On making art

And br(e)aking, too

Friends, we have found ourselves half way through the third month.

Winter is waning, like a white moon.

Spring is waxing, on her way towards us, full of yellow, and of yearning.

I’ve had a funny few weeks.

I’m confident I’m not alone in that.

There has been so much grief, so many ways in which we are being called to bear witness; to stand with; to give our all.

I am not entirely sure I’ve been showing up to the world best I can, and admitting this feels vital. I’ve not been feeling grounded at all for a wee while now, chasing my own tail, well aware I’m running on empty. I’ve been frazzled, so much so that I struggle to read messages let alone reply to them. And the thing is the messages are so beautiful and tender and the sender is so full of love and this same bone-tiredness , and so to send an empty, perfunctory one in response just feels so hollow, and so I don’t, and a week passes, and I’m still tired.

‘I want particularly to talk to those who recognise all their failures and feel inadequate and defeated, to those who feel insufficient…I would like somehow to explain that these feelings are the natural state of mind of the artist, that a sense of disappointment and defeat is the essential state of mind for creative work.’

[o! Agnes Martin!]

What I realised this week is that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, low, fearful and confused about my work and my place within the wider community of our creative ecologies this last while.

The other morning—when I had my first work day with absolutely no zoom calls since the start of January— I had planned to take a whole morning to write, wifi off, but instead I actually ended up tidying my attic room. Sorting, dumping, boxing, shedding. I cleared my desk and put a fresh candle in my holder.

I swapped over the shocking neon ink cartridge I’d been writing in and struggling to read for two days to cocoa brown. I didn’t write a single word. Not even one. It felt soothing and grounding in ways I can’t quite describe…

I’ve been thinking with ideas of failure a huge amount. My run of rejections that started over a year ago has continued into the Spring. I had fooled myself into thinking I’d loosen myself from it when we started to shed winter’s layers. I was wrong, and that is more than ok.

I’ve kept applying for the things I can apply for. I have no say in what I get listed for book wise so that will happen if it happens. But really it has felt like a big deal, making peace with so much rejection creatively. I speak lots about how fertile a place failure is, but right now I haven’t head the time to allow myself to sink into that deep dark soil. I’ve had to keep getting back up again straight away, not able to fully think about what the parts of me that need support to grow, really need.

And we found out very out of nowhere that the beautiful woodland farm kindergarten our wee one attends a few mornings a week is closing in a few weeks. I’ve taken on work, booked sessions and more; all based on these mornings he is happily away playing with pals. Now I’m left trying to do the six months of full time I had hoped to do —in the less than part time hours he was due to be away some mornings—at night once he goes to bed. Some of the other parents and I are going to set up wee swaps, but it will never be enough to do the work, and at first I felt completely ok about it all, which actually is indicative of how used to things like this I’ve had to become. I go into survival mode and never actually stop or stand still for long enough to process. I have, for far too long, had to push my work right out, beyond the edges really. I’ve had to prioritise work that pays over the stuff my heart is drawn to. I’ve had so little time and energy that I’ve barely managed my daily journaling let alone actual writing.

For my first two books, I wrote the proposal in less than a month. For book three, it took over a year, and might not even be ready if I’m honest.

Granted, it is a very different book but the reality is my life and the world are just changed so drastically; altered in ways I can’t quite verbalise, and this has shaken me and the book both. And actually, that has been huge for me. Colossal as well as completely small and almost untraceable, too.

We are witnessing genocide all day every day being live streamed and reaching into every single part of our lives, whether we feel/ accept that or not. I am a writer of lived experience, and I’m just not able to write around the edges of something like this. I am not going to go into detail but I can already see the impact my voice on Palestine has had on the paths my creativity both will and will no longer take in this world. And that feels heavy in some small quiet moments but mostly it feels like nothing, nothing at all, when placed in context. How privileged to even be in a position the like of that.

More generally , I have started to accept, slowly but in a deeply rooted way, that— like with every other aspect of my life and my being — being a mother has changed my relationship with my creativity.

Then a wee while back I started teaching a course—MARK-MAKING CARE-TAKING—for caregivers (mostly mothers or those who hope to become so, or those who are making peace with idea/ circumstances around it), and it has done something utterly mind blowing and heart opening for me. Even trying to write about has me in tears. It is one of the most beautiful, humbling, life-affirming things I have ever done. It has done so much for the way I understand the making of art. The how, when, where, why, what of it all. Something about spending time with women, mostly (m)others, who are at a place in their lives where they have actively, with deep intention, carved room for their own creativity; finding ways to hold space for such powerful, generous and soulful mark-making— has helped me remember what it is all really about.

Sometimes you just have to stop. Exactly where you are, in whatever state, with all the grief and sorrow and worry and overwhelm that comes in hand with all the joy and beauty and love, and you have to carve the time for your work. For your words, your art, your songs, your YOU. Any which way you can.

There is something about putting on the brakes, even for the smallest wee moment, and simply jotting down what is happening outside your own window.

Goldfinches squabbling at the feeder. The first tulip.

