Recently, I read ‘The House that Joy Built’ by Holly Ringland. There was a lot of good information in there, my favourite was her saying to ‘create what you love’, but a lot didn’t ring true for me.
I don’t suppress creativity because of fear. I write and share, especially in writing groups. I pop stories up on my blog from time to time. I have hundreds of stories, poems, and snippets that I’ve created just for fun. It’s not fear that’s holding me back, it’s something else, something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Over the Christmas break, I sat down and wrote a novella (it’s now live on Amazon as an ebook), and it felt wonderful. I came up with an idea, wrote it, shared it with some friends, rewrote it a couple of times, then hit publish. It wasn’t fear that held me back, though there was an element of imposter syndrome thinking no one would like my story, my friends told me to just do it and publish. After it was live, it hit me. I had the time to simply create, I wasn’t prioritising my job, caring for children, or anything else. I was able to be there and simply write.
It got me thinking over my life.
When I was a teenager, I loved writing stories, however I was told by the career advisors that I needed to do something else as creative writing wasn’t a career path. So I started studying journalism. Creativity fell by the wayside, where it stayed until 2011…
In 2011, I closed my business and was told to get a job by the government as I was a single parent. I started writing stories again. In 2012, I joined some writing challenges and would create, but it was in my spare time. It was around my ‘real’ job, around kids, around life. It was doable until my kids got sick and creativity was pushed aside again with stories being written in writers’ groups during lockdown in 2020 and 2021, but not much was finished.
There have been so many times in my life when I’ve been told that my creativity is optional, that I need to grow up, provide for my family, care for my children, put everyone else first. I have squashed down this need for creativity as a priority. I will write something, then stop as something else has to take priority.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had been supported in my creativity. If my careers counsellor had shown me a path where creativity is the focus, if I wasn’t constantly pushed to ‘have a job’ in order to pay the bills, if I had been able to have the time and headspace to follow an idea from beginning to end… but these are fleeting thoughts. I’m now looking to the future, to find ways that I creativity can take a more prominent place in my life, so that I can create what I love.
Since Christmas, I have written and published a novella, written the first draft for a second one and played around with some other stories.
This year, one of the things I aim to do is have creativity front and centre and create what I love. Watch this space.
