#🌱seedling
Recently, I watched a youtube video by @888_crystal that compiled archetype-related questions into journaling prompts.
First and foremost... What is an archetype?
Archetypes are classic roles often seen in storytelling. For example, take the Lover, the Ruler, or the Fool.
The first archetype I answered the questions for was The Creator. The questions are as follows:
- What do you want your legacy in the world to be?
- Do you think you're creative? Why or why not?
- How can you cultivate creativity in yourself?
- Do you have a burning life passion?
- Will you be more fulfilled by totally chasing that passion or by finding balance?
- Are you a perfectionist in your work? Do you like that?
These questions were very insightful for me. specifically, questions two and three brought up ideas of whether or not people are born creative and if they can become more creative over time.
My answer to question two, as I wrote in my journal, was this:
*I think creativity is a support system for life and it is so essential for my wellbeing. I may not have been born creative, I was at the very least born imaginative, which I think is the next best thing, if not one and the same. Imagination helps me breed creativity.
Then, for question three:
I think creativity is a practice-- you cultivate it through participation in creative acts, even if you don't feel creative in the moment.
So many things come up for me as I consider what is a practice. I initially started considering my spiritual practice as just that--a practice. As I delve deeper into my spiritual and creative practices, I'm realizing everything is a practice. All of life is practice. (And remember, practice does not make perfect, it makes progress).
When you look at life and creativity as practices, you will be more gentle with yourself, your comings and goings, your doings, your not-quite-doings.
I am in a fallow period of creativity right now. As I suffer from burnout and try to heal, I am reading books (Dear Writer, You're in Burnout and Burnout, by Amelia and Emily Nagoski.) I find myself unable to write any science fiction or fantasy (which breaks my heart), but I'm finding short pieces like this to be healing, to try and keep up my writing practice.
It's been months since I updated this (10 Sep 2024 to 21 Mar 2025), and yet still, I am burnt out! Maybe I had days that I was less burnt out, but overall, I've been incredibly tired and worn out. While I haven't had many majorly bad mental illness episodes, I still haven't recovered from burnout.
I wrote a whole novel since September though. And as I try to move forward with six novels in a year, I am doing my best to reach the word counts I sent, but right now, nothing is flowing. I just... I want to know how I actually heal. Of course, it's a dynamic process and will take balance to maintain healing. And healing is not linear, and creativity has some sort of relationship to healing.
More on creativity's relationship to healing
I really want to say healing is directly correlated to how creative I'm able to be. Unfortunately, I think that's wrong. There's a lot of complications that follow healing and its relationship to creativity. I think it's often easier to be creative when you're in a place where you feel healed and stable. but I don't think we ONLY feel stable when we're healed. I've been in a rough life patch, but still felt stable because I had internal peace, despite the turmoil in and out of my mind. Maybe that's contrarian of me.
If I go with my earlier answer to Question Two, art is a support system for life, and thus is key for returning to that inner balance and peace.
It's sort of cyclical, I guess. There's a feedback loop, where you need to heal to write but you gotta heal to write.
I guess, when I was writing Dawnless, I had to learn to funnel sad emotions into the writing rather than let the sad writing make me even more sad.