Sarah Rhea Werner:

This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 137: Creative Input and Output. Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and I’ve been thinking this week a lot about creative input and output, the title of this episode might suggest. And I think it’s a part of a larger question about what influences us as creators. Where do we get our ideas? What kind of ingredients are going into the novel or poetry collection or memoir or screenplay that we’re baking up? Are we even paying attention to what’s going into this cake that we’re baking? What kind of ingredients are going into our work?

When we talk about creative input and output, most of the time, I think we’re focusing on the output. We’re focusing on, what are we producing? What are we creating? How fast are we creating it? How many words per day are we writing? How many poems per week are we writing? But I think that we really neglect thinking about what goes in. I’m reminded of an old saying back from my marketing days, and that was, garbage in, garbage out. So, for example, we would be creating a new website for a client and they would give us very low res images, they didn’t have great copy, they didn’t have a very good logo, all of the ingredients for that website were not great. And we would do the best we could with those ingredients, but really, if you’re putting garbage in, you’re going to get garbage out.

I want to say that this is not a hard and fast rule and that, of course, you can do whatever you can with whatever you have. I know last week we talked about the importance of resourcefulness. And so, if you don’t have great tools, if you don’t have a $100 pen or the best computer, that’s not what I’m talking about this week. I’m not talking about our tools, I’m talking about our ideas. So, to continue our metaphor, I think you can bake a really excellent cake using a beat up old bowl and a whisk or a spoon that isn’t exactly super high quality. But if you’re putting in rancid oil or butter that has gone bad or flour that’s full of mealworms or rotten eggs, then your cake might not turn out exactly like you had hoped it would because it’s full of worms.

So, what are you stocking your idea pantry with? What’s going into, what I like to think of as your idea museum. I did not grow up in a family with a lot of money, but there were free museums where I grew up. And so, we would spend a lot of time going to museums. And I have very fond memories of wandering around museums, in the sort of dark lighting, looking at the curious objects displayed behind glass, learning that each one is unique for a reason. Each one has a special job to do. Each thing has a history and a contextual meaning. Each object, each thing, each taxidermied animal is so much larger than it appears behind the glass. Museums for me were places of possibility and each little object or each large object, everything behind the glass had a story and the story was represented by the object, but the object was not the entire story, if that makes sense.

And I like to think about our ideas this way. Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you walk around everywhere with a little notebook, either in your pocket or your purse, or maybe it’s digital and it’s on your phone, but it’s a place for you to jot down sparks, ideas. I remember one of my earliest sparks or ideas, I had my little notebook for Girl in Space, which is my audio drama podcast, and I had simply written down sentient star. And this idea was a little object in my idea museum, and I would come back and I would visit it and I would look at it and I would think about the context around it and what it meant. And I would even think about how beautiful it was, what a beautiful idea, what a beautiful concept. But that was just one idea of many that I had curated in my little book of ideas.

I also remember, oh, gosh, well over 10 years ago, I was living in Chicago and I was getting off of the bus and it was 10:00 PM or thereabouts, and it was very dark. And oh, my gosh, it was summer and I was wearing sandals. And oh, my gosh, I was walking toward my apartment building and a rat ran across my foot. I know, I love animals. I love animals. And I love rats and I love the joy that they give their owners, but this was a Chicago rat, so it was the size of a beaver. And all I remember is its feet were cold and its little tail dragged across the top of my foot and it was greasy. And I just remember standing there after it had happened and I didn’t scream. I don’t think I really registered what had happened for a few seconds.

And then I remember I got out my little notebook and I just jotted down the sensations that I felt in that moment. And I had just started carrying around an idea notebook and it’s on the first page or two of this idea notebook that I still use. And it’s there, it’s in my museum, that experience. That little greasy spark, it’s there as idea fodder, as story fodder for when I need it. Of course, all of your idea sparks don’t have to be something really big or really gross. It can be the way the light filters through the tree leaves, dappling your face, alternately with shadow and light. It can be the way the paint is peeling off of your window sill, like little strips and scraps of dead skin. It can be the weird door at the top of your apartment complex that you have no idea where it leads.

