Hello all. Yes I know what your thinking, where has Lorraine been? Well this might sound silly to you but I’m intensely focused on finishing my first book, so much so that whenever I write I feel as though I should be working on my manuscript not on my blog! Here’s the rub, sometimes I am just sitting here stuck in writer’s block hell! Which for me is just a self imposed hellish place. I wish I was one of those people that could just sit down and bang away at the keyboard and get a book out in a month, or two. But alas I am not!
However one thing I do know about the creative process is that if you do hang in through all the blackness, self doubt and self flagellation. Thrust it all aside, barrel through; great things arrive as if from nowhere. A friend and I were on the phone once and I was talking about some paintings I was working on, I believe I referred to my creative process as ‘mudbowling’.
“I’m just rolling around in the mud.” I told my friend David.
“You got to hang in there Lorraine because heaven is on the other side.” He laughed!
I always remember that advice I got from David, especially when I am having a hard time. I also have on a handy shelf just to the right of my writing space a selection of books to cheer me on when the going gets tough and I might pick one up, read a passage and barrel on! Here are a few of my favorites: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland (cover pictured above), Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, On Writing by Stephen King and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
So creatives I leave you with this nugget from Brenda Ueland’s book.
“The creative power and imagination is in everyone and so is the need to express it, i.e. to share it with others. So what happens to it?
It is very tender and sensitive, and is usually drummed out of people early in life by criticism (so called “helpful criticism” is often the worst kind), by teasing, jeering, rules, prissy teachers, critics, and all those unloving people who forget the letter killeth and the spirit give life. Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.”
Read her book, its simply a work of art, so inspiring and healing!
© Lorraine Hughes 2016
