How do we define creative resilience? Part Two: Practical resilience

My top tips for taking powerful action to get us closer to our creative goals

You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

James Clear: Atomic Habits

This week, following on from my very personal post about emotional resilience, I want to talk about some things that can help us on a more practical level. The beauty of having a great system is that it can support us when we’re struggling emotionally too, as taking practical action with purpose can lead us quickly out of uncertainty and overwhelm.

It’s no surprise that writers (and our fellow creatives) often get close to the tipping point of overwhelm, as not many other jobs require their employees to be the contract negotiator, marketer, writer, editor, researcher, events organiser, events host, admin assistant, accountant and CEO and more! (I’m exhausted even typing that out.) Practical resilience is essential for our super-multi-tasking profession, especially in a world that seems designed to distract and delay us from achieving our goals. And while the good ship Foster has been known to wobble precariously on occasion, over the years I’ve learned a few tricks about how to keep my hand on the wheel, at least most of the time. Here are a few things that have helped me navigate choppy waters and steer myself back towards calm.

Reframing the ‘to do’ list

I will never ever have a ‘to do’ list again, because I couldn’t hate those two words more. I didn’t realise how stressed they made me until I wrote down all my ‘to dos’ in the different parts of my work life (one subject to each page: marketing, financials, books self-published on Amazon, Substack, contracts, backlist, etc.) and it ran to 13 pages! Screw that! So instead I’ve turned my ‘to do’ document into a really useful resource to help me keep track of what’s happening everywhere, and where my attention is needed – but now it’s called ‘Ongoing Projects’. Within this, there’s clear separation between priorities and things that can wait, as well as those annoying little jobs that have to happen every week. Reframing and thinking long term has really helped me to prioritise, and to decide what I can leave for another day/week/year.

Having an ‘I don’t want to’ list

When we’re juggling a lot it’s great to have an ‘I don’t want to’ list, which is everything we would ideally outsource: from cleaning the house to building a website. If we don’t like doing it, or if it’s better in the hands of an expert, then the aim is to outsource it to free up more time to write. Of course, financially this isn’t always possible, but an ‘I don’t want to’ list also tells us where to minimise our time or make strategic decisions. For example, this year I wanted to outsource my web design, but couldn’t afford it – so I decided to strip the site back instead so it doesn’t need much maintenance, and I taught myself enough Wordpress that I’ve managed to do the whole thing so far without any support. It cost me some time upfront, but now it’s a cleaner, mostly static site, freeing up my future time and money for something else.

Doing the hardest thing first

You’re most likely to find me playing around with fonts on random Canva marketing docs or suddenly redesigning my garden when I’ve got a difficult scene to write, some tricky research to do, or I’m generally feeling overwhelmed. Therefore, I’ve learned that it’s important to get the hardest thing of the day out of the way first – because the thing I’m worried about doing is often the thing I really need to do in order to move my creative projects forward.

Time management 1: Making writing time essential

At some stage it may be vital to commit to your work-in-progress and take time off a paid job, go out less, get up a bit earlier, etc. I’ve been doing this from the start: I took a month away from my paid work as a book editor to get my first novel finished, which is how my writing career began. My books take shape quickly because I commit to going away every few weeks during the writing phase, switching off all distractions and focusing purely on my story. I know many writers who are able to come up with a whole draft at home – and I probably could too eventually – but if I take a few trips to work in hotels, without distraction, it means the work happens faster and with less stress. Hotel time might sound like an expensive indulgence (and I have struggled to afford it at times), but when possible it’s also about backing myself and making a commitment to get the book done.

Time management 2: Taking charge of the phone with the Pomodoro technique

Like many other writers, I love to procrastinate, and our phones have made this all too easy for us. However, using the Pomodoro technique – which is doing 25-minute sprints of work then having a 5-minute break, repeating this four times and then taking a longer break – is an excellent way of reclaiming focus, particularly if you download one of the many apps that turns your phone into your Pomodoro timer.

Time management 3: Finding pockets of time

It’s important to have some kind of writing routine and plan, but it’s obviously easier for some of us than others, and particularly challenging for those of us in any kind of caring role. Whenever I read about authors with amazing routines I’m both inspired and envious, because while this might be possible for me when my kids move out, right now my routine is constantly upended by change. Along with all the challenges of keeping up with the daily jobs and getting the kids (and myself!) to the right places, I dread that first sniffle or complaint of a sore throat, which can turn life upside down for a while. Therefore, although my best weeks follow a routine that works for me (writing early) – and I back that up when I can with my golden ticket investment of hotel time – I also try to value precious pockets of time: e.g. when waiting in the car for half an hour while a kid’s class runs late, or when there’s an hour’s window between appointments. I’ve grown to look for these times in advance and gift them to myself – fifteen minutes reading here, a Substack draft there, a walk – or even a quick nap! This isn’t about filling up every second with getting stuff done, but about reclaiming some time to take care of myself and my priorities when I get a moment, even if it’s short and sweet.

Problems and fixes

My annoying perfection-seeking brain likes to complicate things a lot of the time – setting goals and standards so high I make it hard for myself to reach them. Therefore, I have to consciously turn this around and figure out how to make everything easier and more manageable instead. When things get overwhelming, I love the binary approach of ‘problem and fix’: which means whatever my current complaint or moan is, I ask myself what the opposite would be – then work to that. It’s a simple and effective switcheroo.

Validating ‘writing not writing’ time

One of the best things about writing books is that a lot of the work isn’t writing at all, it’s thinking and daydreaming and strategising and just being curious and experiencing what life has to offer, which can be done everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes we only count our progress as the times we make it to the page, but we also need to value the quality of our ideas, thinking time and experiences, and allow time for these. Then we can stop berating ourselves when we can’t get the words down as often as we’d like.

Staying AWAY from the keyboard

If I could go back fifteen years I would kick my arse and save my neck and back, because both have suffered a lot from long hours at the keyboard/laptop. I’m slowly learning to dictate more and loving it – and while I’ve tried Google and Dragon Dictate, good old Apple phone notes is working well for me at the moment. There are also apps now that can scan your handwriting and turn it into a typed document, which I plan to use more in future so I can keep clear of the keyboard as much as possible.

Avoiding generalisations when goal-setting

There’s nothing worse than a general statement of intent like ‘I must market my book’ or ‘I must do more on social media’. Recognising these horrible sentences is the first step to boiling them down to a more workable, manageable plan.

Zooming in and out of the story I’m working on

I don’t always like to hold myself back by outlining (although I have tried to do more of it over the years). If the story is flowing, I run with it, and once it starts to falter I draw up the outline of what I’ve already done and see where it’s going wrong. I call this reverse plotting, and I find it a great way to write because rather than get stuck, I can just switch from creative brain to analytical brain, allowing myself to rest creatively while still working on the book. I’ll be writing more about reverse plotting in a future post.

I hope you found something useful here! Most of these suggestions have one thing in common: they’re about being flexible and adaptable in order to maintain productivity, and I return to these tricks repeatedly when I’m beginning to feel things getting away from me. In the face of overwhelm and uncertainty, action will always beat inaction, because even if we make mistakes, at least we can learn along the way.

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Related posts:

How do we define creative resilience? Part One: Emotional resilience

A (hotel) room of one's own. Validating and celebrating creative practice.

If you’d like another deep dive into resilience, the upcoming topic in my paid community section ‘Just One More Thing’ is about how the infinite mindset can help author resilience, based on the work by Simon Sinek in his book The Infinite Game, as I really believe this is a game-changer in helping us all relax, focus and thrive.