I think I mentioned last week that I’ve been rereading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and I am picking up so much more this time around in the reread. I’m actually doing all the exercises and I’m treating it like a course and it’s just been really great so far. But one of the things she talks about in chapter two is her relationship with her grandmother, and this was really eyeopening for me. Julia Cameron’s grandmother used to send her letters about what appeared to be very mundane things. So, I’m about to read you a very short excerpt from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. She says, “I followed my grandmother’s life like a long home movie, a shot of this and a shot of that, spliced together with no pattern that I could ever see. ‘Dad’s cough is getting worse.’ The little Shetland looks like she’ll drop her full early. Joanne is back in the hospital at Ana. We named the new boxer Trixie and she likes to sleep in my cactus bed. Can you imagine? I could imagine. Her letters made that eas

Life through my grandmother’s eyes was a series of small miracles. The wild tiger lilies under the cottonwoods in June, the quick lizard, scooting under the gray river rock she admired for its satiny finish. Her letters clocked the seasons of the year and her life.” And skipping down a bit. “My grandmother was gone before I learned the lesson her letters were teaching. Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention. Yes, her letters said, ‘Dad’s cough is getting worse. We’ve lost the house, there’s no money and no work, but the tiger lilies are blooming. The lizard has found that spot of sun and the roses are holding, despite the heat.’ My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her, that success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

Again, that is an excerpt from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a fantastic book about living into the art of creative writing or whatever creative stuff you like to get up to. But when I read that passage, it just smacked me upside the head. And it reminded me that we are responsible, whether consciously or unconsciously, this is something that we do, we curate our own experience. We are responsible for curating our own experience. And what we see and how we interpret it, makes up the moments that make up our life, makes up the moments that influence our writing. It’s very easy to take for granted everything around us, and I think it takes a lot of intentionality and practice to see everything around us as a small miracle.

 And maybe we’re feeling a little cynical, maybe we’re feeling a little skeptical and we’re not ready to see things as miracles. And that’s okay, that’s where you are right now, but this all has an effect on our creative output. This is the input and that input goes through a filter in our brains, and out of that comes our creative work. Now, I know very well that a lot of the things going on around us, a lot of what we experience is outside of our control. We can do our best to put ourselves in situations that we think will work out, but sometimes we just don’t have a choice, and that’s normal, that’s life. But there are certain elements of input that we can choose and curate and be intentional about, and that is the books that we’re reading, the movies that we’re watching, the TV shows that were consuming, the hours we spend on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or Twitter. The things that we consume with intention or the things that we weren’t maybe necessarily aware that we could consume with intention.

This is not going to be the type of podcast episode that says get off of social media and go read a classic work of literature, because A, I don’t really like to tell people what to do, and B, I think there is potential worth in everything. And whether a piece of media is good or bad is largely relative. Sometimes the quality of a piece of media is entirely divorced from the value that we get out of it. Perhaps a terrible movie that you watched in your childhood that brings back feelings of warmth and comfort and safety, but maybe it’s an objectively terrible movie, that doesn’t diminish the value that you get out of it. That doesn’t diminish the memories of you and your siblings all smashed together on the couch, eating cereal and taking delight in whatever this movie is.

When I talk about garbage in, garbage out, I’m not talking about the objective quality of the media you’re consuming. I’m not here to tell you to only read books that are rated five stars on Goodreads. I’m not here to tell you that you should only be reading classics or that you should only watch movies that have a Rotten Tomato meter rating of seven and above. I’m not here to do that because, again, nobody can put an objective value onto our experience for us. The things in our idea museums might not make any sense to anyone else, and that’s okay. That’s what makes each and every one of us a unique creator. And would I rather read a urban, fantasy, paranormal, romance book by an author who I enjoy than a work of literature by Herman Melville? Oh, heck yes.

