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Every single evening for the past week, as my husband and I walk our dogs, we’ve encountered one of our neighbors sitting outside in her front yard hunched over her computer working on her complex system of Halloween decor.
Ever since we moved in I’ve enjoyed Cheryl’s holiday decorations. She always goes all out, with multiple inflatables, lights, and other decor. A couple of years ago she and her family installed a programmable light system permanently on their house, and every year we enjoy seeing what display she’ll put up.
Her decorations grow increasingly extensive, and increasingly impressive. A projector appeared, mounted on the front of the house in a bare stretch of wall between two windows, where she plays music videos to accompany the soundtrack spectators can hear by tuning into a particular FM radio station, which also synchronizes with the light display. Last year they hired a hydraulic scissor lift to install holiday decorations high on the eaves.
This year I was admiring her newest Halloween edition: five busts on plinths (one of them decapitated), which was what she was outside working on every night. The plan was to sync a second projector with all of the above so that the creepy heads appeared to speak and sing along with the music. But Cheryl couldn’t seem to get it to work the way she intended.
“I’m sure you already thought of this,” I said unhelpfully, “but is there some kind of helpline for the system that can help you troubleshoot why it’s not working?”
Which was when Cheryl told me that this wasn’t some company’s massive collection of holiday decor she kept adding to every year. She was building and creating every single element of it. By hand.
Every piece of the other decor was also painstakingly hand-created from scratch, if not by her then by a network of fellow hobbyists she told me all share tips and templates in chat groups. The Halloween-themed playscape was one she had deconstructed and then rebuilt herself, 3D-printing the tombstones for the doorways and adding the lights. The witch’s hats were her innovation too, popped on top of conical frames and lit up from within, all to her specifications.
The scary tree, the spiderwebs and spiders, the bats—all cut out by fellow enthusiasts, and then custom-mounted by Cheryl and hand-lit and synced up to the rest of the choreography. (“How do you sync it up to a radio station?” I asked naively. “Oh, you just get an FM transmitter and a splitter,” Cheryl replied as if it were nothing…like, you know, as one does.)
Every holiday it takes her and her family endless hours to fully install and set up. Her husband and son help out (her teenage daughter claims she’s mortified by the display), and this year many of the evenings we came upon her laboring in her yard over the bulky programming, her dad—an engineer—was huddled over the computer with her to try to help her figure it out.
I listened in awe as Cheryl told me all of this. I can’t get over the time and effort and heart she puts into creating her displays, over and over and over, each of them up for only a few weeks every year.
They delight most of the neighbors. The unveiling of her current masterpiece at every holiday is always a neighborhood event, kids and plenty of adults showing up as soon as dark falls, as if it’s our own community Rockefeller tree. Cars and golf carts and people stream in from other neighborhoods throughout the holiday to check it out.
When it’s all over she does everything in reverse, taking it all down and stashing it before gearing up for the next holiday’s creation.
I can’t imagine putting that kind of work into something so ephemeral. And then I realized how much everything Cheryl is doing reflects the day-to-day realities of a writer’s life.
She loves how much delight it gives the neighbors too. It’s not like she’s reaching a global audience with it, or even drawing the attention of the local news. It’s just her community, whose holidays are made a little bit brighter thanks to her efforts.
She’s even enjoyed connecting with the robust community of hobbyists who are as invested in it as she is, sharing tips and ideas and suggestions and templates.
Any of this sounding familiar, authors?
Why else do most of us go into writing as a career except for the sheer love of it? Most of us revere story and words and language and the imagination and creativity, and we get to engage in all of that in shaping our own personal creations, just as Cheryl does. Most of us are constantly seeking to expand our knowledge, increase our skills, stretch our abilities and the limits of our imaginations–not just to improve our creative product, but for the sheer pleasure of doing it.
We may go into this field with starry-eyed dreams of international bestseller status, our books and name known to millions (and we may even dream of making millions from it), made into movies, becoming cultural icons and classics.
