Tag Archives: creativity

Getting Creative When You Doubt You Can

Inspired by an acquaintance who’d been made so miserable by her utter conviction she didn’t have a creative bone in her, I wanted to encourage some self-care in others, and to share what I wrote. You can hear me read it on Kristin’s podcast here…

Buzz In & Out

How DO prodigiously creative people do it? We all have the same hours in the day. We have the day job, the lovely people in our lives and then maybe stuff like making music and art and enjoying other people’s! Rather than wonder / despair and feel inadequate, the only way is to see myselfContinue reading “Buzz In & Out”

Make Work. Bring something into existence.

It turns out I am writing a novel. The first such attempt in maybe 13 years. I had forgotten – hiding in my scripts and what they demand of me – that this process plays a different instrument inside. I hear a different music. Another thing, quieter and much, much stronger, is happening. And IContinue reading “Make Work. Bring something into existence.”

Writing without, you know, “writing”

I used to catch ideas (which are so like butterflies, it almost seems cruel) by leaving myself answerphone messages on the home landline. The light would flicker at me when I got back in the warm at the end of the day: “hello,” glowed the message from a past me of oo, hours ago; “rememberContinue reading “Writing without, you know, “writing””

Fingery-Pokery – The Artist’s Way

I heard about it. I saw it in a friend’s vast personal library. He said “Here, take it.” It sat on my shelf for a year. I started it. Wow. I’m reading / doing / taking / following The Artist’s Way. It’s a course in a book. I’m fed up of feeling my work isContinue reading “Fingery-Pokery – The Artist’s Way”

Magic Beans & The Myth of Artistic Poverty

Poverty paralyses art. It doesn’t inspire. It murders. For twenty months, while my life was fat with “material” (running away from domestic abuse with a freshly-two year-old), it was thin on cash. As the months went by, the rent went up, the flexible hours vanished and the hope of ever getting a mortgage and stableContinue reading “Magic Beans & The Myth of Artistic Poverty”

Inspiration & Invention

I met a man who refused to read Keith Johnstone‘s amazing book, Impro. It’s a stunning book – my new bible, a discovery I rave about, which half the theatrical world grew up with (I say half; I mean actors more than anyone else.) I can’t recommend it enough, so that’s ’nuff said on that.Continue reading “Inspiration & Invention”