Creative Containers

And why you should embrace them

If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is a bit of a cross-genre essay around writing.

[NOTE: Your email provider may truncate this essay, be sure to click on “keep reading” to read the entire piece.]

Unlimited creative freedom.

It sounds like the dream, right? No one to tell you what to create, when to create, or how to create. I love the theory of it, but I also think that it’s a misconception. I’ve heard the belief from so many creatives that:

“Creative freedom without limits leads to the most creativity.”

And while I’d love to believe that, I don’t.

If anything, my experiences (and that of others) has led me to believe that unlimited creative freedom more often than not leads to overwhelm, procrastination, loss of focus, and frustration with the creative process.

The clients who most often want to work with me have been routinely disappointed by this misconception. They often ask what’s wrong with them that they can’t produce something wildly imaginative or creative out of thin air.

Then I have the delightful pleasure of telling them that nothing is wrong with them — they just bought into a theory that probably doesn’t work for them.

They always look surprised when I say this. But then I break out the statistics and blow their minds. Because yes, this has been studied! And yes, there is evidence that points to the fact that when creators have infinite possibilities, it can lead to decision fatigue and creative paralysis.¹

So if unlimited creative freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be… what’s an alternative?

Creative Containers.

The Concept of a Creative Container

What is a creative container? My definition is this:

A set of parameters that surround a topic or theme, often with a specific timeframe.

This seems pretty vague — and it should — because creative containers are meant to encourage, enhance and provide structure for creativity without forcing creative decisions.

Creative containers should provide enough of a framework to make the actual creation phase so much easier — not harder.

And when you think about it, you can find these creative containers ALL over the place. Poets who work with meter, musicians who work with scales, writers who work with genre are just a few of the ways creative containers can show up.

In 2006, Patricia Stokes, an expert on creativity, did a study that found that constraints not only help focus attention but also foster new connections and insights. She argues that creative problem-solving thrives on constraints because they force individuals to approach problems differently, often leading to more original outcomes.²

Benefits of Creative Containers

Baselines

Parameters around creative containers give us a baseline to work from. For example, in the case of NaNoWriMo — the “parameters” are that for 30 days in November, a writer will write approximately 1,667 words every day to reach the 50,000 word goal. This gives participants a baseline of how much writing they should be doing, for how many days, and what the end goal is. What they choose to write about, how they choose to structure their story, how many days they actually write, etc., is all up to the individual but they have, at the very least, something tangible to reach for because of the baseline. This is why NaNo has been wildly popular and has helped millions of writers write and finish their novels. I am one of those millions! (More on this below!)

Positive Pressure

If you’re anything like me, you have a love/hate relationship with deadlines or due dates. As much as we may rage against the concept — it works. There’s a psychological principle called the “Yerkes-Dodson law” which explains the relationship between arousal (or pressure) and performance. The Yerkes-Dodson law suggests that moderate levels of pressure—such as those induced by deadlines—actually improve focus and performance, including creativity. While too little pressure leads to underperformance and too much pressure causes stress and anxiety, the right amount of pressure can enhance creative output.³

The key here is to discern what is the “right amount of pressure.” For some writers, the NaNoWriMo parameters induce hives and anxiety and for others, the parameters are not enough pressure and for a majority of people, they find the pressure is just right.

Generative Ideation

My absolute favorite thing about creative containers is living in the possibilities. It may seem counterintuitive that a container can hold so many potential ideas, but it’s within the given framework that those possibilities appear.

When something is shapeless, intangible, and incredibly broad (like unlimited creative freedom) — the possibilities truly ARE endless which is exciting but also overwhelming. But if you have a few constraints to work from, you now have something to work against. Your mind will automatically start generating ideas now that it knows what the “rules” are — no matter how loose, fluid those rules are.

One of my favorite examples to show off this theory is an exercise one of my mentors taught me that I’m sharing with you. It goes like this:

1. Look closely at this famous photograph, the Migrant Mother. This **photograph was taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936.

2. Tell me who she is.

That’s it! That’s the exercise. It seems so simple, right? That’s because what this example is trying to show you is that while we may have some parameters set up (the photograph) every single person is going to imagine a different story for this woman. The possibilities of who she is, what she’s feeling and what her life is like is going to depend on the person viewing the photograph and their imaginations. So even though we are all looking at the same exact photo — we all have very different ideas in mind about who she is.

Small Wins

In her research on creativity and motivation, Teresa Amabile found that frequent small wins, which can be achieved through mini-deadlines or milestones, help sustain motivation and creativity. By setting shorter, achievable deadlines, individuals experience regular progress, which boosts creativity over time.⁴

This is precisely why “writing sprints” work so well — you have a limited time (the container) to write as many words as you can. And trust me, as someone who has done a lot of writing sprints in my life, it is motivating to watch your word count and sentences begin to pile up, even if I’m only writing a few hundred words at a time. It all adds up.

