Dealing with a disconnect, accepting some truths about expectations
Returning to a daily practice after a break always take a little more effort than I’d like. Today I noticed the struggle getting here, to my writing, as well as going for a walk and doing some yoga. I think that something has shifted in me over the weekend, seasonally as well as emotionally. I […]
What kind of creative space do we most need to be ourselves?
It feels like we are in a kind of limbo, as we wait to see what will happen with the American election. Although my anxiety from earlier in the week has calmed down and I am no longer doomscrolling and checking the news feeds incessantly, I am still agitated and a bit preoccupied. I wanted […]
Remembering the 5th of November years past
I haven’t felt so great today, so I’ve not written a new blog post. Instead I spent a bit of time re-reading old notes, searching for snippets of ideas in things discarded. I’m not sure I found what I was looking for, but this entry from 5th November 2018 reminds me how circular time is, […]
Navigating the early days of a new daily practice
I set myself the challenge to write a blog post each day this month because I know how useful I find it to have daily practices. Anchor points in my day that offer me moments of stillness or movement, of contemplation or escape. These routines, once I can get them established, help me to navigate […]
When anxiety appears, what do we forget about ourselves?
Once I’d decided that I was going to challenge myself to write each day, the scale of it made me pause. Am I up to writing a whole blog post every single day, when I’ve barely had the mental bandwidth or energy to write once a month for the past 10 months? Wouldn’t I be […]
Starting a new thing – noticing the emotions that show up
Where to start? Already this morning thoughts of what I might write have been pulling my focus away from my quiet breakfast in the SAD lamp glare, from the energising wind on my daily walk, from my breath on my mat. In the shower ideas started to come together and I could feel the tangle […]
A new creative challenge for November – restarting a routine
November is NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. Since it began in 1999, aspiring novel writers from all over the world set themselves the challenge of writing 50 000 words in the month towards a novel. That’s approximately 1667 words a day. Last year almost half a million people gave it a go. I was […]
Working at your Creative Habit
November is NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – and people all over the world will be making the commitment to themselves, and their writing, to sit down each day and write. The aim is to write around 1600 words a day, every day, and to end the month with the first draft of a novel. Ta da!
Well, it will probably be a pretty ropey first draft, but that’s not the point. The point is to do it. To get started, to show up, to build a habit and to launch yourself towards something you’ve always dreamed of doing. It’s a cliché that so many people want to write books, but how many people actually do? There’s even a term for it – the ‘someday’ writer – as in ‘someday I’ll write that book…’. I think the person who started NaNoWriMo realised something crucial about creativity: that it’s something we need to work on every day if we’re ever going to achieve the things we want for it.
This November I’ve decided to play along with NaNoWriMo, but as I am contrary I’m not aiming for the first draft of a novel, I’m using the structure to get myself into the writing habit. For too long I’ve been saying I’m going to give some proper attention to my creative practice, but it always ends up being sporadic and a bit fair weather. Not anymore. Next month I am going to show up and write whether I feel in the mood or not, whether I am inspired or not. Because, lately I have begun to realise that it is the act of showing up that is the most important element of our creative practices. It’s not the finished work, it’s not the moment of inspiration, it is doing the work you need to do come rain or shine.
Happy birthday little blog!
This week my blog turns 1 year old. For the last 52 weeks I have posted something that I have written and sent it out into the strange, empty-feeling void of the internet where, I hope, some people have found it. I have managed to do this every single week (except for the time I had unbelievably bad food poisoning and so gave myself a pass) and that in itself is a massive achievement for me.
I am someone who is motivated most easily by external things – mostly doing things for others and feeling responsible to them. I am challenged when it comes to doing things where I have to be internally motivated, things for myself. This blog, although it has some outward facing elements, at its heart is a selfish endeavour. I write for me. I write because I need to – it helps me sort out things in my head – and because I want to. I want to get better at it, I want to write things that connect with people, I want to share things I find out. In that respect, because it is mainly for me, I’m not sure I expected that I would stick with it. I honestly thought it would end up like many of those other failed one-a-day-sketches/photographs/journal writing type exercises that I have started over the years. That I am still here, a year later, making the time to write each week and get it out, is something I feel rather proud of.
Notes on my creative practice: when is making not making?
Yesterday I made two things. One may stretch the definition of ‘to make’ and the other possibly falls under ‘re-purposing’ more than making. As I made them I wondered about this, whether the verb to make has enough elasticity to hold all the things we makers do as part of our practice. Even if, maybe especially if, we do not create things out of raw materials. You know where you stand with a maker who takes the raw material and creates something that didn’t exist before. It is magic, it is astonishing. It takes vision and skill combined. It takes patience and commitment. But what of the people who take something as it already is and adds to it, incorporates it into something bigger, adapts it or alters it? What then? It seems to me that there are still all the elements as before – the vision, the skill, the patience and commitment – however we might interpret the work as slightly different.