I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how various creative mediums overlap and bleed into one another with or without intention, and what else I can learn from the new creative pastimes I’ve cultivated in recent months in lieu of my own once-upon-a-time norm.
A recent prompt from Suleika Jaouad’s The Isolation Journals reminded me of the term typically associated with this mish-mash: Creative cross-training. As writers, Jaouad wrote in one of her daily 5 a.m. emails, “learning from artists of all kinds and dipping into other forms, like visual art or music, can feel profoundly edifying and generative.”
Perhaps that’s why I’m finding myself drawn to create more fiction, fantasy, portraiture and abstract art instead of publishing my normal hard or feature news stories. My brother and I are even thinking of recording a duet. I joke that these habits (the painting, the music, the experimentation of literary forms) have just been innocent byproducts of pandemic boredom and anxiety. But maybe there’s more to it.
Instead of firing off pitches to magazines and newspapers, I now start my day off writing a science fiction short or trying my hand at more stream-of-consciousness prose. In the evenings, instead of pre-scheduling emails to editors and fellow journalists, I might call it a day after a few hours of sketching and watercoloring on commission.
By the time I’m under the covers, I’m toggling between feelings of rejuvenation and self-doubt. On the one hand, it’s all very exciting. I love the variety and the never-ending learning. I love the change and the departure from an often sterile, uninspiring and exhausting career. But then I wonder: Am I wasting my energy? Am I giving up on something? Should I be smarter about how and when I spend time on such creative cross-training? Or does doing so somehow diminish its power? Must creative cross-training involve tracking a measurable output?
I don’t really know. But if any of my fellow multidisciplinary creatives out there have some thoughts, please share.
—fiza
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