I feel like this may be its own topic in and of itself, but I’m really trying to get away from the idea of guilty pleasures like the thought that you should feel bad for liking something or enjoying something, this idea that I should feel bad for enjoying modern mysteries, and then I should make up for it morally somehow by reading a novel by Charles Dickens. Sometimes I think what we get out of media is what we need, and that is the very thing that fuels our writing. So, okay, I’ve said two seemingly contradictory things. I’ve talked about garbage in, garbage out. So, baking a cake with subpar ingredients will result in a subpar cake, but I’ve also said you should enjoy what you enjoy. And again, I think that can be reconciled by the intentionality that you put into consuming a piece of media and the value that you get out of it.

So, your definition of garbage and my definition of garbage might be very, very different. And what is garbage for you, might not be garbage for me. If I get real joy and true meaning out of watching an episode of The Real Housewives, then that’s not garbage for me. That fuels my art, that fuels my writing. If you are reading or watching something that someone else has judged as garbage or inferior, but you are getting actual value out of it, then I want to encourage you to enjoy it. But if you find yourself consuming media that does not necessarily speak to you, that you feel kind of meh about, that leaves you feeling cold or empty or bored, then that’s your garbage. Even if somebody else enjoys it or recommends it to you, that’s your rotten egg.

What I want you to think about is the value that you get out of the media you consume. Is it escapism? Is it joy? Is it humor? Is it excitement? Is it beautiful visuals? Is it a feeling of warmth or nostalgia? These are all fuel for writing. These are all things that you can curate and put into your idea museum. And for me, sometimes the values of these things change, either over very long or very short periods of time. Some pieces of media that used to have great value for me are no longer really that resonant and they no longer spark those feelings that I used to enjoy. And it’s okay to let them go and to say, “Okay, this is really no longer something that inspires me. This is really no longer something that I want to hold on to.”

Or speaking of a shorter period of time, perhaps I start out scrolling Instagram and I feel my heart grow, suffused by pictures of plant life and coffee and authors doing their thing. But then an hour passes and I’m still scrolling, and my feelings have turned to jealousy and resentment and mental fatigue, then it’s time to stop and go do something else. Media in itself, isn’t bad. It’s not bad to go onto Instagram and enjoy some of the videos or images that you see there. But what I’d like to encourage you to do is do so intentionally and really understand how you’re feeling as time passes. What value are you getting out of this experience? Is this time well spent? Was the thing that used to be fresh, cold milk, has it been left out on the counter? Has it turned into something sour and curdled, that is no longer a good thing for you? What are you paying attention to? What are you curating in your brain museum?

I want to quickly address a moral concern that might be bothering some of you, those of you who are perhaps equating the idea of curation with the idea of theft. And in response, I’d like to refer you to an older episode of the Write Now Podcast, episode 42. It’s called, are there any original ideas left? So, if you’re concerned with filling your idea museum with only original ideas and it’s not from other sources that have inspired you, I think that episode will help give you some perspective about how art is extremely organic. And we, as a species, are consistently and continually moving forward, building off of other’s ideas. It’s not our job to invent the concept of a story. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time we sit down to create a piece of art.

We can use what has been created before us. We can mash up two ideas that we really like and put it through our filter, through our brain, through our own interpretation and our own experience to create something that feels new. I’d really encourage you to read the book, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, because this was an ethical concept that I was really struggling with myself for a long time. And there certainly is a huge difference between inspiration and plagiarism, and I’ll give you a hint. One comes with a healthy dose of re-interpretation and artistry, and the other one is actual theft.