So does the feeling of achieving those small wins. It creates momentum.

Content in the Bank

I’ll often get a comment from a non-writer like:

“Wouldn’t your time be better served working on a long-form project — something that has ROI?”

This is such a hallmark of our hustle and bustle societal conditioning. It’s not bad enough that we feel we need to be constantly producing… but then we must find a way to monetize what we produce or create.

And it sucks the fucking fun out of everything.

Look… I don’t care who you are or what kind of “art” you create — nothing you create is ever a waste. Every creation that has your fingerprint on it taught you something. Perhaps it taught you that you hate containers! Maybe it taught you that you absolutely LOVE flash fiction and want to try to improve on that skill. Maybe you learned that you work better at night with the owls. What it teaches you is so individualized but please believe me when I tell you — there’s a lesson in everything you create.

It’s also content in the “bank.”

As creators, we have an inventory of what we produce. It could be one painting, one poem or one story. Or it could be twenty novels, two nonfiction books, twenty-five recorded lectures on various topics.

This “inventory” grows over your creative life and before you know it, you have a substantial amount of creations to look back on. Are all of them going to be amazing and wonderful? Nope. Chances are, only 10% of your inventory will ever live up to your standards (nature of being someone who creates) but that doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of, or return to, other creations.

My book, Lost in NYC started as a draft I wrote when I was in college for a class. I put it away and didn’t look at it again until a decade later and ended up rewriting and publishing it. If I had thrown away what I created back then, I know for a fact that Lost in NYC wouldn’t exist as a book and that’s a damn shame, because I love that little book baby of mine.

Examples of Creative Containers

Most of the time, my students and clients are participating in various writing creative containers without even knowing it. If you’ve…

• Ever tried/attempted/won NaNoWriMo

• Gone through an “Artist’s Way” experience

• Completed writing assignments for a course/workshop

• Participated in a writing “challenge” or “contest”

• Submitted a piece of work to an anthology or other co-created works

• Participated in writing sprints or timed silent writing groups

• Used a guided or thematic journal

• Written based off prompts or sentence starters or story seeds

Then you have used a creative container!

Creative containers get a bad reputation because there are some containers that do stifle and limit creativity. And while most of those rigid containers are unhelpful to all creatives, some people would rather swear off trying new shapes of creative containers than get caught up in a rigid structure, again. And I get it!

My experience, however, is that creative containers have saved my creativity. In my many, many years as a writer and creative, there has never been an experience where a creative container hasn’t come to the rescue to save my creative sanity. And I LOVE to “assign” them as work for my students and clients because it’s easily the number one way to get back into a habit of creating. And not just creating — creating for yourself.

Mini Case Study

One of the past containers I used during a very rough period of my life was a 30 Day Card Reading challenge that an Instagrammer (@lionharts) put out. The parameters were simple:

Pull a daily card, look at the prompt, write your response.

What I did with that container though is create a short story using the prompts and then I annotated the chapter with notes about how writing that chapter went for me, how hard/easy it was to include the prompt and card essence into the chapter, etc.

While I learned so much participating in this container, it was nothing compared to the sheer JOY and FUN I had writing it. And that’s exactly what I needed at that time in my life to bring myself home to my creativity.

In fact, I had SO much fun doing this the first time, that I’m doing it again this November…

Write the Cards: A FREE 30 Day Challenge

I’ll be honest with you and tell you I have an ulterior motive to doing this challenge again this year. Especially in November. All the camaraderie and spirit I mentioned with NaNoWriMo? Well, after 25 years, I fear that the organization has lost their way and I don’t feel comfortable participating in an official capacity. But I will always be grateful for what they created and for kick-starting a very real, very important container for many writers.

I want to create that same kind of feeling for myself and others — but in my own way.

The “container” for this challenge is not only simple — it’s FUN!

For 30 days in November, we’ll gather in my community and set out to achieve a collective goal: to use the prompts and any kind of card deck to inspire your writing. That’s it!

Just in case you want the “rules” (spoiler alert: there aren’t any real rules) of the challenge, here they are:

• Every morning in November, you’ll get a prompt and writing task sent to you

• You can then use the prompt/task however you wish — pull a card or don’t (but it will be more fun if you play along), use the prompt or don’t.

• If you want accountability or to share you work, you can “submit” your day’s work in our private feed for feedback, support and inspiration (you don’t have to submit your work to enjoy others’ posts!)

1. Schwartz, Barry (2004). The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less

2. Stokes, Patricia D. (2006). “Creativity from Constraints: The Psychology of Breakthrough.”

3. Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). “The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit-Formation.”

4. Amabile, Teresa, and Kramer, Steven (2011). The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.