TIME for Creativity
With Prompts about Time!
HAPPY HANUKAH, CHRISTMAS, DIWALI, KWANZAA & HAPPY NEW YEAR! I’ll be taking the next 2 weeks off from Substack. (Brave Space will continue unabated).
I hope you too will be able to take some time for yourself. Sending you all reiki for healing & wholeness & love with prayers for peace in the New Year. May Palestine be free.
Some of us are our most creative when we’ve got a deadline. Even if it’s imaginary. When we set a timer, we impose the illusion of brevity. We think “I’ll only do this for 5 minutes!” A timer also imposes the illusion of urgency which creates dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter, that helps us with motivation.
I create with a timer daily. I want to fit so much into my day (ADHD!) and I have such a strong ability to focus without ever coming up for air (Autism!) that if I didn’t set timers, I’d be lost to myself. I wouldn’t eat or hydrate, and chances are I’d ignore needing to pee! So I set my timer.
I also set priorities, or I’d forget what I’m doing here on this earth. Many times a day I look up and wonder, is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Have I forgotten anything or anyone?
I genuinely love moments when it’s time to look at where I am and what I’ve done and what I want to focus on next. Being able to reflect is a super-power! Learning this opened my world!
I love planning. But I could plan forever and never execute! I use my timers and my schedule to keep myself on track.
I have a mission. As an Audhder, I have had to create some scaffolding for being in the world. Because time-blindness is real, I’ve created ways to structure my time that let me show up for myself and others as a healer, writer, artivist and as a creative coach trying to make a difference.
At the end of each year, just like at the end of each day, I like to look back and see what I have accomplished. I don’t mean how much money I made or how much creative output I tallied or what kind of recognition I received. If I measured myself by those standards, I’d see 60 years of failure.
To me it’s more important to measure all I have been able to do in terms of healing myself and others. Yes, how far I’ve come, measured only against myself, having lived 40+ years of my life with multiple active chronic illnesses and 55 years of undiagnosed Audhd, but specifically how has my journey led to how connected and present I am. Am I more able to be present and connected today, this week, this month, this year? And this leads me to consider how I experience time.
My experience of time proves to me how present I am. Some months, it has felt as if every day is Friday. By this I mean, I’ve felt as if I’m losing whole weeks! Like, omg, it’s Friday again, how did that happen?
When this happens, I know I have to slow down. My life has become a blur. But slowing down is possible. I change how I relate to my to-do list. I stop adding to it. I remove everything but essentials. I say no to everything that comes at me. I give myself grace. I go back to how I managed time when I was still healing. When I had much less capacity. I get into bed early after a hot bath with epsom salts and magnesium flakes with arnica.
How connected and present I am starts with how aware I am of time. For me and for many, my creative time is when I can let that awareness go. In order for me to create with joy, I need to feel safe in letting go of my awareness of time. For me, this means setting a timer.
This is part of why Brave Space works for so many people. I am setting a timer for all of us. This provides the safe container we need to dive into the creative process. This is one way I offer joy to many all year round based in my own struggle and success at creating more ease in my nervous system where all healing begins.
THE PROMPT:
A Few Thoughts on Time…
First a writing warm-up with Time which is typical of what a warm-up prompt looks like in Brave Space…
What do you or your characters think of time? Who has it? Who doesn’t have enough of it? Who is bothered by its potential to run out? Who feels energized by it and who feels as if it’s all too late? Who can stick to a schedule and who wants to be spontaneous? How does our approach to time define our character? Who is obsessed with time and who is oblivious to time? What about a particular time that was so influential a character seems to still live in that time? How do we become aware that they do that? Who refuses to go back to the past? Who is ready to sift through it for hours? What are the time-stamped objects in your work, and how is that moment in time brought into the present for us to understand? What is it about today that wants or needs us to revisit that time?
Time for some neuroscience!
Numerous experiments have demonstrated that people have the ability to accurately detect the passage of time. One experiment showed that, without consciously counting, a group of 19 to 24 year olds were able, on average, to tell when 3 minutes was up within a 3 second margin of error. Interestingly, the age group of 60-80 tended to average perceiving 3 minutes pass at around 3 minutes and 40 seconds consistently within the test group. This would seem to indicate whatever mechanism we use to sense time slows as we age, and thus as we get older time seems to pass faster. So time is relative, and personal experience varies.
The DRAMATURGY of TIME
How does time happen in your work? Do you use time to your advantage? (So often if you can condense the time of your story, it will work better!) Does it move fast or slow? Does it change: moving fast sometimes and slow other times? Does time work like real time, the way it does in Marsha Norman’s ‘Night Mother? Or do many years or centuries pass? Do you pull characters from different times into the present? Would it benefit your work to bring in someone from the past? Do you tend to concern yourself with the past or the future or the present? Are your concerns reflective of your life? Do those concerns shape character? Do you tend to write scenes that are consecutive in time? Or does your work make leaps á là Caryl Churchill? What would happen if you changed how you deal with time? Write a scene where time moves fast or slow or shifts. Can there be urgency in slowness? Can there be leisure in speed? Write a scene where we are aware of time in a different way, a way that is meaningful for the scene. What does it mean to be waiting? What are the stakes?
The Theatricality of URGENCY
There are times in everyone’s life when there is an emergency that calls for urgent action. Typically urgency occurs when we have a sense of threat or a sense of high stakes or the sense that this is a life or death situation. The interesting thing about life/death situations is that they can also occur inside a person even when the outside world seems relatively calm. Life and death threat can easily be triggered in anyone with a trauma history, and we don’t need to know the trauma history to understand that a person is triggered or acting from a place of great fear or distress. How we behave during those times can make what we think of as “our character” evident. And yet this is biological, as we all have the same physical responses to threat and go through the same steps. This means that what we think of as “our character” can change as we heal from our traumas. This means that revelations and moments of recognition can actually heal us in deep ways that change how we behave and that character is more about our humanity and our similarities than about our differences.
What urgent moments have you/your characters lived through and how has it revealed “character?” Has this caused them to judge themselves or limit themselves in any way? Who is a fighter, a flight-er or a freeze-r? How does a character manage to act when action is most needed? Can you give your characters ultimatums? What are the hardest choices to pose?
And don’t forget: Events raise the stakes, change the playing field and/or push the story forward. What events are taking place or need to be taking place next? List the next three events you need to write - write them.
TIME isn’t TIME without ENDINGS
ENDING - noun: an end or final part of something, especially a period of time, activity or book or movie; the furthest part or point of something; the final part of a word, constituting a grammatical inflection or formative element. How is a formative element an ending? As a verb: gerund or present participle: ending (the opposite of beginning or starting), to come to or bring to a final point; perform a final act; have as its final part, point, or result; eventually reach or come to a specified place, state, or course of action. Where did you or your characters end up this year? From what journey? What sort of ending do you want? What kind of endings do you prefer in your reading? In your own storytelling? How do you craft your endings? Do you tend to write toward them? Or do you write from them?
Start with a final image - a startling ending or a happy ending or whatever kind of ending you imagine - and write backing away from it. What caused that to happen? What caused that to happen... keep writing backwards until you get to a stopping place that is the beginning.
BRAVE SPACE:
With prompts, grounding practices, & discussions and the creative process and craft! Brave Space invites playwrights, poets, painters, potters, novelists, memoirists, musicians & artists working in any medium to make meaning in a safe community. Begin and/or bring your projects to completion.
Or use Brave Space as a body-doubling space to get other things done in community (write hard emails, clean out your closets, do taxes).
$5-25 suggested per session. 4x/week! On or off camera. No commitment, drop-ins welcome. Try it!
Female & nonbinary folks welcome any time. All Humans welcome on Sundays.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 12pm ET with Fast Feedback every Friday; and Sundays at 6pm ET with Sharing Second Sundays at 730pm ET (that means January 11th!!!) Email or reply for a link!
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: Next Brave Space is Friday 12/19 at 12pm and then Sunday 12/21 at 6pm ET and next week 12/22 - 26 MWF at 12pm ET. Yes! we’ll meet the day before and the day after Christmas! And Yes! we’ll meet on New Year’s Day the week after! To start your 2026 in a Creative way!
