The Creativity Chronicles

Willow Blooms #013 The Beginning- Curiosity

I’m trying out voiceovers. I know that it can sometimes be difficult to sit down and read and I want to make my articles as accessible as possible. I couldn’t read books for a couple of years and loved diving into audiobooks, especially when they were read by the author. Bear in mind that the voiceover was recorded at home on my phone, so there may be some crackles, the sound of the wind, and definitely some stumbling over the words. This is the third I’ve done with a recording, so please let me know if you like experiencing Willow Blooms this way, and if so I’ll keep offering them!

Writing is often a solitary activity, but this week I have been writing with others, both online and in person. It’s been a real pleasure to share spaces with other writers, and witness the magic of human creativity in action. Creativity can take the mind in very different directions, and can require a surrender to the ‘not knowing’ where you’ll all end up. This was especially evident in these writing groups because on both occasions we each wrote with the same starting prompts, and all created vastly different pieces of writing. For example, in one group we started with the prompt of where we keep our passport. My poem brought up the memory of having my passport stolen after carelessly leaving it my car, whilst others landed on ideas about precious storage spaces. Every poem sparked a different idea and image, and bloomed into a conversation with a life of its own. From this, the second prompt was offered by a group member, who read Kit Wright’s poem, The Magic Box.

I have looked the poem up to provide links for you, and I love that Leominster Primary School have shared an accessible version of their poem, which you can read here, or listen to Kit himself reading it here, or there is a brilliant resource by the Linking Network, with a full activity based on the poem that would be great for developing creativity, the imagination, and emotional literacy, and this is available here.

How do our minds go in so many different directions from one starting point? It really is a wonder to me! Although after watching the London Marathon yesterday, I’m suddenly struck by the image of each and every runner taking their own marathon route, heading off in different directions. What chaos would ensue, highlighting potential downsides of creativity where we are trying to all understand each other and find one way of thinking about the world, or behaving in life! No wonder we have so many misunderstandings and our creativity is not always encouraged. Creativity is an anarchic act. We need more of it, but perhaps not when entering organised marathons.

What is creative writing?

When words are used for creative self-expression, pretty much anything goes. The writer can choose to follow traditional forms of writing, or can go entirely off-piste. If the writing is for others to read, the intention is usually to engage, entertain, and spark curiosity, with an authentic voice. If writing is not going to be shared, it might be more experimental, and emotionally messy, raw and personal.

My understanding is that writers can have very different processes. Some start with a clear idea of what they are going to write. They have a sense of the main points, the start, the end and the structure and journey in between, and their writing task is to join it all together. Others, and I count myself in this category, often start with an idea, and follow where it goes. They do not always know the direction and the content of the journey in advance, or at least, not a lot of it, and have to surrender to the creative process, and trust where they are taken. Whichever method used, there then follows a process of stepping back and looking what has been created, perhaps moving parts to make the pieces flow, or making additions. After this comes the fine editing, polishing and refining.

Having heard a lot of advice about writing structure, planning a plot in advance etc, it took me a while to accept that my way of writing was not wrong, just different. I didn’t need to know what was going to come of it, I just needed to sit down and write. I wrote blind, allowing my hands to take me along a creative path that was better if I didn’t interfere. The thinking is welcome later.

Do you do recognise one of these approaches, or is your writing process different? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

The playful not-knowing

In many aspects of my life I tend to like a degree of certainty. I like to know what is expected of me, the likely outcomes of my decisions, and having time to consider choices before making a decision. Yet creative writing is different. I enjoy the not knowing, as my imagination can be entirely free. There are no stupid ideas, and no wrong, rather just different trails that might or might not be fun to follow.

We can have all kinds of fun with letters and words, if we just allow ourselves to play. This is my play with pasta letters on a weekend I was likely avoiding cleaning the house!

I love the ability we have to gather bits of information from our immediate senses, the world around us, and our past experiences and conscious memories. Somehow we join these together with the glue of our imagination, to create something that didn’t exist in that form before.

I used to be a member of a writing space where I could go each week and sit with other writers to work. I loved the quiet focus, and would often look up into the beams of the ceiling and wonder what was collecting there. I imagined the thoughts inside each writer’s head and how they might creep out into the room, and be made visible. I would consider what they might all create in their merging above our heads. What if some of them were silently slipping from one mind to another? Our imaginations connecting and dreamily changing form like molecules in a lab experiment. I often thought of writing a short story about this, wondering about the wars that ensued when one writer unwittingly published their book first, having gleaned all the words of others from that writing space. What chaos might ensue, when all the other writers recognised characters they regarded as their own. How might they all react to their work seemingly being stolen whilst working in the space. But that story hasn’t made it past the idea stage, so I’m leaving it out there for someone else to run with!

