Useless
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“Creativity should always look at the world sideways, backwards, upside down.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
We have spent this week thinking about protecting our creative space, finding the hour that belongs to us and noticing all the perfectly reasonable things that somehow manage to eat it up, but today I want to suggest something slightly less sensible.
Make something completely useless. One of the quickest ways to squeeze the life out of creativity is to start asking what it is for, whether it is any good, whether anyone will want it, whether you could sell it, publish it, post it or somehow turn it into something productive.
I know I do this all the time because somewhere along the way I seem to have acquired the idea that if I am going to spend an hour creating something, there ought to be a point to it.
But some of the happiest creative moments of my life have had absolutely no point at all.
They have been doodling, taking photographs, making ridiculous little films, rearranging a room because I suddenly wanted everything to feel different, writing something I knew nobody would ever read, painting very badly or following some strange idea simply because it made me feel more alive.
Perhaps that is part of protecting our creative space too, because we are not only protecting the time, we are protecting creativity from our constant need to make it useful.
There is something lovely about making something simply because you want to see what happens, because a colour has caught your eye, because an idea is making you laugh or because for half an hour you would quite like to follow your curiosity somewhere without having to explain where you are going.
So today, give yourself permission to make something gloriously, joyfully, magnificently useless, and see what turns up when there is absolutely nothing riding on the result.
Writing prompt:
What would you make, write, draw, photograph, cook, rearrange or play with if it never had to be useful, impressive or seen by anyone else?
Want to create a writing practice? Come join us at Heart Leap.
If you’ve been meaning to write — your journal, your Substack, your book, your Big Beautiful Thing but somehow always end up reorganising the fridge instead… welcome home.
At Heart Leap, I host four writing hours a week Monday to Thursday from 9–10am GMT. We chat for five minutes at the start, five at the end, and the rest of the time we simply write together. No pressure or performance, just a calm, friendly corner of the internet where pages get filled and ideas stop hiding.
If you need accountability, a regular rhythm, or a space where other writers are also muttering “why is this so hard?”, you’ll be in excellent company.
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