Lean into ritual
Welcome back to Worm School! This summer, I’m making a plan for finally finishing my overdue book project—and the advice I’m giving myself / the habits I’m adopting in my writing cave should, I hope, prove useful for anyone trying to make progress on an ambitious creative project.
Before we get to today’s lesson, some announcements:
Worm School will last three more weeks, with the eighth and final lesson coming out on Monday, July 22nd.
Free subscribers will receive one additional lesson, in two weeks. If you’d like to read the full series and also join the weekday Worm Zoom sessions, I’m offering a 20% discount on paid subscriptions through 7/3.
Worm Zoom will continue weekday mornings until the end of August; then I’ll decide if it’s worth extending again. Thanks to everyone who’s been participating so far! I’m finding it a really useful accountability practice. (Paid subscribers can join us here.)
Meanwhile, there will be no new newsletter issues in August. The normal newsletter format/schedule will resume on September 9th and continue every other Monday after that.
OK, on to today’s lesson!
Week Five: Lean Into Ritual
Last week’s lesson was all about finding energy in your creative life—a worthy goal for sure. But I also want to acknowledge that some projects are just inescapably energy-demanding: They require sustained attention and sustained labor, and may only feel energizing in brief moments.
When that’s the case, I always wonder: How can you make the experience feel a little less effortful and/or how can you learn to tolerate the discomfort a little longer?
One answer to both questions is to lean into ritual. In a creative practice, ritual can be a way of:
Transitioning from one state to another state
Getting into the right headspace for the kind of work you’re trying to do
Shutting out distractions
Silencing your inner critic
Tolerating the discomfort of trying to do something difficult or elusive
Making hard things a little less hard
In short, it’s a way of saying I’m doing this now—and when you repeat a ritual day after day, it makes I’m doing this now a habit and helps build momentum on your project.
Remember Maggi Hambling: “It is not difficult to make a work of art, the difficulty lies in being in the right state to do it.” Ritual is a semi-reliable way of getting into the right state semi-regularly.
I’m betting that most of you reading already have some rituals around your creative practice. But I’m also betting that some of your rituals are not entirely conscious and may not be serving you too well.
For instance, your ritual might be that you sit at your desk and do a quick scan of email, social media, and the news before getting down to work. Maaayybe that’s getting you into the right headspace for being creative—but probably not, and you’d probably be wise to substitute a more effective pattern of behavior.
Playing around with our rituals—being intentional about what kind of mental space we’re trying to create—can be really effective, and also kind of fun. As you think about tweaking yours, here are five criteria to consider: