Business Musings: Creative Cross-Training

To Get a Free AI Audio Version of this blog, click here.

Every time I complain about being too busy to get all of my work done, I toy with the idea of quitting school. I’m taking classes every spring and fall semester at UNLV. Dean tells me I don’t have to work hard at them because I already have a job, but you know, the ancient training dies hard.

I was raised to be as good a student as I can be. (Sometimes it’s hard; I’m dyslexic and certain subjects are detail focused. I am not great at them.) I put a lot of effort into learning, but I also get a lot out of it.

Still, I hear his point. I watch the other people I’m in school with and I realize that I’m lucky. I’m studying for the reasons I have always studied—to learn something. The middle-aged students around me are trying to get an advanced degree to move careers or advance in the ones they have. The younger students—the ones straight out of high school—are trying to find themselves and figure out what they want to do with their lives.

They all feel tremendous pressure, and the idea of getting even a mediocre grade makes them (the younger ones in particular) believe that they’ve ruined their entire futures.

I am not in that precarious state. I’m doing this for me. I’m finishing the Spanish degree that I couldn’t finish forty years ago. Back then, the University of Wisconsin required language students to travel abroad for an entire semester to immerse themselves in the language. I couldn’t afford to do that, and there were no scholarships available. Besides, I would have had to leave my then-husband which, looking back on it, might not have been a bad thing.

Still, the experience left me functionally illiterate in Spanish which irritated the heck out of me. I tried studying on my own, but it’s not the same. The classes challenge me, as I’ve written before, and taught me several things, particularly about the damaging effect of getting stuck in the words rather than the conversation.

So quitting is not a good idea for me, even though it comes up almost weekly. I really am overscheduled. I love it and I hate it and I want to write more and I want to do more.

Only…I learned a lesson about my own process a long, long time ago. If I’m left to my own devices, if I schedule time to write and do nothing else, I’m creative for a few days, maybe a few weeks, and then I dry up. The words don’t flow easily. I can’t remember what I wanted to write or why I wanted to write it.

I need to be challenged.

The first time I experienced this was in 1985 at the Clarion Writers Workshop. Six weeks long, spent with other writers in an almost hermetically sealed Michigan State University. We were in a closed dorm (not the graduate dorms that most years of Clarion students had) and we rarely saw anyone else. In fact, our walk to class took us through an underground tunnel where there were always the remains of hastily eaten breakfasts, but no sign of people. One of my classmates, Robert J. Howe, labeled that little passage The Marie Celeste and it stuck.

I had thought that six weeks with writers, talking writing and reading, was my idea of heaven. By week three, I was bored out of my mind. Yes, I had a lot of work to do. Yes, I learned a lot. And jeez, I wanted to think of something else, have a conversation about something—anything—else.

I realized then that I needed outside input, and a lot of it.

I had to relearn that lesson a couple times as a young professional. I would take a week or two off of my day job and stay home to write. Which I did. And then, I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t just need the time away. I needed something else to occupy my brain.

School does that for me. I’m studying stuff I wouldn’t normally study. If I’m reading, I’m reading someone else’s reading list. I’m learning things in disciplines I’ve never really explored in depth. I’m stepping outside of my comfort zone all the time.

I’m doing that living in Las Vegas as well. I see entertainment I wouldn’t have given a second thought to in the other places I’ve lived. I explore casinos, and neighborhoods that my younger self might have considered sketchy.

I don’t know if I’ll ever use the input, but it might crop up in ways that I might not recognize. Sometimes I do know what I’m learning and sometimes I wonder where the heck I got that idea.

Over a year ago, I saw an interview with a neurologist, who mentioned that one of the most important things a person can do is cross-train the brain. The article went on to talk with creatives and a different expert mentioned that those who indulged in “creative cross-training” did better on everything, from the happiness and wellness scale to actual creativity.

Of course, I didn’t save the article in my Pocket Reader app. Or if I did, I can’t locate the damn thing. I can’t remember when exactly I read the article, and I know it wasn’t called “Creative Cross Training.” I just Googled the title and found a series of posts on the topic. The most interesting one is the one, of course, that everyone quotes. It’s from Adobe’s 99U site. The article makes this point, that drawing teaches a writer to see, and music teaches a writer to hear.

But I think creative cross-training should be more than just experimenting in other art forms. Maybe other disciplines might be better. I learned a lot when I was teaching myself how to be a runner. I’m learning a lot about the human body as I learn Pilates. (It also helps my back).

Learning another language isn’t just teaching me how to communicate. It’s teaching me how to see the world in an entirely different manner. Some of that will help with my science fiction and fantasy writing, but some of it simply gets me to consider topics and concerns that never usually enter my consciousness.

Not only that, the creative cross-training does what real cross-training does: it gives the primary muscles a rest while activating the secondary muscles. It took me years to realize that I couldn’t run/walk all the time. I have terrible balance (always have) and I needed to work on core strength. Finally, I found Pilates.

I’m really bad at Pilates. There are certain moves this old and many-times-injured body can no longer do (if I could have ever done them). I try, though, and that’s what counts. I have better balance than I had, and strengthening my core muscles has really helped my running form.

I know that cross training is essential. But I get so tied up in the day to day on my writing work that I forget to put in the other stuff. Having an outside schedule can be annoying. I know I’ll lose hours every week traveling to school, sitting in class, and doing my damndest to finish homework that—as Dean says—I really don’t need to excel at.

But I am giving it as much effort as I can, and in hindsight, I’m seeing the payoff.

Much of the time, though, I find myself thinking about Nancy Kress’s award-winning novella (which later became a book series) titled “Beggars in Spain.” We published the novella as a standalone hardcover in the original Pulphouse Publishing’s Axolotl line. The story is about people who have done away with the need to sleep.

That causes other problems, of course.

But I still think…what would happen if I could sleep less and do more? It’s not possible, especially for me with my health. If I cut down on sleep, I manage a day or two before I actually fall asleep while doing other things.

That temptation is there. Think of all I could accomplish with an extra eight hours in my day. Think how crazy I would really be.

Creative cross training has been essential to my process from long before I even had a term for it. I needed to think about something other than writing and publishing and fiction and editing. I needed to focus in a completely different direction, meet people who never think about storytelling for a living, and talk with folks who have different concerns from me.

It keeps my brain fresh, but more importantly, it keeps my writing fresh.

And that makes it all worthwhile.

*****

If you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis, then please head to my Patreon page.

If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

Click paypal.me/kristinekathrynrusch to go to PayPal.

“Business Musings: Creative Cross Training,” copyright © 2023 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Image at the top of the blog copyright © Can Stock Photo / MilanMarkovic.