Light catching in a raindrop.

The sound of the swans above the bog.

Then writing a sentence about how you are feeling in your own self: physically, emotionally, sexually, creatively.

Inner and outer landscapes.

The vast and the vaster.

A moment that might be the one to stop the break you are headed for.

At the core of that course, like at the core of NESTING, is the idea that our creativity is a vital part of who we are. That it is essential to hold it close, like a wee bird, and in doing so we hold ourselves close. I know from experience that when I hold me close, I find it so much easier to hold others close, too. Those I both know and don’t know. In order to do well by the world, I need to do well by that wee creative bird. I teach this, share it constantly, but looking at the way the last year has been , I’ve not done this well myself at all.

Ruth Allen

writes in her beautiful new book WEATHERING — which I recommend you preorder right now—about the ways the body responds to being pushed too far, not given the space to stop, rest, heal, noting that, like the earth herself, sometimes we simply break. If we push ourselves too far, don’t allow ourselves to simply be, we leave ourselves open to all sorts of things but I know, as I approach the half-year mark after breaking my ankle on sea cliffs in the west of Ireland on the eve of autumn equinox, that how my body responds to a lack of equilibrium in my days is quite simple.

It breaks. Not always in ways that are as obvious as being on crutches but that still have a huge impact.

And the truth of this all is that I know so well that in order to feel balanced I need one thing more the anything else.

I need to be still.

I found this note, written at the start of 2022, over two years ago now: a hope that even a break to my ankle did not allow me to fulfil. I have not, in the whole of those two years and two and a bit months, really properly allowed myself to be still. To be bathed in enough proper quiet for me to be able to listen. To listen to the world out there but most of all to listen to the world inside me. The small quiet voice that sings her truth in ways that we can only tune into when we are in the right place, and hen we have really allowed ourselves the stillness that out creativity really wishes for us and for our work.

I have found mothering has been the loudest experience of my life. So much noise, from so many different directions, and never a chance to really sit with any of them long or deeply enough to make any sense of it all. It is beautiful, this cacophony, and I am so fiercely grateful, but my creativity has been impacted on by the complete lack of quietude, of time and space in which to be still. By the always and ever and more more more of it all. The gaps I so much relied on in which to land, take root and grow, have disappeared— and I still haven’t quite found the way out but I am trying.

It feels ridiculous, preposterous even, to be offering anyone writing advice right now given I have not written a single thing outside of my course content, mentor feedback and my journal all year.

But the thing is, even though I haven’t found the way, I know the directions— I understand how to get back there—should my personal situation change anytime soon.

And I suppose perhaps this is my way of beginning to hold myself accountable.

I offered NESTING as a reminder to us all that the world is hard and heavy and loud but there are real, tangible ways to find our way back.

Back towards ourselves, our creativity, our hearts, our joy.

So, here is what I am going to try this work:

(1) CHANGE

Before checking my phone each day I’m going to go outside in search of one fresh thing in our world.

A change in colour, a new bloom, a different bird on the feeder, a shift in the morning light.

(2) CEREMONY

Then I’ll make a cuppa, sit myself down with my journal and my seed cards. I’ll pick one out, and meditate through words on what it might mean. If you are keen on this, make yourself a set. They are a handful of inspiring, important words , shuffled, and picked at random. I adore them and have found I need a springboard to get me writing at the moment, maybe you do too.

(3) CHOICE

I’ll remind myself that every moment of the day I have a choice. I can fill the day up with worries and a sense of helplessness or I can lean back into stillness best I can. Instead of doom scrolling while stuffing an oatcake into my hungry belly, I’ll have a proper lunch eating good food and sowing seeds. This is not to say I’ll have blinkers up to the world, rather that I will focus on making my ability to bear witness more sustainable.

Choice. It is an important word.

I wonder how you find ways to take a break these days; how you put the brakes on to allow yourself to be with your creativity. It is not easy and I feel that talking about these things truthfully is going to continue to become more and more important.

I suppose all of this is to say: I am sending love to the artists, the dancers, the potters, the writers, the makers, the mothers, the menders, the singers, the acrobats, the carers, the makers, etc.

I am holding close, as close as I can, all those who care and who love enough to be struggling this last while.

Those who allow themselves to feel enough to feel like they are failing, like they are too scared, confused, overwhelmed— simply TIRED— to do what their heart and their mind and their body and their soul need in order to heal, to grow, to thrive.

We should feel this way, I am sure.

It is these feelings that will guide us onwards.

It is the time for us to go to work but sometimes that work looks like rest, reading, digging, baking, weeping, belly laughing, legoing, texting back, making love, building fire, dancing, singing, sowing.

Sometimes the work looks like changing the colour of your ink pen and drinking coffee from a mug your pal made and lighting wonky beeswax candles made by your wildling and not writing a single word but recognising stillness.

Not quite there yet, but close enough to hear her quietude.

To hear your own, too; her gentle, gorgeous song.

Thankyou for reading. You might, if you’ve enjoyed this, consider a paid subscription to gain full access to my work. X