The 120-Minute Experiment in Creative Time
Week 2 of The Journal of Creative Joy Practices
🌷 THE JOURNAL OF CREATIVE JOY PRACTICES 🌷
Is a series documenting my adventures with the Creative Joy Experience Guide. This is a guide I created to help your creative energy emerge this spring while supporting your body’s need to complete the stress response cycle and connect more deeply to the seasonal elements of earth and water.
Week 2: The Journal of Creative Joy Practices
Creative Joy Practice: Coworking for 120 minutes inside The Reading Room
Stress Cycle (Energy) Support: Connect in time with others
Connect In Time With Others
Positive social interaction with others can help your body know the world is a safe place to live in.
Source: Burnout: The Workbook by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
My Experiment in Showing Up
In November 2025, I celebrated my forty-first birthday, and five days later I launched an experiment known as The Reading Room: A weekly, focused coworking group for mindful connection and creativity to commit to doing something you want to get done in your creative practice or anything that supports your creative practice.
Coworking, also known as parallel play or body doubling, is not just for kids, it’s a powerful antidote to burnout because it acts as a tool for anchoring in the present moment. Through the mindful presence of others, we can take meaningful steps forward on a task or project that we’d otherwise procrastinate on or avoid altogether.
Earlier that fall, I’d joined my first coworking group, an online space hosted by an artist I admire. I thought about joining for a while before I actually committed because I wasn’t convinced it was a practice that would work for me. When an offer came for a free week to try out the group, I went. And what I found was a group of writers and artists, many self-identifying as neurodivergent, committed to gathering weekly in real time to move the needle forward on their creative lives.
For me, some days that needle barely moved, other days it jumped, but on most days it moved steadily along. Over the next several weeks, this started to feel like real progress to someone who always felt like her creative life was nothing but a series of starts and stops, with most being stops. The supportive energy of the group allowed me to show up for myself because it held together what I’d been unable to hold alone: the time, energy, and space for creative work.
Unexpectedly, only two months after I joined that online coworking group, the facilitator ended it due to burnout and business pivots. They had held the container for too long and couldn’t hold it anymore.
I’d been thinking about starting my own coworking group for creatives but wasn’t sure who would show up, or more honestly, if anyone would. But I believed in the power of this sort of gathering and also in my ability to hold the container (with intentional breaks), adding signatures I feel are important to nurturing our creative bodies and minds, such as regular stretching and breathing, in-person connection, inspiring books/card decks, and a magical location.
As an experiment, I created The Reading Room with the option to join in person at Story Parlor or virtually from anywhere. Each session begins with a community check in followed by a few minutes of guided breathing and stretching before entering the flow of our work. After 100 minutes in the water of our creative flow we complete our session with a community check out. There is always a card deck to pull inspiration from, and sensory tools to help us focus and find our flow.
Hi, Faye.
What a beautiful morning. I had such a great session at The Reading Room with you yesterday, Thanks! 😊
—Text received from a member of The Reading Room
That experiment began five months ago. And in that time, I watched members of the group make significant progress on their projects, form and deepen friendships, begin to release the guilt and shame that comes from all the starting and stopping of creative projects — and like I’ve been slowly practicing since joining my first coworking group — trust again in their ability to show up for themselves.
At the end of April, the experiment ends but the experience continues.
Week 1 of The Journal of Creative Joy Practices explored my experience floating in a sensory deprivation tank at Still Point Wellness in Asheville, North Carolina, to support my creative body’s need for restorative rest.
The Reading Room’s Next Chapter
The Reading Room container closes on April 30, 2026, not due to burnout or business pivots, but because it was always meant to be an experiment and it was always meant to have an end date. I learned a lot from facilitating this space, and I am happy to share that it will return again later this year.
What Stays:
same location (our magical Story Parlor home!)
community check in and check out
guided grounding movement and breath to support finding our way back to center (now led by me as a certified yoga teacher!)
weekly card pulls from my various creativity and well-being decks
What’s Released:
the name (expect a rebrand!)
What’s New:
we’ll meet for a series of weeks, rather than months, to move with the energy of each season and take intentional breaks in between
they’ll be more ways to cultivate creative relationships beyond our weekly sessions
and some other exciting opportunities that I’m still mapping out
Until then, we have one more week to gather, and I invite you all to breathe, connect, and cowork together (in person or online).
Register for the final session of The Reading Room on Thursday, April 30 from 11am to 1pm.
As a subscriber of Keeping Creative Time, receive 30% off with code APRIL30
If you are local, you are welcome to join us at Taco Billy for lunch after the final session of The Reading Room. I’d love to see you there.
✨ Come Find Your Creative Flow with Me 🫶
Where you’ll find me in creative community this spring.
📖 Thursday, April 30 | The Reading Room: Focused, Hybrid Coworking for Creativity + Connection—last chance to join us this season
11am-1pm | Story Parlor (+ Virtual), Asheville, NC
🍳 Saturday, May 2 | Creatives Over Easy: A Monthly Soul Reset for More Community, Connection, and Creativity—special edition as part of Parlor Fest
9:30-10:30am | Story Parlor, Asheville, NC.
🌷 Creative Joy Experience Guide for Spring 🌷
Nourish your creative joy through real self-care practiced in community. It’s Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way meets the Nakoski sisters’ Burnout in an actionable, seasonal guide. Help your creative energy emerge this spring while supporting your body’s need to complete the stress response cycle.
How It Works: Download this free, bingo-style experience guide, choose one activity from each category to complete, and then take yourself on an artist date to celebrate.
Download the guide
Play at your own pace
Complete your guide by June 20, and you’ll be entered to win this season’s book giveaway: The Practice of Attention by Cody Cook-Parrott.
Visit jfayedavanza.com for more details.
Until Next Time
Keeping Creative Time
It’s never too late to be the creative person you want to be. 💖
Before you go, enjoy a song from the playlist I call . . . Odes to Time.
Esperanza Spaulding —“Ponta De Areia”—Esperanza, 2008.
Keeping Creative Time is a weekly-ish journey with Faye, a writer in conversation with what it means to live a more joyful and easeful whole creative life — one breath, step, and creative question at a time — with stories and tools from her creative community in the heart of Asheville, North Carolina.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for listening!
J. Faye D’Avanza, MSLIS
Creative Empowerment Coach & Facilitator
Founder & Librarian, Library of Care
jfayedavanza.com
Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a book purchase from one of the book links I’ve shared. ☺️❤️📚
As always, an enchanting read with thoughtful visuals - I am excited for the revamp on the Reading Room - to match short intervals of creative connection with seasonal rhythms and energy is a stupendous idea!!!
It's innovative, thoughtful, and, I think, in great collaboration with the current needs of our community!
I also appreciate the breaks in between, Faye - I think it is the one component most creatives miss out on, and then they find themselves in a burn-out state of existence, not knowing why and how it happened! Well, hell, I think a lot of us know now - without the moments for pause, rest, reflection and self care, there can be no sustaining of the creative spark!
So, Thx much, Faye, for building your offerings with care, consideration and great insight into the creative, joyous, mischievous journey we are all on!! Always your bud in bloom! - Myn