Discover Your Unique Creative Ecosystem

I found what I came to call my creative ecosystem in the midst of creative depletion. It was November of last year, and I had just launched my membership community. Behind me, I had weeks of diving deep and getting this new offering together, creating lots of content around it, and before then, my first six months of running my creative business full-time.

I had no ideas. No inspiration. No creative energy. I had used it all, and none was left. I was creatively emptied out.

The holiday season was in sight, but there were still a couple of weeks left. So I decided to slow down, do the necessary, and meanwhile try to refuel my creativity. A week or two passed without much happening, until one day. It was a chilly, early winter day and we had a beautiful sunset. I needed new photos, so I took my camera and headed down to the lake. The ice had just started to form, and I could hear it - it was singing.

A burst of inspiration crackled beneath my skin, like it hadn’t in weeks. I breathed in the cold air and set up my camera. Half an hour later I headed home in the disappearing light with a hundred pictures and a full heart. This was it! This was were I found my creative energy: in my own process. The following weeks, I put together something I came to call my creative ecosystem. A reminder of all the parts I need to do my best creative work.

So… what is it?

A creative ecosystem is a cycle that brings forth your body of creative work. It's different from a creative process in that multiple creative processes can make up an ecosystem. It’s especially helpful if your creative life is multifaceted, like mine is.

The cycle starts with the things that bring your energy and inspiration in your creative life. It then travels through the steps that you need to take, to turn that inspiration into your body of work.

Let’s say you are a book blogger and novelist. Your cycle might look something like this:

Your inspiration comes from browsing bookstores and reading.
While reading, you take notes and write down quotes. After finishing a book, you reflect on it for a while. You might read other reviews of it. You compare it with other books.
You write a blog post reviewing the book.
You take your insights from multiple book reviews you’ve written, and condense it into lessons learned that you can use in your writing project.
You work on your novel.

When the ecosystem is in balance, the different parts of your creative life feeds into each other. One gives energy or insight to the next, each playing an essential role in your ecosystem.

Too often, we tend to neglect some part of our cycle. Maybe it’s the part that we never make time for, or it’s a part that is a bit uncomfortable and difficult. But when we ignore a part of our creative ecosystem, things can quickly become unbalanced. We may experience things like creative blocks, burnout, or struggle to go deeper. Or like me, creative depletion with no new ideas.

My creative ecosystem

What I realised that day, with my camera in hand and the song of ice in my ears, was that I had been ignoring parts of my creative ecosystem. Most of all, I had been ignoring my own creativity, and it had left me emptied out.

I wanted to get clearer on what I actually need to be able to do my creative work, and avoid ending up depleted again. So I sat down, and I shaped a cycle.

1. My own creative process

It has always started with my own creativity. When I began blogging, I did so to document my own process and the challenges I was facing. My coaching was born out of my own explorations and insights about the creative process. This is where I get much of my energy, inspiration and insights.

I call this creating art. I’m using art in the broad sense of the word, not just the visual arts. This is the creativity that is for its own sake, for its own purpose and creative integrity, in contrast to creativity used for strategic content, coaching or marketing. For me, this is primarily novel writing, but also photography. It’s free and open.

2. Working with clients & community

Next comes the work I do with my coaching clients and my membership community. This is work that requires creative energy, but that also gives me a lot of ideas and inspiration. In this part, I coach and guide, work directly with creatives, their ideas and processes. From this work, I’m always learning more about what people need and how I can help.

3. Note challenges & insights

From my own creative process and the work I do with others, I take note of challenges and insights. For this to happen, I need space to reflect. When I’m just going going going, I’m too focused on the work to learn from it. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important to slow down, look up and zoom out now and again. In this step, I might journal, read, think or simply rest, but I might also reflect through writing a more introspective blog post.

4. Turn into concepts & guidance

From my notes of challenges and insights about the creative process, I dive deeper and research. This is where my notes can take shape into concepts and guidance. For example, I noted that I needed my own creativity, to energize my creative business. Then I took that insight, dug deeper, and developed the concept of a creative ecosystem. In this step, I sketch and think, I make vision boards, scribble and test things.

5. Create content & offerings

Finally, in the last part of my creative ecosystem, I take what I’ve learned and turn it into something. Most often, it’s a piece of content like this blog post, but it can also be a new offering. This being the last step of the ecosystem illustrates how many steps come before what I call creating as a coach. Here I’m creating to guide, help and support.

When I could see my own creative ecosystem, I could also see what steps I had given too little attention. I’d been jumping between steps two and five, expecting myself to crank out new ideas without the space for reflection and diving deeper, without the energy from my own process. Not surprising I was feeling depleted.

The parts I was neglecting were all ones that didn’t give an immediate, tangible result in my creative business. To sit and journal a day, or play around with a vague concept idea, or work on my novel… they were all things I valued, but difficult ones to prioritise. Yet they are essential, so I’m trying to get better at making them a priority.

Uncovering your creative ecosystem

Okay, so maybe I’ve convinced you of the power of knowing your own creative ecosystem. But how do you find yours? How do you know what it looks like? Well, I want to start out by saying that everyone’s ecosystem looks different. You may have a few or many parts to it, the process might be long or short. It might also change over time with your life situation, skills, and interests. All this to say: there is no one right answer. Use this concept with playfulness, like a way to clarify something that is inherently pretty messy.

Here are some questions to help you figure out what goes into your ecosystem and in which order they come.

Where do you get your creative energy and inspiration? What refills your creative buckets? This part will come early in your creative ecosystem.
What are the results, or the output in your creative life? What does your work lead to? This will be a part at the end where you gather experiences or lessons from the earlier steps. This doesn’t have to be as tangible as an offering, but can be a finished piece of art, or improving a skill.
How does the different activities in your creative life relate to each other? If you share on Instagram, is that something that gives or requires energy? What comes before? What does it lead to?
What helps you in your creative life? What has given you new insights, new ideas or breakthroughs in the past?

Start sketching out your ecosystem, and give it some time to take shape. When I first played around with mine, I didn’t have step four - turning insights into concepts. I were then supposed to go straight from insights to creating content and offerings, and I realised that was a big leap. Which in turn made me realise that’s exactly what I’ve tried to do sometimes, and that I need to give myself time to develop my concepts.

Recognise what you need

To create something insightful, meaningful and powerful is big work. Regardless of whether it’s something you do just for yourself, or if others share in it as well. That work doesn’t just happen in a vacuum, but comes from somewhere. The writer might need to experience life to write stories that touch a nerve. The artist might need inner exploration to make art that feels authentic.

We live in a world that only sees the output, and so that’s what it obsesses about. We don’t see the hours spent staring out of the window, or all the discarded ideas before arriving at one that worked, or the healthy meals, body movement and hours of sleep needed for sharp focus. Just like it only sees the end product, and not our nature’s fragile ecosystems needed to create that product.

We, the creators, have to learn what we need. We have to make it a priority, because no one else will do it for us. We have to see all the parts, and make space for them all. We, and only we, can make sure our creative ecosystem is in balance.

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