NeuroAffirming (NAF) Parts Work Group:
Meets Second Saturdays of each month (January 10th at 12pm ET - time zone converter here) to offer community, parts work experience and support for anyone neurodivergent (inclusive of Autism, ADHD, Audhd, OCD, cPTSD, BPD and more).
You do not need an actual diagnosis to participate. Run by Emma and Jess (Level II), both of us Audhd, we are creating non-pathologizing and anti-ableist Parts Work content for healing and ease in neurodivergent systems. Sign up for our link here. Sliding scale from $5-25/session, but no one will be turned away.
original artwork by Scott Sherman at ScottShermanStudio on instagram
Opportunities
RHONDA MUSAK is offering her yearly LEAP with PASSION Workshop for making your 2026 all you want it to be. It has helped me SO much! I highly recommend it! If you are looking for a great way to achieve your goals in 2026, leap with passion! Register here!
Due 1/5/26 The Relentless Award! For an unproduced full-length play. More info here.
Due 1/12/26 but they CAP at 400, so don’t delay! The Leah Prize is given for a full length play by a woman, trans, or non-binary playwright who is emerging.
Dark Nature Poetry and Literary Fiction Anthology for Wildlife Protection has a call out for Dramatic Monologues and Fiction (they have enough poetry), and there is more information on what they seek at their Facebook group. They seek dark lit combining beauty and gloom. This can be about plants and/or animals. It may also involve people as observers to Nature, their yearning for connection or grief at estrangement from it.
My colleagues at the Grief Dialogues are seeking short plays or pieces/stories centered on 9/11, its aftermath, or themes adjacent to that day (such as resilience, community, or collective grief). You can submit here for a production to be presented during the week of September 7, 2026 for the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
DUE 1/19/26 - Summer Writers’ Conference on Martha’s Vineyard 2026! Fellowships include full tuition & lodging! Queer Writer Fellowships open to all queer-identified writers ages 18+, and ALSO full fellowships for Parent-Writers, Writers of Color, Teachers & Educators and two brand new fellowships for Full-time Caregivers and Emerging Writers. We are offering over $20,000 in Fellowships to attend, and the deadline for application is Jan 19th, 2026.
Amazing People Doing Amazing Things:
If you want to be listed here, please let me know what you’re up to and include your links!
Julia Lee Barclay-Morton is writing beautiful essays on Substack and whether you’re autistic or disabled or not, I highly recommend her work!
Philip Metres, the poet, has just recently started a Substack that I also recommend.
Jess Pearce & I made these neuroaffirming IFS experientials on Insight Timer. Enjoy here.
My play, “WINNERS,” was named a semifinalist with the Jewish Plays Project. My flash fiction, “The Summer My Mother Remarried,” was nominated for Best Microfiction by the editors at Boudin, the spicy online cousin of the McNeese Review. And my chapbook, “Dear Palestine,” will be published by Moonstone Press (Philadelphia) in early 2026!
POLITICAL ACTION:
I suggest, instead of feeling helpless in the face of the news, get up-to-date on issues important to you. Seek out Substacks or youtube providers or other newsletters and outlets beyond the corporate hegemony. Here are some ways to readjust your focus.
Get Involved:
What you need to know about ICE.
Fight for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Writers for Democratic Action.
READ/SUBSCRIBE:
Chop Wood, Carry Water - a substack by Jess Craven that helps me focus on political action and includes good news to help sustain us!
ABORTION EVERY DAY a substack by Jessica Valenti - support real research about what’s really happening. MEN, this is scary shit, and your support is needed and appreciated!
THE CRUCIAL YEARS a substack by Bill McKibben - climate change and ways to understand it and to actually do stuff about it.
ERIN in the Morning, by Erin Reed - news about the trans community.
The Intercept, 972mag, Aljazeera, and Mondoweiss - independent news.
DONATE:
Give to the Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance
Give to Doctors Without Borders
6 Ways to Support Palestine
Donate for Civilians in Palestine