Where do our ideas come from?

If they don’t come from the air, where then do our ideas come from? In the example above, it came from a playful reimagining of a real event.

What if?, I asked myself.

And suddenly a story evolves, and something impossible is grounded in reality. This makes me remember some of my first experiences of creative writing in primary school. In the classroom there was a box of laminated pictures, probably A4 in size. Each picture had no words, or descriptions. We were invited to choose whichever card we wanted and to use it as a prompt for our creative writing. I vividly remember one of the cards that I chose- it had a picture of an elephant sitting on a bench. I say vividly remember, but I realise now that I can’t actually remember if there was a child sitting next to the elephant, or another elephant, or an empty space… Whichever it was, the ridiculousness of an elephant sitting on a bench in the local park was such a fun idea to play with! There was no right answer, and I could be as ridiculous as I liked. The playfulness and autonomy offered to me with these creative writing tasks had a big impact on my experience of learning, and my subsequent view of creative writing. I doubt that all children have such positive early experiences, and wonder how this affects their creative confidence.

How do we show up to our creativity in adulthood?

Whilst most towns have a pub, and a place to worship, not all towns will have an art or writing group. Where they do, these can be prohibitively expensive for many people. A great way in for many people is Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, which many of you will already be familiar with. This book has guided many people, with often quoted phrases of ‘morning pages’ and ‘artist dates’.

The artist date is a commitment to have an experience that will spark the imagination or inspiration; a date with you and your creative self. And morning pages, is the act of writing three pages of unfiltered freehand writing, as soon as possible after waking up. The idea being to write without thinking, just stream of consciousness to clear the mind and allow space for creativity. It’s almost like a meditation. Morning pages are not shared with anyone, and do not require any analysis. All that follows is three more pages tomorrow. People have been writing morning pages for decades, and I’m curious whether there have been any studies that explore the impact on creativity or well-being of those who write them, and those who do not. Or the impact of stopping for a while… Let me know if you’ve seen any.

Anecdotally, I’ve found that when I wrote morning pages, I was more creative. I also found it a big commitment to keep going every morning, and my practice fell away. I tried starting up again last year, switching from A4 paper to a slightly smaller A5 page (I don’t think Cameron specifies the size of the pages), which obviously meant the task was quicker and a little easier. Again, I don’t know what impact this might have on my creativity, but surely something is better than nothing!?

How might we measure creativity?

There are many ways of conceptualising and measuring the creative process.

For example, we can look to studies that capture what happens in the brain. From this, we can develop ideas about the cognitive processes at play, as Anna Abraham has done in her book the Neuroscience of Creativity (2018). I find the neuroscience fascinating, but for me, it can be too reductionist. Fortunately I’m not a neurosurgeon, so it is less important for me to know exactly which part of the brain might perform a particular function. This allows me to stay more curious about the ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions.

• How do we develop our creativity?

• How does our creativity impact on our well-being?

• How does well-being impact on our creativity?

• What supports us to be creative?

Julia Cameron views creativity as a spiritual practice, and although her reference to a Christian God may jar with some readers and put them off, her broader message can still resonate. She refers to the spiritual path being a route to a more authentic self, and suggests that by developing a regular writing practice, people access parts of themselves that have not had the opportunity to develop before. This sounds like a kind of depth psychotherapy, and personal development to me.

Julia’s premise is that we all have creative potential, but some people have had fewer creative opportunities, or the opportunities were there, but they became closed off through early experiences. There are lots of ways this might happen-

• Singing our hearts out in the reception class play, and being told to stand at the back, and not sing any more.

• Reading a heart-felt poem to a child we like at school, and having them laugh in our face.

• Proudly taking a painting we’ve created home to a parent or carer, and having them ask what it’s supposed to be, and swiftly putting it in the bin.

I am sure we’ve all experienced something a bit like this, likely unintentionally clipping our creative wings. In all of these situations we might feel disappointed or ashamed. Unless there is some attempt by an adult to encourage us, and reassure us that one person’s opinion should not stop us from doing things that bring us joy, we might never try the creative activity again. The responses we get often create powerful stories about our creativity, impacting on us often without us knowing. What stories do you tell yourself about your creativity? And how does this help or hold you back?

Nurturing a compassionate writing mind

Cameron’s book was first published in 1992, around the same time that Professor Paul Gilbert, Clinical Psychologist, was developing compassion based therapeutic approaches to working with people with depression. Gilbert identified self-compassion as an especially important part of therapy when people experience high levels of shame and self criticism. He developed an approach known as compassionate mind training, or Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT).