What I want to encourage you to do with this episode is to be aware of what it is you are consuming, whether by choice or just simply because life is acting out all around you. Be very, very aware of what you’re consuming and what you have control over consuming and through what lens or what filter you’re processing your own daily experiences. This is all fuel for writing. Perhaps your first step is even to start noticing what influences you and how it influences you. For one thing, I’ve noticed that when I am reading a certain book or a certain type of book, I find myself when I sit down to write, writing something that feels a little bit similar to the voice of the writer that I just read. So, when I’m working on one project versus another, I like to be intentional about the books that I’m reading while I’m working on that project, and maybe you’ve had this experience too.

But I really want to encourage you to not only intentionally choose what it is that you consume and what it is that you’re storing away in your little journal or your little notebook, or your mind museum, what ingredients are you assembling for the cake that you’re about to bake. And understand that what might be judged as garbage to one person, might be extremely valuable in another way to another person. So, I’m curious now to hear your thoughts. Where do your ideas come from? How intentional or unintentional are you when curating your mind museum? What media do you love that fills you with inspiration, no matter what other people might think of it? And what have you noticed in your experience? Is the relationship between input and creative output? You can let me know your thoughts by going out to the show notes for today’s episode.

So, today’s episode is number 137. So, if you go out to my website, which is sarahwerner.com, that’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com and navigate to the show notes for this episode. If you scroll down to the bottom of the show notes, you’ll see a comment box where you can type your thoughts, your ideas, your questions, whatever comes to mind as you listen to this episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. I do read and respond to every single comment that is left on my website, and I would love to engage with and further our conversation there. You can also get in touch with me via social media. So, I’m at Sarah Rhea Werner on Instagram and Twitter. I had to think for a second. And that is S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. Come follow me, come hang out with me. I love to chat with people on the social media. It is often a great place of inspiration for me, until it’s not.

If you like what you’ve heard here, please do consider subscribing to the show. You can do that on any app that you prefer. You can also support the show financially if that’s something that you’re into right now. This show is made possible by the beautiful and generous support of my patrons out on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party platform that allows you to donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, $900,000 per episode, whatever you feel is right for you. In order to become a patron, you can go out once again to the show notes for today’s episode. This is episode 137, and scroll down to where it says help support this podcast. The generous support of my patrons means that I do not have to have ads in my show, and so it’s really nice to have a show without ads. So, a big hearty, thank you to all of my patrons on Patreon for making this show possible and ad free.

Special thanks go out to Tamara Salmon, Amanda King, Christine Black, Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Amber Fetessi, Dennis Martin, Lidija Hernie, EK Knight, Mark Bullock, Michael Beckwith, Mike Tefft, Sarah Banham, Summer, Tiffany Joiner, and Whitney Magruder. As always, thank you all so much for helping to finance this show. It means the world to me. Now, if you want to support the show and you are unable to do so financially at this time, you’re in luck because there is other ways you can support the Write Now Podcasts. Basically, tell someone else about the show. Word of mouth is one of the best ways that we get new audience members and listeners and amazing new writers into our community. So, yeah, just tell people to look up Write Now with Sarah Werner. Because I don’t know, we’re at this point now where there are actually a lot of other shows out there called the Write Now Podcast and let them know it’s the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner. And the icon is like a little forest with the words Write Now, super imposed in white over it.

So, yay. So, yeah, thank you for doing that. It really is lovely and wonderful of you to do that. Final thing just real quick. If you are not a member of my newsletter community, I invite you to sign up for my Dear Creators Newsletter. The newsletter comes out every Monday morning so you start your week off right. I talk about all sorts of things that affect a writer’s life. It is different content than here on the podcast so you’re getting two different things from me each week. So, again, if you’d like to sign up for my Dear Creators Newsletter, you can do so over at sarahwerner.com and just click on the little thingy that says, Dear Creators Newsletter.

I promise, I won’t spam you or send you anything that’s terrible. Okay, so we’re at the point now where there’s lots of loud traffic. Two of my neighbors are mowing their lawns. And so, I think that this is an excellent time to say that this has been 137 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner and I am going to pay extra attention to the world around me today.