Eventually those of us who stay in this business, who create and enjoy lifelong creative careers, are those who realize the foundational joy of creating and sharing our work, connecting with people over what we have created—whether that’s millions or thousands or hundreds or even one. My most meaningful moments as an artist, both as an actor and a writer, have been those when I could see that a single individual had been profoundly affected or influenced by what I’d created. That it had brought a fellow human being a moment of illumination.
And just as Cheryl has found the rewards of her community of enthusiasts, the writing community that the most contented of us create around us can be among the great rewards of this career.
Cheryl saw us hovering at the back of the crowd across the street—our giant dogs are hard to miss—and came over to say hello. She’d come home the day before with a migraine, she said, likely from so little sleep and so much screen time over the past week.
“It must have been so frustrating that it took so long to get everything figured out,” I said to her. “But congratulations on finally doing it.”
“It was worth it,” she said, her face glowing as she watched the neighbors enjoy her handiwork. “And it wasn’t so bad,” she added. “It was kind of fun figuring it all out.”
Read more: “What Is Your Wendy?”
This hit a chord for me too. However hard whatever I’m working on may be, however obdurate and frustrating, I’ve never not been proud and pleased at finally finding the way through—grateful for the challenges that stretched me beyond what I thought I was capable of, and even relishing them, at least after the fact.
Partly I think this is because we tend to value more highly what doesn’t come to us as easily. But I also deeply believe that it’s because the process of this pursuit we all put so much of ourselves into is the truly rewarding and fulfilling part of it. It’s the creative part of a creative career. It’s the journey of those of us who are called to it that’s where the real rewards of our creativity lie.
Every single evening for the past week, as my husband and I walk our dogs, we’ve encountered one of our neighbors sitting outside in her front yard hunched over her computer working on her complex system of Halloween decor.
Ever since we moved in I’ve enjoyed Cheryl’s holiday decorations. She always goes all out, with multiple inflatables, lights, and other decor. A couple of years ago she and her family installed a programmable light system permanently on their house, and every year we enjoy seeing what display she’ll put up.
Her decorations grow increasingly extensive, and increasingly impressive. A projector appeared, mounted on the front of the house in a bare stretch of wall between two windows, where she plays music videos to accompany the soundtrack spectators can hear by tuning into a particular FM radio station, which also synchronizes with the light display. Last year they hired a hydraulic scissor lift to install holiday decorations high on the eaves.
This year I was admiring her newest Halloween edition: five busts on plinths (one of them decapitated), which was what she was outside working on every night. The plan was to sync a second projector with all of the above so that the creepy heads appeared to speak and sing along with the music. But Cheryl couldn’t seem to get it to work the way she intended.
“I’m sure you already thought of this,” I said unhelpfully, “but is there some kind of helpline for the system that can help you troubleshoot why it’s not working?”
Which was when Cheryl told me that this wasn’t some company’s massive collection of holiday decor she kept adding to every year. She was building and creating every single element of it. By hand.
The
I want you to understand the scope of her efforts. Those heads I had been admiring? She didn’t purchase those ready-made. She printed them piecemeal on a 3D printer and painstakingly fitted them together, 16 pieces per head, not counting the plinth. And there was no ready-made program she could plug and play to make the creepy little bastards talk. She had to figure all that out herself too.
Every piece of the other decor was also painstakingly hand-created from scratch, if not by her then by a network of fellow hobbyists she told me all share tips and templates in chat groups. The Halloween-themed playscape was one she had deconstructed and then rebuilt herself, 3D-printing the tombstones for the doorways and adding the lights. The witch’s hats were her innovation too, popped on top of conical frames and lit up from within, all to her specifications.
The scary tree, the spiderwebs and spiders, the bats—all cut out by fellow enthusiasts, and then custom-mounted by Cheryl and hand-lit and synced up to the rest of the choreography. (“How do you sync it up to a radio station?” I asked naively. “Oh, you just get an FM transmitter and a splitter,” Cheryl replied as if it were nothing…like, you know, as one does.)
Every holiday it takes her and her family endless hours to fully install and set up. Her husband and son help out (her teenage daughter claims she’s mortified by the display), and this year many of the evenings we came upon her laboring in her yard over the bulky programming, her dad—an engineer—was huddled over the computer with her to try to help her figure it out.