Gilbert identifies three directions in which compassion can flow-

• Self to self

• Self to other

• Other to self

We can have different levels of comfort with each of these. For example, many people are compassionate to others, but struggle to be compassionate to themselves. Others can become dependent on receiving compassion from others precisely because they struggle to receive it from themselves. And if we cannot experience compassion from any of these directions, is it likely that we feel safe enough to enter into an unknown creative space?

In brief, CFT supports people to develop greater compassion in all three directions. A greater sense of safety can be felt if we are not always anticipating criticism and shame. It makes sense that people will start to feel more positive about themselves and others when they have more positive interactions with themselves and others.

Indeed, Cameron says that creativity

‘flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self acceptance’ The Artist’s Way, p43

She acknowledges that we ALL have ‘the secret doubt’ which holds us back. She warns that creativity takes us out of the certainty of our lives, and invites us to discover something new, to take a leap and see what happens.

Rather than encouragement, we might first experience the noisy voice of an inner critic. The inner chatter that tells us our writing is not good enough, says it’s boring, and unoriginal, and that other people will laugh or see how stupid we are. So we stop, trying to protect ourselves from this negativity and the imagined criticism of others. This inner critic is clearly trying to keep us safe, to keep us from potential judgement, but unwittingly going about it in a restrictive way.

It is undeniable that to be creative is to be vulnerable.

‘What if it falls flat?’

‘And what if it doesn’t?!!’, our compassionate minds will ask, nudging us on.

Compassionate creativity can be polite, and self-celebratory!

Our deepest fears

We often think that our deepest fears are of failure. Of looking a fool, of collapsing into shame, of our deepest flaws being discovered.

Marianne Williams, (also as long ago as 1992!) says otherwise-

Our Greatest Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, Harper Collins, 1992.

NOTE- I’m mindful that the reference to God may make this hard to connect with. I do not share this quotation with a particular religious lens, but I see it within a broader spiritual one.

Our tendency towards familiarity, certainty, and things that feel safe, can limit us. We’re brilliant at making up stories that conceal the fear. Our fears, based on these stories, often prevent us from stepping into our power, and owning our strengths. The tendency towards self-criticism or fear of shame about aspects of our inner lives will stunt our creative growth, says Cameron. And yet, this week I saw how easily criticism can creep into our creative spaces. The tendency for creativity to be something else to be competitive about, and hanging our worth on. The comments that show judgments of whose writing is ‘the best’. Yet which of us gets to decide that one poem is better than another? There is no single judge in life, we are all just giving our opinion. And why does it matter? I have also observed how easily comments, intended as compliments, can be received as criticism. How something is warped, as if talking different languages and the meaning is lost in translation. We cannot know what wounds and fears people bring to these creative spaces, and whilst we are usually not responsible for them, we can make efforts to create spaces that do not deepen them. I experienced a writing group where everyone’s writing was equally celebrated, and words were met with curiosity and warmth, and another writing group where comparisons of worth were evident, and poet’s words were met with hmms, and ahhs, and silence, whether of disinterest, or confusion, or distaste, or wonder, or fear, I am not sure. Guess which one of these groups I’m more likely to go back to?!

Why is this important?

Many writers comment on how supported they feel here. This suggests a few things-

• This is not always their experience.

• It makes a positive difference to feel supported, no matter how experienced we are.

• I suspect, like my experiences in the two different writing groups this week, we are more likely to show up because of the positive support we receive.

There remain real world limits to our creative bravery, but we’ve perhaps all internalised Cameron’s advice, and created a writing space that has psychological safety. It makes a difference knowing that our writing is valued. Most importantly it helps us to keep showing up for ourselves.

I am interested in creative writing as a way of supporting well-being. As a psychologist I have historically worked with the spoken word in my work, yet in my personal life, art and the written word are the most powerful ways I have to express myself. My words and images reveal parts of me that my conscious mind does not know exist.

I thank you for joining me on this meander. It has condensed some of my ideas about creativity, and opened up many more questions. I am going to keep coming back to creativity, and asking how it might link to well-being, and links with compassion and psychological safety. For now, I will leave you with some questions to ponder along with me. I see the benefits of entering the spaces of uncertainty, and have been experiencing some of these for myself. I wonder what it might be like if we had more psychological safety and cultivated our compassionate minds in other areas of our lives? What are the places that you would most like to cultivate creativity? What might this give you the courage to try?

If you’d spare a few moments to complete the survey attached, and share with any friends, I’d be very grateful. It would really help me develop my ideas about a series of posts about creativity and well-being.

Sending you my best wishes for a great week.