The Theory

In my experience so far as a writer, I try to track and analyze trends in my writing and process to better understand myself. I want to know in which circumstances I thrive, and which ones hinder my creative flow. During the past few years, I’ve noticed trend that I think might be measurable and experienced by others:

My writing seems to suffer when my health suffers.

I’ve been paying particular attention to my physical health for most of my life; I’ve been a regular at one gym or another since high school. I’ve always subscribed to the idea that we should always be trying to better ourselves, and that includes trying to take care of our bodies so we can enjoy life as long as possible.

Mental health is a whole other animal, one that I feel many of us can agree we’ve never fully gotten a grip on. But they often go hand-in-hand, so if I can put effort into my physical health, I usually depend on that to help with the mental. It doesn’t always work, but I think it’s safe to say it certainly doesn’t make anything worse.

I’ve been writing seriously since 2023, and between then and now my physical health has undergone a somewhat notable change for the positive.

This is where my theory comes in: when I compare my health timeline to my writing habits, I see correlation.

For most of my writing career, I didn’t have any solid writing goals that I was striving to hit repeatedly. I just wrote when I felt like it, and thus it took me about two years to finish drafting my first novel. However, after last year’s Horror Month where I purposely took a break from writing, I set my first concrete writing goal. Keep in mind, this was when I had been doing Lagree (like Pilates but harder) for about a month and a half. My motivation and dedication to improving my craft was becoming far more intentional right around the time I started feeling the change from this lovely new fitness regime and a diet change for the better.

I theorize that this wasn’t a coincidence.

To further this idea, I’ll present another correlation: In just the month of December, I wrote 31,709 words. December was also the month where I got a fantastic grip on my fitness and eating habits, adding occasional cardio to my routine and eating nutritional, satisfying and healthy foods all the time with almost no fast food breaks. I may have even been slightly overdoing it, given that I was doing some form of physical activity 6 days a week. But I was eating clean, and eating enough to fuel that activity. Is it really so surprising that I cranked out 31,709 words during that time?

Now, the crash.

Starting around late February/early March, I experienced a very common phenomenon around getting in shape: my brain started insisting that my progress should be linear. I noticed that my weight was staying the same, even though I was sure I was doing everything right. So, addicted to the progress I’d been seeing, I doubled down.

I got stricter with my eating, trying to keep my food intake as low as comfortable to kickstart the results I thought I should be seeing. This, combined with a run of bad luck with getting food poisoning/norovirus from chicken, led my calorie intake to plummet, which meant I was sleeping less soundly and I was also getting to bed later than I wanted to. As such, I went through a major stutter in my writing output during this time, which I chronicled in real time during those months’ Monthly Writing Goals Update sections in my posts. Bottom line- my health suffered, and so did my writing.

There’s a pattern here.

I wanted to see if it was just me, or if other creatives also noticed correlations between struggling health and low creative output. So, I asked my fellow artists for any takes/opinions on this effect.

First, we have Saige, of course!

“I think my personal relationship with my writing habits and my health is a bit complicated. Sometimes, it feels cyclical. I don’t feel motivated to do anything, I fell behind in my goals, I feel worse about my progress, I do less writing, you get the picture. Oftentimes, when my mental health is bad, my creativity stops.

Part of this is because I want to give myself space to recover. I play cozy games, spend far too much time on Instagram Reels, and try to connect with people so I can bounce back. I want to put my best foot forward when I write. Sometimes, I can get things done here and there. But generally, production halts. 

There is one exception to this that I think is really important to bring up: my poetry. Sometimes, when I’m at my worst mentally, I write some of my best poetry. Many of the poems in my collection came from times when I was struggling with my identity and my upbringing. I have folders in my notes app of poems from past crushes and flings that rarely see the light of day (though I hope they will, when the time is right!). When I am anxious, I like to tuck those thoughts into some neat stanzas and come back to them later. I’ve made some banger poems while doing this. I’ve also made some bad ones. When I’m going about my day normally, I rarely write poetry. It’s when I’m feeling my feelings that it all comes out. 

I go through phases with my mental state and my creative output, so it is hard to quantify. I know some people do their best work when they’re at their worst. Other than poetry, I find I am not that kind of person. But I know not everyone is the same way! Brandon Sanderson got some of the ideas for Feruchemy from his sleepless nights due to his insomnia. That’s where the song Fireflies came from, too. Haylock Jobson wrote Heretical Fishing as an escape from his rough childhood and the pressures of adulthood. Sometimes we need to create. And sometimes we need the break. 

Oof, I didn’t mean to write this article for her, so back to Ava now.”

Wonderfully put, Saige. And you can write my articles for me any day. It’s comforting to know that I’m not just weak- Saige also sees a stutter in her productivity when things get hard for her.

This phenomenon is observable in all art forms. I asked the lovely Olivia, our artiste en residence, this same question: have you noticed a correlation between health and creativity?

“I’ve never had this issue before but have seen firsthand how health can prevent creatives from making their art. A lot of webcomics I follow have had to go on hiatus at one point or another due to the health of the artist tanking. It can be very strenuous sitting in one position, which is then taxing on your mind- it’s why 30 minute breaks are recommended to get your mind out of the flow state so you can focus on something else.

Art block is an issue that I do have personal experience on. You either have no ideas or all the ideas but no motivation to act on it. You can’t get your mind and body to sync up so whatever you do make, you’re not happy with it because it’s not at the quality you want it to be.

