Do you know that feeling when you pick up a book and absolutely devour it, sucking it in like you’re feeding a gaping maw within your chest? And then you tear through the next few books trying to satisfy the same clawing yearning.
Then one day, your thoughts wander. You feel restless and when you open Kindle, forget that you had started the book staring at you. The words had slipped out of your mind. Scenes and dialogue fill your mind. A song catches your imagination and before you know it, it’s 2 am and you’re pacing, caught up in a battle or a scheme between characters. Before you know it, you have an entire new backstory, planet, or subplot that’s run away with you.
But then, as quickly as the flood of ideas came, they ebb away. You don’t feel like doing anything but watching TV or reading brain candy – your comfort fiction. That itch is back again that you need to satisfy, and the hunt is on for a book that will touch your heart or mind.
The Creative “Input-Output Cycle”
I call this the creative “input-output cycle.”
All creatives need a mix of input to stimulate their minds, imagination, and emotions. Without craft to emulate, ideas to inspire, and experiences to wake us, our creative well will remain dry.
Some authors can even name the story that “woke them” or tapped the buried flow of water, making it rush into and fill the well. For me, it was the chapter book series The Secrets of Droon by Tony Abbott (#myfirstedgelord) which my mother gifted to me for Christmas in 2nd grade. My parents had already cultivated a love of reading in me, but from that moment onward, I devoured books ravenously for 4 years: horse books, mystery, historical fiction, classics, and above all else, fantasy.
Then, the well overflowed, and stories started spawning in my brain. I couldn’t hold them in. They distracted me from my homework. I would spend hours daydreaming at my desk, incapable of reading because my brain had synthesized too much (no such thing), and now had to express itself.
Have you ever heard this quote?
Q: Why do you write?
A: Because I have to.
It’s not a choice, it’s a compulsion. Just as reading becomes as necessary as breathing, as vital as food for the mind, heart, and soul, so too does creation.
As C.S. Lewis said in Till We Have Faces, “I was with book, as a woman is with child.”
Input Begets Output, Output Crowns the Soul
I’ve always been confused by writers who say they struggle to come up with ideas for their next book. I’ve always had the opposite problem. In fact, the plethora of ideas makes it hard to choose where to start my stories, which could fill dozens of books (according to my outlines).
I can’t read a book, listen to a piece of music, or watch a movie without new ideas blossoming in my mind. I remember the exact moment one of the main characters of my sci-fi universe popped into my head. I was sitting in my room in my senior year of high school, reading the first chapter of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. My main character positively exploded into my mind, thereafter occupying my every waking, and sometimes sleeping, thoughts.
It’s painfully obvious when a writer is unfamiliar with storytelling. When I review a sample that makes me suspect a reading deficit, I usually suggest this exercise – I ask them to pick a couple of their favorite books and rewrite a passage of their work in each style. The answer is usually, “oh… I’m not sure. I don’t really read much.”
Can an artist learn to paint even if they’ve never set foot in an art museum? Yes. Can a musician compose even if they hardly ever listen to music? Yes.
But they might as well be half blind and half deaf in their endeavors. Our brains need stimulation to form new networks, patterns, and understanding. If you are having trouble writing, then read! I know you’ve heard this. Reading is the most important form of input for a writer, but other creative inputs are also vital – art, music, dancing, religious experiences, travel, and so on.
But the opposite is also true. You could be in a reading slump, slightly irritated at everything you pick up, because nothing quite seems to touch that deepest place within your soul. These days, it’s actually easy for our brains to become oversaturated with input – that might be your problem.
If you’re having trouble writing, it might be because you’ve had too much input, and of the wrong type. Imagine again our well of creativity. If you’re constantly tapping into various underwater streams, you could end up with a geyser of cool aid that turns your creative landscape into a nasty sludge of punch, rather than a full well of spring water that you can dip into and disperse with control.
It might be time for some quiet. Let your mind digest everything you’ve consumed and settle. Go back and savor one course a bit more deeply. Your original ideas might be fighting to emerge from the roiling stream of external ideas you keep cramming into yourself.
And what you add to the world’s body of stories will be your crowning achievement, standing atop all you’ve uniquely experienced.
Finding a Creative Balance
Finding the right balance of input and output takes time. In my experience, the right combination has also varied depending on my life circumstances. Sometimes poor mental health led to an abundance of my own stories as a form of emotional expression, while other times I drowned out my own thoughts with other peoples’ stories. New experiences sometimes compel me to add a new facet to my world, while other times curiosity inspires me to read and research a ton about that experience just for the sake of learning.
I’ve come to listen to myself and notice the type of restlessness and frustration I feel when my mind is ready to shift from one part of the creative cycle to the next. When I’ve spent several days reading the first few chapters of a dozen books, with none managing to capture my interest, I’ll start to poke at my own worldbuilding and outlines instead. When I start rewriting the same scene in my mind in every possible iteration till it feels like I’m beating a dead horse, I’ll return to my TBR list, often picking something completely different from the story I’d been working on to shake my brain lose.
I’ve spent months to years in an “output” cycle as my stories rapidly expanded, barely watching or reading anything in that time. But recently, I “cycle” more rapidly, reading multiple books in a few weeks, then switching back to scene development for a couple weeks, and so on.
Name Your Process… and Feel Less Insane
I come from a big family (7 kids!) and over half of us love to write. When we started to articulate our process like this, it helped us understand each other and ourselves so much better. It also helped our non-writer relatives and friends understand our “crazy” a bit better!
Sis: Hey, do you want to watch Stargate?
Me: Nah, not tonight.
Sis: Aww, you said that last weekend, come on!
Me: I know! But I’ve been in output mode. I can’t get this scene out of my head. I just need to get it down!
Me: Hey, how are your stories going? What have you been working on recently?
Sis 2: Ah, I felt kind of stuck on that one character. It was really annoying me so I stopped working on it for a while. I must’ve read at least 5 Mercedes Lackey books in the past week though!
Me: Nice! I’ve been in input mode too. I picked up Nine Princes in Amber and now I’m trying to get my hands on everything Zelazny ever wrote.
Giving yourself permission to take a break and just enjoy stories can be hugely relieving! Not to mention practical for building both empathy and craft skills.
It can be harder to notice when you’re oversaturated and need to take a break to let your own ideas bubble to the surface, but this is also a practice that will greatly benefit your creative process in the long run.
There’s no right or wrong way to balance an “input-output cycle.” You could write in the morning and read in the evening, or vice versa. You could write all day on the weekends and read your comfort fics during the work week. Or if you’re chasing down a deadline, you could do nothing but bang out that draft for several months, and then go on a binge afterwards.
But naming where I am in my creative cycle and discovering what helps me transition between “input mode” and “output mode” has been hugely helpful to me in sustaining both the development of my stories and a well-read mind.
How well do you know yourself? Are you in control of your creative “input-output cycle?”
Hi, I’m Caylah Coffeen, a freelance editor and marketer of sci-fi and fantasy books. I love reading and writing and am a follower of Jesus Christ.
I’ve worked for Monster Ivy Publishing and Eschler Editing, and am currently a weekly editor with Havok Publishing. Reach out to chat about books and publishing!
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