How Not To Give A F*ck – Refill The Well

In this continuing series, I will show you how not to give a fuck about your book rejections, bad reviews, and disappointing sales. Please see the table of contents at the bottom of this post for more in this series.

We've gone through a lot of steps to get here. You've slaved away at exercising and meditated. You've been working on your hobbies and thinking all types of positive thoughts. Now it's time to really do something for yourself. If you sink all of your creative juices into your writing, and you transition your writing from a hobby to a job, you may find that, over time, your creativity will hit lows you've never seen before.

When your creativity is low, you'll find your mind wandering and your attention drawn to distractions like checking your sales dashboard and review stats. No! Don't dooooooooooo it!!! Don't click on those bookmarks! You're already in a vulnerable state, maybe stuck in a fit of writer's block or not sure where to go on your outline, and looking at your zero sales and terrible reviews is only going to make things worse. Trust me.

I have an theory on this loss of creativity and it's not mine alone. I know I've heard it from countless other authors so I can't take the credit. Still, if you haven't heard of this before you should know about the Well of Creativity.

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The well of creativity is like a water well, a big hole in the ground with water in it. You dip your bucket in and pull up a pail full of water (creativity) and use it. But if you draw from the well too frequently, it may run dry, and you either need to wait an undetermined amount of time for it to fill up again or you need to refill it yourself. Make sense?

I do a combination of both of these techniques. I try to see a project to completion, and then take some time off to refill the well before starting something new.

Refilling the well can include any of the activities I've already mentioned like meditation, exercise, or your hobby, but I feel it really works by taking the time to ingest creativity from other people as well. This “refilling the well” time is when I binge-watch an entire show on Netflix, read an entire series of books, go see a movie, or attend a concert. I enjoy the fruits of some other person's creativity in the hopes their creativity will refill my well, give me a boost, so to speak.