I listened in awe as Cheryl told me all of this. I can’t get over the time and effort and heart she puts into creating her displays, over and over and over, each of them up for only a few weeks every year.
They delight most of the neighbors. The unveiling of her current masterpiece at every holiday is always a neighborhood event, kids and plenty of adults showing up as soon as dark falls, as if it’s our own community Rockefeller tree. Cars and golf carts and people stream in from other neighborhoods throughout the holiday to check it out.
When it’s all over she does everything in reverse, taking it all down and stashing it before gearing up for the next holiday’s creation.
I can’t imagine putting that kind of work into something so ephemeral. And then I realized how much everything Cheryl is doing reflects the day-to-day realities of a writer’s life.
What Drives Creative Effort?
I asked Cheryl why she went to such Herculean efforts with her decor, and her answer is just about what you would expect: She just loves it. It gives her pleasure: not just the result, but the doing of it, the constant effort to innovate and improve and learn and expand.She loves how much delight it gives the neighbors too. It’s not like she’s reaching a global audience with it, or even drawing the attention of the local news. It’s just her community, whose holidays are made a little bit brighter thanks to her efforts.
She’s even enjoyed connecting with the robust community of hobbyists who are as invested in it as she is, sharing tips and ideas and suggestions and templates.
Any of this sounding familiar, authors?
Why else do most of us go into writing as a career except for the sheer love of it? Most of us revere story and words and language and the imagination and creativity, and we get to engage in all of that in shaping our own personal creations, just as Cheryl does. Most of us are constantly seeking to expand our knowledge, increase our skills, stretch our abilities and the limits of our imaginations–not just to improve our creative product, but for the sheer pleasure of doing it.
We may go into this field with starry-eyed dreams of international bestseller status, our books and name known to millions (and we may even dream of making millions from it), made into movies, becoming cultural icons and classics.
But it doesn’t take long at this business to realize the odds against reaching the highest heights of our field—and yet we persevere. Even when it’s hard…even when we just can’t figure the damn thing out!…we keep at it.
Eventually those of us who stay in this business, who create and enjoy lifelong creative careers, are those who realize the foundational joy of creating and sharing our work, connecting with people over what we have created—whether that’s millions or thousands or hundreds or even one. My most meaningful moments as an artist, both as an actor and a writer, have been those when I could see that a single individual had been profoundly affected or influenced by what I’d created. That it had brought a fellow human being a moment of illumination.
And just as Cheryl has found the rewards of her community of enthusiasts, the writing community that the most contented of us create around us can be among the great rewards of this career.
Creativity’s Inherent Rewards
Cheryl eventually got the program working the way she wanted it to, and that night she announced the show’s unveiling on our neighborhood Facebook page. At dusk we headed that way, joining other neighbors streaming toward her house. When it was over neighbors burst into applause, and then hung out chatting.
Cheryl saw us hovering at the back of the crowd across the street—our giant dogs are hard to miss—and came over to say hello. She’d come home the day before with a migraine, she said, likely from so little sleep and so much screen time over the past week.
“It must have been so frustrating that it took so long to get everything figured out,” I said to her. “But congratulations on finally doing it.”
“It was worth it,” she said, her face glowing as she watched the neighbors enjoy her handiwork. “And it wasn’t so bad,” she added. “It was kind of fun figuring it all out.”
Read more: “What Is Your Wendy?”
This hit a chord for me too. However hard whatever I’m working on may be, however obdurate and frustrating, I’ve never not been proud and pleased at finally finding the way through—grateful for the challenges that stretched me beyond what I thought I was capable of, and even relishing them, at least after the fact.
Partly I think this is because we tend to value more highly what doesn’t come to us as easily. But I also deeply believe that it’s because the process of this pursuit we all put so much of ourselves into is the truly rewarding and fulfilling part of it. It’s the creative part of a creative career. It’s the journey of those of us who are called to it that’s where the real rewards of our creativity lie.
