The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative.
Creativity. It’s a word we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? On the Syncreate Podcast, we share stories of the creative journey. We talk to changemakers, visionaries and everyday creatives working in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Our goal is to explore creativity in all its facets, and to gain a better understanding of the creative process – from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
The Syncreate Podcast is hosted by Melinda Rothouse, PhD. She helps individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life through coaching, consulting, workshops, retreats, and now, this podcast. She's written two books on creativity, including Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities (winner of a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation), with Charlotte Gullick. She's also a musician (singer-songwriter and bass player) and photographer based in Austin, Texas.
The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Episode 33: Creative Spark Series - Incubation & Time Away with Melinda Rothouse & Charlotte Gullick
In this episode of our Creative Spark series, Melinda and Charlotte emphasize the importance of creative incubation, and of stepping away from our work at key moments in order to gain the perspective to move forward in a productive way. This is not the same as procrastination or avoidance; it is a strategic move in the creative process that allows us to return to the work with fresh eyes. This episode, like the mini-episodes that preceded it, includes insights and prompts from our book, Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to consider how you might meaningfully embrace creative incubation, or step away from a work in progress, whether for a day, a week, or more, in order for to gain the perspective or insight needed to return to it with a sense of freshness and renewed purpose.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 20: The Syncreate Model of Play, Plan & Produce, Episode 29: Iteration, and Episode 31: The Power of Collaboration.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors, so if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group, starting in July. You can find more information on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate, and we’re now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
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Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology and spirituality. We believe everyone has the capacity to be creative, and our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
Charlotte: And I'm Charlotte Gulick. I'm a writer, educator, and writing coach. We are the co-authors of a book on the creative process, also called Syncreate.
Melinda: All right. We're back with our Creative Spark series. And our focus for today is on the power of time away. So in this era of maximum, efficiency and productivity, you know, there's this impulse to just, you know, just try to get things done in a very particular timeline. And that's great. Focus is great. It's important.
We've got to have the drive to move forward with our work. But sometimes we actually need to step away from the work. And there are some very important reasons for that. So in in the creative process, we often talk about incubation and incubation as a phase of creativity. So we may have an initial idea, something we're really excited about.
And then sometimes it needs time to develop, and we have come to understand that our brains are kind of always chewing on things in the background, whether we're consciously thinking about it or not. And that's why some of the best ideas arrive when we're doing something completely different, when we're in the shower or taking a walk or a sleep and we, you know, dream something.
And it's the solution we've been looking for. And so we can come to understand that, and sort-of harness that power of incubation. And then sometimes, like if we've gotten to an initial or, you know, draft or version of whatever it is we're working on, sometimes we then need to take some distance from it, take some perspective. You know, we've been looking at it so closely for so long, it's like we can't even see it anymore. Right?
And so we've got to like, put it down. Like people often recommend, if you finish a draft of a piece of writing, put it away for a week or a month or however long, and then come back to it. So you can see it with fresh eyes.
Charlotte: Absolutely. And you can also be strategic with that, if you are someone who is looking to make sure that you do follow through on your creativity, is having more than one project at a time, can be helpful. So you can use this to trick yourself when you're procrastinating. I don’t want to do that thing, so I'll work on the thing that feels a little more approachable right now.
Or if I know that I have this project that needs at least three months of me to not be in the weeds with it, so I can understand its structure, and its purpose, and get a sense of its overview. I know I need three months away, so I will put it away, not open that file, hide it from myself, even on the desktop. So I'm not thinking about it at all. And then I'll work on another project. It helps that I write essays, so that I do have these shorter pieces.
Melinda: Yeah, and I think about it with my songs. You know, sometimes I write a new song and then the more I play it on my own, and then with other people, you know, other people always bring new dimensions to it. That's one of the reasons I love collaborating musically, is because everybody brings, you know, puts their own fingerprints on it.
And I love that. And I love to see how things change and evolve over time. But, you know, I record voice memos for my musical ideas and then to go back, like months later, and listen to something and just be amazed at how much it's evolved and changed. Like, I didn't really realize it, but, you know, over time it inevitably changes.
Charlotte: It’s also so cool to be like being collaborating with yourself through time, and through the feedback of other people. That's really cool. I know with my essay project that I have, so, there are 14 essays, and they live in my mind. I have an impression of them, but just yesterday I got feedback from a writing partner, and I hadn't looked at it in a while, and it was like, I got to see it anew.
And that's so critical to the process. And there's nothing else that you can do except for put some distance between you and the piece that you're working on. There's no other way to like, make it happen. So again, it's what we had talked about in a different Spark [episode], where time away and patience, that combination is just really important.
And I also think it's related to joy, too, that the time away is partly, we know that things take time. And so I'm joyfully stepping away so that I can I can get the perspective on the project that it needs, so that I can help it arrive fully.
Melinda: Yeah, and we kind of touched on this, you know, in an earlier episode, but, you know, just sometimes time away allows us to maybe receive certain inputs that we didn't even know we needed. You know, we'll read an article, or we'll hear a piece of music, or we'll have a conversation with someone, or see a film, and it gives us some new insight into the project we're working on that we didn't even know we needed, but it enhances the project, right?
Charlotte: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Melinda: Yeah. So what's our Creativity Pro-Tip for today?
Charlotte: Well, not surprising. We are highly encouraging folks to take some time away and to be more structured about that. So, you know, it's kind of like checking in, like, what does this thing need? Well, I don't know right yet. So that's a first step of time away. And then maybe let it sit there for a week and then come back and ask yourself, without looking at it or listening to it, is what are my impressions of this piece?
What is it doing, and what does it need? And then from that place where you've taken a step back and kind of the 10,000-foot overview, you can go on and look at it, and you can say, okay, this is what I wanted to be doing. This is what my impression of what it is and is it there.
So I think it's you have to decide what the what your time increment is. But I would say a week to three weeks minimally.
Melinda: Yeah. Great. So try taking some time away and see what happens.
Charlotte: Yeah.
Melinda: So at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for one on one coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 coaching group starting in April [now starting in July] and we're offering a 10% discount on the coaching series. If you mentioned that you heard about it through the podcast, so just reach out to us through our website.
Charlotte: You can find more information on our website, Super eight dot org. When you can also find all of our podcast episodes, find them, connect with us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and create. And we're now on Patreon as well. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave us. I love you.
Melinda: And we're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin with Charlotte joining us from the Hudson Valley. The podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. Thanks so much for being with us and see you next time.
