I used to think I only had a certain number of stories in me.

Once I wrote them, I feared my creativity would be all used up. For years, this stopped me from writing, or at least from writing consistently.

Once I told my few precious stories, there’d be nothing left to write about—so why even start what would be the beginning of the end? I thought that life only would give us each a fixed amount of material—there was my brother’s death, the death of some dear friends, and a couple of love stories.

So instead of releasing these tales, I hoarded them.

They swam through my mind, sentences swirling and darting. They wanted out, but I wouldn’t, couldn’t let them.

Until I did.

I still don’t fully understand how I changed from someone who worried she’d run out of stories to someone who often can’t keep up with them. It’s a mystery, one that has something to do with sustenance, with creation. My first blog entry was about weaning my daughter, who was 17 months old at the time. I’d been either pregnant or nursing for five years straight, my body locked in a loop of need.

Once my body was my own again, it was almost like the milk that had coursed through me changed forms; instead of the blood-flushed womb or the thick milk that held and fed my babies, it was words pulsing through my mind, hot and silver.

It felt like maybe once my body became accustomed to creating, it couldn’t stop.

Since that day, three years ago, I haven’t run out of ideas. I wrote a little at first, and then a little more, and now, I write nearly every day. While the process has been part discipline and part mystery, I can tell you that the belief I held before, that we each only have a handful of stories to tell, was a big fat lie.

Creativity begets creativity. The more we write and read, the more we immerse myself in the world of stories, the more stories we find.

It’s actually problematic sometimes; I’ll be in the middle of my day, spending time with people I adore, and instead of fully being in the moment, my mind is recording it. It’s making metaphors, grabbing at colors and smells so it can be recreated later.

I do have dry spells. Days when the words come out sideways if they come out at all. But I don’t get too scared about it anymore. I know that I can take a break for a few days, or fill my head with a really good book or blog, or take a long, winding walk, and the words will come back. And when they return, I’ll be ready, I’ll be hungry for them.

And those few stories I held to, tight and greedily for so long? I get to tell them more than once.

The biggest dramas of our lives, the ones that have to do with loss and love, with home and heartbreak, they don’t just happen to us once. The story of my brother’s death is different to me at 41 than it was at 24, or 33, or 62.

Our stories evolve as we do, which means they stay full of spark for as long as we are here, as long as we need to tell them.

Relephant: 

8 Ways Women can Create Space for Creativity.

Author: Lynn Shattuck

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Patrick Tomasso at Unsplash