As part of our ongoing weekly November series about creativity and the processes behind it, we asked STL writer and content strategist Sarah Truckey about how she keeps her creative juices going.
“It’s about dedicating a certain amount of time to my work, talking myself into doing it, and building it up to be a productive endeavor. The hardest part, really, is getting down that first sentence. But after that, it gets easier. And my first sentence often becomes my last, and I work in non-sequential parts that I piece together later, moving paragraphs around on a page as if they were Jenga blocks: equally as temperamental, difficult to move and fragile.
“If working from home, I work best in the morning—early morning—with a large French press and no breakfast, while dressed in my pajamas. I’ll get up from the kitchen table and pace around only when really stuck or after I’ve come up with something really mind-blowing. And, somehow, during those periods away from the computer, my writing becomes new to me when I sit back down. It’s a fresher perspective thanks to my time away.
Sarah Truckey’s workstation at The Royale | photo by Sarah Truckey
I’m most productive during the day on my laptop at The Royale. And I like to read/write by hand at O’Connell’s late at night. I need to have something else going on around me that forces me to drown it out and consequently turn toward my writing. These are places where people won’t bother me and where I’m comfortable enough to be self-absorbed. These are also places with alcohol, which is one of my ways to hurdle a creative block. But it’s a delicate balance: one whiskey loosens me up and lets me write with ease, two gives me a concentrated flow, and three will most definitely start to lead me off-topic.”
For more on creativity, check out our interviews with “Empire” and “The Good Wife” director Rosemary Rodriguez and “House of Cards” creator Beau Willimon.