You know that line from Sweet Home Alabama about not being able to ride two horses with one ass? Well, that hits different when you're staring at a half-finished painting on Wednesday morning while your editor's email about manuscript deadlines burns a hole in your inbox.
I've been living this dual creative life for longer than I care to admit, and some days I feel like I'm doing a pretty decent job of it. Other days? Other days I feel like I'm failing spectacularly at both, like some cosmic joke where the universe decided to give me two passions and half the time needed to pursue them properly.
If you're reading this and nodding along, chances are you know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe you're a musician who also writes poetry. Maybe you're a photographer with a novel burning in your chest. Maybe you're like me, someone who needs both the visceral satisfaction of paint on canvas and the magic of words on a page to feel fully alive.
The Pull of Two Worlds
Here's what nobody tells you about having two creative loves. They don't always play nicely together. Writing demands different muscles than painting. Different patterns. Different spaces in your brain and your heart. Some days I wake up and my hands are itching for a brush, desperate to work out some emotion in color and texture. Other days, it's all about the words. Conversations with characters in my head have been chatting away all night while I tried to sleep and now they're practically vibrating in my chest, demanding to be set free on paper.
Sounds dramatic, but it’s sooooo true!
The problem is, the world doesn't always care about your creative flow. Deadlines don't adjust because you're in a painting phase. Gallery shows don't reschedule because you're deep in a manuscript that's finally clicking into place. And that feeling of being perpetually behind? It's enough to make you want to quit everything and take up something simple, like accounting.
But here's the thing I've learned. We don't quit because we can't. This isn't about career management or time optimization. This is about survival. About embracing the full spectrum of who we are as creators.
The Myth of Balance
Let's get something straight right off the bat. I believe balance is a myth. There. I said it. At least, the kind of perfect, social media-worthy balance where everything gets equal time and attention and you're somehow crushing it in all areas simultaneously.
Nah. That's not real life. That's not how creativity works.
Real life is messier. It's spending three weeks completely absorbed in a painting series, barely writing anything, then suddenly having a story idea that won't let you sleep until you've written fifty pages. It's missing social events because you're on deadline, then feeling guilty about not being present for the people you love. It's the constant internal negotiation between what needs to be done and what wants to be created.
I used to beat myself up about this. I'd look at other writers who seemed so focused, so dedicated to their craft, and wonder if I was somehow less serious because I also needed to paint. I'd see artists who lived and breathed only their visual work and question whether I was diluting my artistic vision by splitting my attention.
What I've realized over the years is that this isn't a bug in my creative system. It's a feature. Having two creative outlets doesn't make me half of each. It makes me more of both.
The Unexpected Gifts
When I'm stuck on a scene in a novel, sometimes the answer comes while I'm mixing paint. There's something about the physical, meditative act of working with color that unlocks different parts of my brain. The feel of a brush on canvas can untangle plot knots that hours of staring at a screen couldn't solve.
Similarly, the discipline of writing. The daily practice of sitting down and putting words on paper even when they don't want to come has taught me things about commitment and persistence that serve me well in the studio. When a painting isn't working, when I want to scrape the whole thing and start over, I remember all those mornings I didn't want to write but showed up anyway. I remember that sometimes the magic happens in the showing up, not in the feeling inspired.
The two practices feed each other in ways I'm still discovering. The storytelling skills I've developed as a novelist make me better at composing a painting, at understanding how the eye moves through a piece and what emotional journey I want to create. The color theory and visual composition skills I've learned as an artist make me more conscious of the sensory details in my writing, more aware of how to paint a scene with words.
The Practical Magic of Organization
But let's talk about the nuts and bolts, because inspiration without organization is just a really pretty mess. Over the years, I've developed some systems that help me honor both sides of my creative nature without completely losing my mind.
