Consistency is Hard!
Creative Consistency is harder than I thought it would be. It’s easy to think that you have all these great ideas when you have the diversion of employment and/or side hustles to keep you at one idea a week.
When you take that activity away and take that time back it becomes much harder to come up with something on a daily basis. It starts to feel a little different and a lot more difficult. It’s a challenge I didn’t expect to have after leaving Corporate America nearly 2 years ago, but yet here I am.
I took a break from writing this year to distract myself and live my best life. Then I took another break to completely focus on a few freelance projects and my job hunt, but in all honesty, I could have done both. I probably needed both. Writing has become therapeutic for me; a bit ironic because I struggled with creative writing in school, but that’s a story for another day.
Let’s get back to consistency.
Some creators carry around an idea book to quickly jot down concepts that come to their minds. The hope is that they capture as many thoughts and ideas as possible, even the fleeting ones that last just a moment.
So I started jotting things down again. Anytime I catch myself mid ouuu, I go to the notes app on my phone to write it all down. Sometimes I go back to it and think what the hell was this? Other times I end up reading it over and over again because it gives me the healing I needed in that moment.
But again, back to consistency.
In my humble opinion, stand-up comedians have to be some of the most consistent creatives. They have to find ‘the funny’ in things that are relevant and current on a pretty regular basis, and then make it work so that people actually laugh.
I just finished binging ‘Seinfeld’ on Netflix and the dude literally had a show about everyday nothingness, his stand-up also centered around this theme. How do you consistently write about nothing?
‘Don’t break the chain’ also dubbed the Seinfeld Method requires you to mark an X on your calendar for every day you complete the task you’re trying to become more consistent with. Jerry Seinfeld allegedly (he may or may not have had anything to do with this method) said to get better jokes you have to write every day and advised marking an X on a calendar for each completed day to track progress. The goal is to not break the chain.
In an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Eddie Murphy mentions getting his inspiration mainly from conversations. He’ll say something, recognize the humor and then write it down. It’s the consistent notetaking, but also consistent awareness that’s key.
Issa Rae, although not a stand-up comedian, is an awkward black girl that also gets some of her material from conversations with friends in life.
I’ve been struggling with consistency because I’ve seen it as either having to always be on or waiting for a lightbulb moment. It’s neither of those things. It’s consistently setting time aside for your craft and remaining consistent in your situational awareness to recognize a resonating moment.
I say all that to say I plan to annoy your timelines and inboxes with consistency.
