Welcome, friend! I am chatting with Jessie L. Kwak today about her book, From Chaos to Creativity. I throughly loved it and below you will find a quick overview about the book before we jump into the interview.
From Chaos to Creativity
By Jessie L. Kwak | Goodreads
Art and writing can be the most fulfilling part of our lives. But it’s often difficult to make space for it in our day-to-day existence, especially if we’re not at the point yet where creating it is our job. Sometimes we have so many ideas it’s difficult to keep them all organized, much less maintaining a creative schedule or dedicated workspace. With all the clutter overwhelming your scattered brain (not to mention your desk), it’s all too easy to fall into procrastination and disarray. From Chaos to Creativity is a series of glowing beacon. Jessie L. Kwak has written a Getting Things Done for artists and writers, drawing on her experience as a professional copywriter with a novel-writing habit, and from interviews with other authors, artists, musicians, and designers, to teach you how to focus on the good ideas, manage your project, make time in your life, and execute your passions to completion. Make great art by channeling your chaotic creative force into productive power and let the world see what you’re capable of!
Hi Jessie! Welcome to Armed with A Book. Please tell me and my readers a bit about yourself.
Hello! I’m an author and business book ghostwriter who loves telling my own stories and helping others tell theirs.
I’ve been writing fiction since I learned to string words together, but I’ve only been publishing novels for the past six or so years — alongside running a freelance copywriting business.
I live in Portland, OR with my husband and our many house plants and bicycles (very Portland, I know). When I’m not writing, I love getting outside to hike and mountain bike!
In From Chaos to Creativity you mentioned you are obsessed with productivity. I totally relate with that. What do you think makes people so curious about being productive?
I think there’s a push and a pull element to that curiosity. On the one hand, we live in a hustle culture that can be pretty toxic — most of us feel like we’re perpetually lagging behind some amorphous metric, always running toward a finish line that’s being moved farther and farther away.
On the other (more delightful) hand, many of us have more dreams and ideas than we can possibly execute in one lifetime, and we want to live to our fullest!
If we can just figure out how to be more productive, we think, we can get rid of the guilt we’re not doing enough, and actually spend time doing the work we’re excited to do.
When did you first realize that you needed a creative system over a productivity system? How are they different from one another? Do they share any similarities?
I jumped ship from my “real” office job over 10 years ago to become a freelance writer, in part because I thought that would put me in charge of my schedule. I was tired of spending my most creative hours punched in on a clock, doing someone else’s work.
The joke was on me, because when you’re a freelancer, you may control your own hours but it’s extremely hard to clock out.
I realized that if I wanted to make time to write fiction, I needed a better system. So I started reading everything I could about being more productive.
The problem was that so many productivity guides are aimed at people who are punching a clock in a corporate environment. Some of the advice was great, but a lot of it didn’t apply to someone like me: a creative-brained person working for herself and setting her own schedule.
In that case, you don’t just need a productivity system to help you manage tasks and knock them off a list. You need a creativity system to help you manage all the chaos of life and work, and sort it in such a way that it frees up your creative brain-space.
I eventually created a system that worked for me, with my particular brain and work/life situation. From Chaos to Creativity is my attempt to help other people create a system that works for their particular brains and work/life situations.
In what ways do you pursue creativity?
I have quite a few creative pursuits! There’s my writing, of course — science fiction, nonfiction, and ghostwriting business books are all creative in their own ways.
But it’s also nice to get out of my head and be creative with my hands. My office doubles as my sewing room, and sometimes when I’m stuck on a writing project I’ll lose myself in a sewing project instead. I mostly enjoy sewing apparel, and have a nice hand-sewn wardrobe, often of patterns I drafted myself.
I also occasionally paint and do woodworking. I studied theatre stagecraft in college, and I really love digging into a woodworking project. Most recently I built a Murphy folding bed to go in my office for when we have guests. I bought a hardware kit, cut and assembled all the pieces, and then when my folks came over for Thanksgiving last year my dad helped me put the whole thing together. I’m super proud of it!
In social media, terms like influencer and creator have become quite common. In your opinion, is everyone who is creative considered a creator? What role do labels like influencer and creator play in our self-image?
I think those terms generally apply to people who are trying to commoditize and monetize their influence and creativity — and I’m not saying that in a bad way, not at all! But the reason those terms make me wary is that, because of our hustle culture, there’s so much pressure for us all to commoditize our art.
I know a lot of writers who started writing because they enjoyed telling stories, but they’re putting so much pressure on themselves to write a commercially viable story — rather than just enjoying the process.
I interviewed sci-fi author Curtis Chen for my book on the writing process, From Big Idea to Book, and he put it this way. People can go out on the weekend and just play tennis and enjoy themselves without feeling pressure to become a professional tennis player. But writers almost always put pressure on themselves to make the sale, to build an audience, to make their art commercial.
It’s really demoralizing to feel like you have to fit into this creator/influencer role and be constantly yelling about your art on social media, when you just want to write a fun story and enjoy yourself.
