Activating creativity after a pause: Part One

(and why creativity is like a sourdough starter)

September, for many of us, represents a new beginning: a time to re-start.

The academic year recommences and, even if we don’t have children of our own, we might be more aware of a different rhythm: the increased traffic on the road, students heading to and from school. Here in the northern hemisphere, the weather turns, the days get noticeably shorter. Mornings are darker. There’s dew on the ground and sometimes the whisper of mist in the air.

It’s prompted me to think about re-starting in the context of creativity. How do we begin again after a break?

By way of metaphors of bread-baking, this week’s piece encourages us to think about how we might circle back into creative expression when we feel sluggish and lack the energy to return to a project (or perhaps even begin a new one).

Speaking of new things: Inquiry of Reading is a venture I’m thrilled to have started recently—an online forum to explore ways that literature can inspire new ways of thinking and being, with participants from across the globe. Our next gathering is on Sunday 24 September at 4pm UK time. If you’re curious to try something new, we’d love you to join us—when we’ll be discussing The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid. You don’t need to read it ahead of the session. Tickets are free and you can find out more about it (and book your place) on Eventbrite here.

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Making bread from a sourdough starter requires (like creativity) consistent care.

The starter (also known as a levain) is a mixture of natural yeast and good bacteria: a live fermented culture that, when combined with flour and water, becomes a leavening agent for the bread. For the starter to stay alive and retain its active properties, it needs to kept at the right temperature and be fed regularly with flour and water.

Photo by Vicky Ng on Unsplash

As writer and academic Katherine Firth suggests, sourdough starter is a wonderful metaphor for creative inspiration. When mixed with the right ingredients and given the right conditions, it alchemises into something nutritious, delicious and substantial.

The sourdough starter is an always-accessible, bubbling energy that activates creation.

How can we access the same levain in our creative lives?

One simply thing we can do is stop expecting so much of ourselves.

When we use a sourdough starter, the frequency of baking doesn’t matter. We don’t necessarily need to bake a fresh loaf every day. What matters is that we consistently nourish the starter, feeding it what it needs.

As Firth points out, if we bake daily, we keep the sourdough starter on the counter top at room temperature where it’s always accessible. But if we bake less often, we must refrigerate it to keep it alive, after which it requires a little more tending and time to come to room temperature.

The point is: the potential to create is always there, even if we don’t feel it. We just need to allow time and space to gradually ‘warm up’ our creativity.

If the starter is neglected, it can get crusted with mould and is rendered inactive (this has happened to me more than once in the past, after a trip away when I’ve returned to something that looked like a failed science experiment).

With love and care, we begin again.

We gently coax the starter gently back to life by adding more flour and water, by removing it to a different container. We can take the pressure off ourselves, remembering that it’s not essential to bake something daily. We just need to practise the intention of nurturing something back to life: small steps towards reconnecting with our artistry, with our creative expression.

In the next piece, we’ll look at easy, practical actions we might take to support a shift back into creative flow.

In the meantime, what one small thing can you do today to re-start your latent creativity?