I learn a lesson about creative process
Courtesy of a storm-blown fence, two writer friends, stale flat bread, and two wise artists
I wrote an essay this week. Something wasn’t right about it. I puzzled over it, added, deleted, moved bits around, but my words tasted like stale bread.
Stumped, I called on two writer friends for a second opinion. They wrote kind, wise words suggesting what might help it work better.
I put the essay back in my writer’s oven, hoping the words would rise.
Life has felt tough this week. Storm Isha blew my garden fence over. I’m tired. The tasks on my to-do list make me sigh. Fences cost how much? January seems never-ending. (Is it really still January? Are you sure?)
And now my stories taste like my to-do list. Sigh.
The artist Mark Rothko said people who experienced an emotional response while gazing at his art felt an expression of his experience while painting them.
The playwright Jez Butterworth said in this podcast interview that his job as a writer is to get into the creative ‘register’ from which he creates his best work.
I believe my state of mind-body-soul infuses my words when I write. It’s why I meditate before each writing session - to try and rise above my to-do list and access my creative register. It mostly works, but not always: this week, that essay.
I finally got it. My writer’s oven timer dinged.
The words felt stale because I was writing something I thought I ‘should’ write. My heart wasn’t in it.
You’ll be glad to know that essay is now exactly where it belongs.
My voyage with this stale essay feels like a beautiful reminder of what really matters.
We can point ourselves towards what we think we ‘should’ do. What other people say we ought to do. Shiny, gleaming prizes. Trophies to hold aloft.
But often, these are not the things we want to shape our art - or our lives.
Back in 2015, Andy and I made a short film together and it won the British Wildlife Photography Award (film category). We stood on stage at Mall Galleries in London, collected our award, and received a generous prize. It meant a great deal to us at the time.
After he died, this award-winning moment was rarely one I returned to in my thoughts.
Instead, I thought of my 40th birthday when we shared a picnic on the beach at Stoupe Beck then ran hand in hand into the bracing North Sea and swam together. I thought of the times we shared a packed lunch at Skelton Tower during a hike on the North York moors and watched a NYMR steam train curve and whistle through the valley below. I thought of our clifftop viewpoint on the daily dog walk where we stopped to watch the sea and the sky, wrapped our arms around each other, and let nature’s beauty fill our hearts.
It’s the little moments that truly matter. The mind-body-soul register we’re in as we carry out day-to-day activities, the accumulation of moments between the dreaming and the result. Our achievements carry the qualities of the process we went through to create them.
In making art, in writing words, in living life.
I’m grateful to my stale essay for reminding me to take care with my creative goals, to seek my creative register in writing and life, to take a break when I’m feeling tired, and to prize the little moments along the way.
Beautiful- I’m glad the original essay ended in the bin and we got this instead
"I get my best ideas in the shower" - it turns out this very often is the case, we search and scatch around, pounding our brains and paper (or keyboards) and walk away in frustration and even a touch of self-loathing when we can't break through. Then we let go and sometimes, not always, our minds have infused all this information and like a washing machine it churns and washes and gives us something clean and new all while we have stepped away from the problem and let a mysterious part of the brain take care of it. Michael Arndt who wrote 'Little Miss Sunshine' said only this week that writing is 99% thinking....