All that to say, it’s cool if you want to just go out on a Saturday to play tennis or write a story. And it’s also cool if you want to put in the elbow grease to be Serena Williams or Nora Roberts.
But you should make the best choice for you. Society puts a lot of pressure on us to turn our art into side hustles, and I want to firmly push back against that.
What are the common traps that creative people fall into?
I think it goes back to that pressure we put on our art and creativity — we put a lot of “shoulds” on our work that aren’t doing us any favors.
I should write X words a day, I should finish every project I start, I should take a class, I should get a booth and sell my necklaces, I should….
You should do what gives you the most joy, because that’s when your creativity will really start to shine.
For someone who may not know what they are creative in, do you have any suggestions on how they can find out?
Experiment! If you think you might want to do something artistic with your hands, head to a craft store and wander the aisles until your interest is sparked by some medium. (Personally, I love playing with polymer clay — it’s a blast and there are so many cool tutorials out there!)
Alternately, you might take a class as a starting point. A lot of community colleges have fun continuing education classes. Or check out a website like Udemy or Skillshare, where you can find online classes in everything from embroidery to music to martial arts at a really reasonable price.
That’s a great way to try out something that seems interesting, and see if you want to go deeper.
Burnout is something that is talked about in terms of careers. In the reading community, it often shows up as ‘reading slumps’ when no matter which book we pick it, we can’t get into it and honestly, the drive to read is just not there. What are your thoughts on burnout as a creative?
Oof. Burnout.
It’s something most creative people have struggled with at some point or another, and I’ve definitely been on the edge multiple times — if not fully tipped over the cliff.
One of the biggest causes of burnout for creatives is the pressure we put on ourselves, or that society puts on us. It makes us feel like we’re in a hamster wheel with no finish line, and the faster we run the faster the wheel spins, which means we have to run that much faster.
For independent authors like me, it’s the pressure to publish the next book, then the next (then the next and the next and the next…)
You can’t outrun burnout. (Believe me, I’ve tried many times.) The only way to stop burnout is to slow down — but society tells us that’s not an option.
For me, the way to avoid burnout is to take a step back from living in the day-to-day of all your pressures and tasks and to-do lists, and take regular time to reconnect with your vision for your life.
It’s taken me years to figure this out, but these days I’ve built more time for strategic thinking into my schedule.
In the past, I worried I wouldn’t accomplish enough if I “wasted” Friday morning going on a long hike by myself. Now, I realize that taking that “wasted” time for myself means that I get a better sense of clarity about what I should and shouldn’t be spending my time on.
Basically, instead of wasting a morning’s work working on the wrong things for my business and life, I’m now getting clarity more regularly, so the time I’m spending working is more impactful.
What is the hardest part of taking the leap of being creative full time (e.g. as a writer or artist) vs doing it as a hobby at the side of your desk?
It think it’s finding the balance that I’ve been talking about. Balancing the pressure for your art to “perform” (meaning, to earn cold hard cash) with your desire to remain creative and joyful.
Because of that, I really want to dispel the myth that you have to go full time in order to be legitimate. Plenty of famous artists and authors and creative folks had full- or part-time jobs. You’ll make better art when you’re not choking the life out of it by forcing it to support you monetarily.
I don’t mean to discourage anyone from taking the plunge! But if you do, I would make sure you have a steady, unobtrusive income stream. Like, pick up a couple shifts a week at a coffee shop, or take on some freelance work, or go down to part time at your day job if you think that will support you better mentally and creatively.
Don’t define success by what other people are doing. Define it as living each day in a way that brings you joy.
What was the most challenging part of writing From Chaos to Creativity? Was there a section you were most self-conscious about?
The most challenging part was framing the idea. I mentioned earlier that I came up with a productivity system that worked for my creative brain. Well, when I started writing From Chaos to Creativity, my plan was to tell everyone else how to use my system.
But over and over, people kept saying “Well, that wouldn’t work for me. I do this instead.”
Eventually I realized that the world didn’t need another book by someone touting their personal system. The world needed a book that was more a “choose-your-own-path” guide to coming up with a system that works for individuals.
Because of that, I pivoted and started interviewing other creative folks to hear what they did, and included all those interviews and examples in the book. I think it’s much more valuable because of that!
What are some books about creativity that you find inspiring?
I love Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit — that’s one I go back to over and over. Same with Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art and Turning Pro.
I’d also highly recommend Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic.
One of my favorites! Is there anything else you would like to add?
The question of how to avoid burnout and embrace joy is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
I’m actually starting to build some tools to help creative folks take those necessary steps back from the chaos of everyday life in order to reconnect with their vision — if you’re curious, you can read more at www.chaos2creativity.com/spotlight
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and sharing with my readers. 🙂
You’re welcome!
Thank you for hanging out with Jessie and me today! We really appreciate you taking the time to read about From Chaos to Creativity and hope that if you pick it up, you will let us know! Find it on Goodreads. You can connect with Jessie on Twitter, Instagram and her website.
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