First, I've learned to work with my natural patterns instead of against them. I'm a morning writer. Always have been. So I protect those early hours fiercely. Coffee, silence, words. No negotiations, no exceptions. But afternoons? That's when my visual brain comes alive. The light is different, my energy is different, and that's when I head to the studio.
I keep separate calendars for each practice, but I review them together. Writing deadlines get priority because, frankly, editors are less forgiving than galleries. But I block out studio time just as seriously as I block out writing time. If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't exist.
I've also learned to batch similar activities. All my business stuff—emails, marketing, administrative tasks—gets dealt with in specific time blocks. That way I'm not constantly switching between creative and business brain, which is exhausting and counterproductive.
I'm one of those people who genuinely loves a ten-page to-do list. Planning brings me joy, and there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of checking items off that list. Working in two creative worlds, writing and painting, can feel overwhelming at times, especially with writing since it encompasses so many forms: novels, short stories, essays, blog posts, and more.
To manage this complexity, I schedule two week-long planning retreats each year with a group of local friends. One in summer and another in winter. These sessions help me map out my writing schedule and priorities for the months ahead.
My workspace reflects my love of organization. I have an office with an adjacent studio, and everything has its designated station: bookshelves, computer setup, canvas storage, paint supplies. I do a weekly housekeeping session to keep everything flowing smoothly, and the same principle applies to my digital files. Everything has a proper place and a logical file name.
The backbone of my system is an Excel spreadsheet where I track all my progress: word counts, painting completion stages, due dates, submission dates, rejections, and acceptances. I organize this data by year, month, week, and day, which helps tremendously in staying on top of both creative practices.
The Art of Pivoting
Flexibility has become my secret weapon. Some weeks, a painting will demand all my attention. Instead of fighting it, I've learned to adjust. I might write shorter pieces during intense painting periods, or focus on editing and revisions rather than first drafts. The key is staying engaged with both practices, even if one is temporarily taking center stage.
I keep a notebook specifically for capturing ideas that come while I'm working in the other medium. Can't tell you how many times I've been mixing colors and suddenly had the perfect dialogue for a scene I've been struggling with. Those moments are gold, but they're also fleeting. Writing them down immediately means I don't lose them in the transition between worlds.
The Pressure Cooker Problem
The biggest threat to a dual creative life isn't time management or organization. It's pressure. The pressure to produce, to be consistently brilliant in both areas, to justify your choices to people who think you should just pick a lane and stay in it.
Yuk! I’d die.
But for me, pressure kills creativity faster than anything else I know. When I start feeling like I have to prove something, like every piece has to be perfect because I don't have time to waste on experiments or failures, that's when both my writing and my art suffer.
I've learned to protect my creative space fiercely. Not just the physical space, but the mental and emotional space where ideas can breathe and grow. That means saying no to opportunities that don't serve both sides of my creativity. It means being selective about whose opinions I value. It means remembering that this isn't a race. It's a life and the experience of that life is YOUR choice.
The Long View
Some days I still feel like I'm trying to ride two horses, and honestly, some days I fall off both of them and lay there on the ground for a while, looking up at the bright blue sky while asking myself, “Am I crazy?”. But most days, I feel incredibly grateful for this complicated, messy, beautiful creative life I've built.
When I look at my bookshelf filled with novels I've written and my walls covered with paintings I've created, I don't see evidence of divided attention or compromised focus. I see a full wonderful life. I see someone who refused to choose between two loves and found a way to honor both.
If you're struggling with your own version of this dance, please know that you're not alone. You're not less of a writer because you also paint, or less of an artist because you also write. You're not confused or unfocused or trying to have it all. You're nurturing the full spectrum of your creative gifts, and that's not only okay. It's necessary.
The world needs creators who refuse to be put in boxes. Who bring the insights from one medium to another. Who show up consistently, not perfectly, and trust that the work itself will find its way.
So keep dancing between your worlds. Keep feeding both sides of your creative soul. The horses might buck sometimes, but the ride? The ride is absolutely worth it.