringing together numerous disparate strands that resisted my efforts, and in order to get them to co-operate I had to quash their rebellion and bend them to my will.

When I finally managed it, I was elated. But reading the resulting chapter with a bit of distance, the struggle shines through. The argument feels laboured and arduous. The point being made doesn’t seem worth the endless journeying it takes to get there. If the writing process was like forcing a square peg into a round hole, the reading process is like surveying that uncomfortable peg jammed into its wall, surrounded by damaged plaster, and wondering if a round peg would really have been so hard to come by.

It reminds me, in an unlikely sort of way, of all the time I spent playing the violin between the ages of six and twenty. I really, really wanted to be good at it, and I thought the way to get better was to try harder. What I actually should have done, if I wanted to be the best I could be, was learn how to relax. Mastering an instrument is intricate and finicky, and there are heights you simply can’t reach if you have tension spreading out from your shoulders and down into your fingers, like I did. But instead I just kept bashing stiffly away at all the difficult bits, hoping I could bend them to my will, too.

The thing is, effort will only get you so far. You can’t strong-arm your way to something beautiful, something that sings. This doesn’t just apply to creativity. So often in life, the result you want eludes you when you grasp for it. Maybe you can’t fall asleep because you’re trying too hard to fall asleep. Maybe you push a loved one away because you’re trying too hard to keep them close to you. Sometimes progress happens only when you stop trying to make progress – when you allow for ease as well as effort, like deepening a yoga pose by relaxing into it, or solving a problem by sleeping on it, or increasing a harvest by letting the land lie fallow for a season.

When it comes to a creative pursuit, this might mean resting more; letting yourself off the hook for being ‘unproductive’; reminding yourself that there’s no rush, that you’ll finish when you finish; trusting that a breakthrough will come in its own time. It might mean you give up on producing for a while and do some quality consuming instead: reading books, looking at art, listening to music without doing something else at the same time.

You can still make an effort, of course. You can still put the time in; you can still get your teeth into the problem and chew on it. But at a certain point, I think, you have to relax and trust that you’ve done enough for now. The hard work needs time and space to alchemise on its own. It may not be easy, but you can still cultivate ease. There’s an image I love in the ancient Chinese philosophical text, the Tao Te Ching: ‘a tree that is unbending is easily broken.’ There is strength in flexibility, in yielding, in being gentle. A branch is strong because it bends.

Now (how’s this for a segue) I’m going to practise what I preach and take a couple of weeks off posting on Substack. I’ve written an essay a week for ten weeks, and the gears are starting to grind. It’s time to ease off, and allow my brain a fallow period.

See you on the other side,

Kx

---

If you enjoyed reading this post, please hit the like button below so that others can find it too!

And as ever… your weekly reminder that if you like my writing you can support it by buying my book (UK edition / US edition) or sharing The Babbling Brook far and wide.