When I got into recovery, I had to give up writing. For good. I told God and then my sponsor that I would not write creatively ever again. This sacrifice, I said, was necessary for my sanity.
And I was right.
My creative process at the time was compulsive and ego-driven. I did not write for the sake of telling good stories, or discovering inner truths, or sharing ideas with people. I wrote because I wanted everyone to think I was a genius. I wanted them to discover me. To pay me lots of money. To make me famous. I wanted to be on billboards and talk shows. Ex-girlfriends would be sorry for all the mean things they said to me. I would be vindicated by my universally praised talent, all my foibles and failings excused for the sake of my art.
I put a lot of time and energy into thinking and writing that way. It was a miserable, lonely life. And it made me crazy. I lived in a studio apartment above a drugstore where weird voices whispered my name at night. I was building a “novel machine,” which looked like plastic bags taped all over my walls. Sticky notes. Random words. Pencil scribblings. Piles of dice and dominoes. Strings of yarn connecting the dots.
The mad genius at work.
Honestly, it was all a bit juvenile. And sad. But, at the time, it was not possible for me to extract my creative process from the lonely and selfish boy inside, the one who felt worthy and loved only when he got heaps of praise and attention for the things he made.
It was no way to live. It certainly was no way to stay sober. So I had to quit writing for good.
And I did. Mostly.
That summer, I managed to write only two things: 1) The first sentence of a YA novel about a boy who flies his rocket ship into the sun, and 2) a short story about a disembodied spirit following their true love along a silver thread sewn through other people’s lives. The story was cut into little snippets meant to be shuffled and read in any order. I gave it to the girl I had a crush on.
But that was it! No more writing for months.
When summer ended, I was back in school and already enrolled in two creative writing classes with stories and poems due regularly. I thought about sticking to my guns: no more writing. I reasoned that, if education was going to cost me my sanity, I would say goodbye to college. But my morning reading suggested another way.
I was about halfway through The Joy of Full Surrender by Jean-Pierre de Caussade. He suggested, in a nutshell, that surrender meant attending to your responsibilities without worrying about the results. Just do what the universe gives you to do, and try to enjoy being in the moment.
As a college student, I was responsible for completing my courses in good standing, and that meant I would need to write. Not to be famous. Not to be loved. Not to be praised. Just to fulfill my obligations.
My decision to stay in school marked the beginning of a new relationship with creativity, one which has grown (and continues to grow) around a central question: Can I be creative in a way that is compatible with a spiritual life?
Let me clarify: Many folks (in the US at least) who talk about the intersection of creativity and spirituality treat them as two names for the same process, one defined by personal exploration and expression. In this view, the artist is “spiritual” because they dive within themselves, unearth rare insights, express these insights in their art, and then share their art with the world.
Framed this way, the relationship between creativity and spirituality is inherently individualistic, focused on the artist alone, rather than, for example, their role as a culture-bearer or as a participant in a craft tradition. When situated in a profit-driven marketplace for creative work, this relationship becomes self-promotional, sales-oriented, and competitive. The artist must build themselves into a brand, cultivate followers, and measure the value of their work in material success.
This is not what I recognize as a “spiritual life.” We are now in the “Greed is Good” realm of spirituality, an upside down world where wealth is the truest sign of a healthy connection to the Creator, rather than a sign of greed and avarice. It’s the poison dressed up as the cure. Essential aspects of spirituality and creativity are perverted by this view. Introspection, inner work, and the sharing of insights have all been repurposed in service of material gain. It’s the very same logic I used to justify my ego-driven, compulsive, and ultimately self-destructive creative process. It is, in fact, the logic of overconsumption presented in terms that young and hopeful creative types will find attractive. Express yourself! The world will love it! (Don’t forget to monetize your content.)
This is not the kind of relationship I am looking for. When I’m asking about the compatibility of creativity and spirituality, I’m not hoping to have my value as a person affirmed through wealth and fame. Not any more. Instead I’m looking for a relationship that reflects the values I find in recovery. By “spiritual life,” I mean a life of humility, connection, and service to others. In other words, what I’m really asking is this: Can I be creative in a way that isn’t only about me, a way that genuinely connects me to others and to something bigger than myself?
I’ve been wrestling with this question for more than twenty years now. It has proven a tricky one to answer. In some ways, creative acts always involve a great deal of self-absorption on the part of the artist. We isolate ourselves so we can focus. We might even try to eliminate thoughts of others—potential critics, potential audiences, people we know—in order to keep our expression from becoming muddied by undue influence from other-people-oriented anxieties.
But in other ways, creative acts involve all the elements I associate with a spiritual life. Art is an act of service because it produces work for the benefit of others. It is also a means of connection—to a source of inspiration and to an audience. And a touch of humility is required of even the most egotistical creative, for we rely on ideas which arise from a source beyond our control.
And so, creativity is not easily summed up or judged as either compatible with spirituality or not. Creativity can be sick and selfish. Equally, it can be vital and healing. The artist may be at times intensely interested in crafting a specific emotional effect for others, and at other times wholly absorbed in solipsistic musings. Their process may drive them to isolate one day, and seek company the next. They may be motivated by ego, greed, self-worship, altruism, devotion, public responsibility, a desire to bring joy to others—even all of these at once.
The relationship between creativity and spirituality is therefore a complicated one, exactly as complicated as the relationship between the spiritual life and being human. The artist is just a person, after all, and art (like any other human activity, from politics to monasticism) is no guarantee of anything more than that.
The more productive question, then, is how. How can I write without slipping back into the self-absorption, isolation, delusion, and misery that an ego-driven creative process produced for me? What methods will nudge my process towards humility, connection, and service?
Some answers to these questions have already been sketched out in the entries of this blog (see, for example, Small Stones Observations or Writers for Recovery). Others can be found in the pages of the book. But I’ve barely scratched the surface. The relationship between spirituality and creativity runs deep, the methods for navigating that relationship are many, and exploring these methods leads to all sorts of questions about the origin and nature of things like consciousness, inspiration, language, and imagination.
I expect that, in future posts, Recovery Writing will grow increasingly troubled with notions of creativity, spirituality, and all the many weird and vital spaces in between.
“He suggested, in a nutshell, that surrender meant attending to your responsibilities without worrying about the results. Just do what the universe gives you to do, and try to enjoy being in the moment.”
That’s it—in said nutshell ☺️
What a novel (sorry) way to reframe the writing process. I like it! Your 2 stories sound great too - I was just wondering if the girl caught on? I'm happy for you if she did. ♥️Thanks James.