Unseen Productivity
I belong to a group of five women writers who check in with each other once a week by email. The check in provides a way to mark our progress on our journey to writing success – however each of us defines that.
Last week, one of the writers checked in and apologized for not accomplishing “more working writer stuff” after a holiday week that included a sick husband, sick child, and a baby only a few months old. Not to mention the job she has…
While she was juggling all that, she also managed to make a visit to the yarn shop to supply one of her creative passions—knitting. And, she looked at notes about her protagonist’s job choice. And she thought about what her own ideal work situation might look like. Whew! Just reading that makes me tired.
I guess the only thing that qualifies as “working writer stuff” is actual pages written on paper or screen. No written pages, ergo an unproductive writing week.
She is not the only one to apologize for unwritten pages. The rest of us have apologized for the same thing because of work schedules, fatigue, depression, and just the general insanity of living.
I think it is funny, actually, that with her months-old baby in her arms she doesn’t realize that what she just went through is a perfect metaphor for this creative conundrum.
That baby of hers? Well, before she held that “product” in her arms, she went through nine months of watching what she ate and taking vitamins to nurture what couldn’t be seen, especially those first three or four months. After all, other than morning sickness, fatigue, and an occasional flutter, what did she have to show for all the eating and vitamins, exercise and sleeping she did those first few months? Nothing. For all she knew, she could have just been putting on weight.
And those last three months? Oh sure, she was definitely growing something, although by the last month she was probably convinced it was never going to show up. And she probably got tired of people asking her, with a nervous eye on her now monstrous belly, when she was due (almost as bad as being asked if we have finished our manuscript—yet).
Many pregnant women in the ninth month wonder if we will ever have anything to show for all our months of conscious eating, exercise, and increased discomfort, yet do we called ourselves unproductive? No way! Fat, maybe. Frustrated by the wait, yes. Unproductive, no.
What we all forget and need to remember from time to time is that much of the creative process and therefore creative productivity is unseen. Much of what nurtures and feeds into the final product— reading, listening to music, baking cookies, talking with a friend, hugging your child, having a good cry, falling into deep sleep—may look like it is accomplishing nothing, like it is falling into some black hole, making us feel unproductive.
Yet, as long as we don’t allow those things to become distractions or excuses (a very fine line there sometimes, I admit) then we need to value them as the kind of productivity that can’t always be measured within a day or week or month. By acknowledging the new experiences that provide new perspectives, the conversations that raise new questions, the imaginings and quiet, staring-into-space times as the nutrition and nurturing necessary for giving birth to our creative projects, we honor the process as well as the product.
Honor your unseen productivity