The best way to break out of it is to just push through and keep making something even if it’s trash, so I end up with a lot of nonsense scribbles sometimes. The worst thing for art block is staring at a blank canvas trying to figure something out instead of just doing, even if it’s trash.”

Oh. My. God. You have no idea how comforting it was to hear Olivia say even she has some “nonsense scribbles” sometimes. I love this term. I’m going to steal it from her. I really could’ve used this advice back in March/April. I would not even try to write because I thought I had nothing good to say, but I really should’ve allowed myself some time for nonsense scribbles.

So, all three of us have seen examples of health impacting not only our creativity, but that of others we support. This leads me to a question: Is there science to back up our theory that health impacts creativity?

Time to get scholarly

That’s right, boys. We went and Googled some stuff.

This article by Erin Eatough, PhD describes a poll given to employees during the pandemic. It found that those who reported to be struggling greatly with their mental health also reported the feeling that being creative at work required a higher amount of strain and effort on their part. In other words, a correlation was found between struggling with mental health and the ease of creative output. Kind of exactly what I theorized. Look at me, being smart.

In another article, Petra Raspel Borzynski reports that creative professionals tend to report higher instances of struggles with mental health. Not because creatives are inherently mentally ill (a fallacy that Borzynski quite eloquently shreds apart in her article), but because jobs in the creative field tend to be more high-pressure, demanding, judgmental, discouraging, and competitive. It’s no wonder that people working in such industries feel a significant strain on their mental health- all of those things are a recipe for high cortisol levels and low self-esteem.

Johnny Wood, writing for World Economic Forum, posits that exercise has a correlation to increased creativity. In his article, Wood explains that a study was able to link habitual physical activity to increased creative output, though I found one thing to be very interesting: there was no discernable difference in creative output between those who got regular moderate exercise and those who got regular vigorous exercise. That’s interesting specifically to me, as I have always had a tendency to push myself where I probably shouldn’t (see above where I mentioned taking fitness classes 6 days a week).

The Flipside

Being creative can, in turn, have a positive effect on our health. In a study described by Victoria Pelham in an article for Cedars Sinai, it was found that only 45 minutes participating in the creation of visual art lowered the cortisol levels of 75% of participants. That’s real, measurable proof that engaging in creation has positive effects on our physical and mental health (high cortisol can lead to both mental strain, like anxiety, and physical symptoms, like high blood pressure and weight gain).

Further, in a 2023 poll by the American Psychiatric Association described here, there was found to be correlation between casual creative activity and perceived mental health levels. Those who rated their own mental health highly also more frequently answered that they engaged in some sort of creative activity often in their daily lives.

Conclusion: It’s all interconnected

So, what conclusion can we draw from not only the experiences of my fellow creatives, but also these studies and claims asserted by professionals? It’s all linked together: creative output can lead to better health, and better health can lead to higher creative output.

How does this help me?

At the moment of composing this article, I’ve found myself to be in a bad slump. I’m struggling to open up a document and just let myself go, and when I do manage to get the engines going, I hate everything I’ve put on the page. My creative output is suffering, so I can conclude that better health will likely have a positive effect on this problem.

What does better health mean for me? First, the mental side. I struggle with having patience and compassion for myself (recall a very old article where I describe having to treat myself like a toddler). We all go through highs and lows with our ability to be kind to ourselves, but I will need to get more intentional with my self-patience if I want to see improvement here. Maybe I need to re-read that old article of mine and visualize myself as a fussy toddler: what is causing the tantrum, and how do we compassionately stop the tantrum from continuing? Perhaps starting a reflective journal will help me to organize these observances in an intentional way.

Second, the physical side. I did mention above that I have pulled back on my intense regimen and allowed myself more rest days per week, but I’m currently still struggling with the nutritional side of things. Several unlucky bouts of food poisoning, norovirus and general stomach issues have, unfortunately, given me a pretty good aversion to most meats. This is an issue because my physical regimen demands an adequate intake of protein (which I can’t just replace with your standard protein shakes, as whey irritates my IBS). To remedy this, I have started to search out plant-based protein sources like edamame, chickpeas, and plant-based meat substitutes like Beyond and Impossible products. I would also like to increase my general caloric intake, while being careful to keep those calories coming from such protein-dense foods. I’m sure it will take several weeks as I find meals that work for me.

But it’s important to not neglect my creativity, even though I’ll be focusing on my health. But what will that look like, given that I’m struggling with it so greatly?

As Olivia put it, it’s gonna be time for some nonsense scribbles. Playing around with no intention or benchmark, just scribbling out sentences. This will also mean more free writes, something I haven’t been doing as much lately. And I’ll need to very intentionally remove any expectations I want to place on my work- when I do feel like I can add words to a novel project, I need to remember something: first you make it exist, then you make it good.

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Monthly Writing Goals Update

5,744 / 20,000 words

Honestly, writing this article was a major help for this rut I’ve been in.

I finally realized that I needed to write for myself, not for the furthering of progress in the projects I’ve deemed “top priority”. So, I spent an entire day re-reading The Silverwing and the start I’d made to its sequel, falling in love with those familiar characters all over again and realizing that this story is fun for me to create. I found myself pounding away at the sequel, known hereafter as SW#2, and somehow 3,500 words happened in two hours.

That’s what happens when you write for yourself. I don’t care if The Silverwing never gets published; I have loads of fun spending time in its world.

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