Tag Archives: art

The Friday Review No. 4: Remembering Stillness and Forgetting Perfectionism

Leave a reply
_20170407_142405

Painting by Martin Battye FRSA, and my own inept reflection!

This week has been about catching my tail.

You know those moments where you come out of a period of frantic activity and realise that the house is a tip, and so is your head?  Suddenly you find yourself coming in to land in what you think is home, but which turns out to feel like a strangely alien place.

So I’ve been sitting still.  Listening to the birds outside the window.  Doing self-care things, like going to therapy appointments, meditating, remembering how to do the down dog asana (though in my, case, very badly), journaling, and indulging my muse.

I took myself off on an artist date.  Not to a gallery or the movies.  I went for an hour-long wallow at the library.  I love our library.  Its huge.  I always feel like I’m in a sweetie shop with an unlimited budget.  Sometimes I go in there, and I can’t see anything I want to bring home.  Other times, such as this one, there are so many books I want to take home and cuddle that I just can’t decide.  Well, you can only read so many words in the three week loan period, and I figure the ones I like will pop up again soon enough.  I came home with six, including two art books which I hope will help me to get drawing again.

The choice of art books was partly prompted by a dear friend, Martin Battye, painter and raconteur, Fellow of the Royal Academy and my husband’s cricket club.  He lent me a few of his old sketch books a while ago, as I wanted to write a blog post about his creative process, thinking his images might inspire you, dear reader, as much as they do me.  Then Life happened, and the sketchbooks stayed patiently waiting on my desk in a plastic carrier bag for the time when Life would get out of the way, and I would remember I had a blog!  This week, Martin needed his sketch books back, and I felt awful, of course, for neglecting my promise to him, and his kindness in lending me his treasure trove.  I looked through the pages and was once more dazzled by the obvious fact his work illustrates:

It’s a sketch book.  That means it is a work place.  A place to try things out.  You don’t have to get it perfect every time.  Or, as artist and illustrator Cliff Wright puts it so brilliantly:

‘Drawing is a great medium for experimentation because nothing is set in stone – you can always do another drawing if you don’t like the first one.’

Cliff Wright, The Magic of Drawing: Bring your Vision to Life on the Page, David & Charles Ltd 2008

This has been a revelation to me, a victim of perfectionism all my life.  Even as a kid, I struggled with the idea that I could make a mess and get it wrong and practice till I was happy with the end result.  Somewhere along the line, the idea of playing, and of practicing something to get the hang of it, got lost.  It had to be perfect first time.  Which is, I suppose, why I eventually stopped making art altogether.

Martin’s sketchbooks, the sketchbooks of a man I think of as a ‘proper’ artist, show that making rough sketches, making a mess, scrabbling about to find the right line, are what sketchbooks are all about.  Which makes it alright for me to do the same, somehow.

I’m grateful to Martin for his support and generosity in sharing his work with me, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of the precious images from his sketchbooks with you soon.  In the meantime I’m taking this crucial revelation about perfectionism into the coming days, hoping it will sink in permanently this time, and allow me to try stuff out, experiment, get it wrong.  Because that is how you learn.

Happy Creating,

EF

Sometimes I forget

Leave a reply

paintbox

You may think things are quiet here at Evenlode’s Friend.

Well, I suppose they are, on the website at least.  Not inside my head, however.  Not inside my life.

I haven’t been writing much here lately because, well, I’m going through another growing phase.  By which I mean, the shit really hit the fan again.

Sometimes you need to take time off for your life.  Sometimes you need to remember to take care of yourself.  And thats what I’m doing at the moment.  Intensively taking care of myself, and Husband, who was recently diagnosed with coeliac disease, almost a year since he was told he had diabetes.  This, along with coping with dementia caring, and my own health issues, has rather forced my hand.

Sometimes you need to take the time to devote everything you have to healing.

And the really odd thing is that this morning, I was reading an article about creative blocks (which sadly now, I just can’t find) and I thought:

I’ve forgotten how to do this.

I’ve been so focussed on healing my life that I’ve forgotten my creativity.  I’ve been so immersed in studying nutrition and recipe books, delving into spirituality and psychology, chanting mantras and ploughing through academic papers on brain degeneration in Alzheimers patients, that somewhere along the line, I’ve forgotten how to write.

Forgotten how to create.

Something new.  Something unique.  Something mine.

A creation that is truly of my soul.

Of course, I haven’t forgotten.  I still tell myself stories at night as I fall asleep.  The stories of love and redemption that comfort me in the midst of the storm, enough to enable me to believe that there is something good at the other end of all this.  Because I’m an old romantic at heart.  Because I believe that there has to be hope.  Because I believe that a hug makes everything better.  Even if its only a hug in a story.

But holding a pen?  A crayon?  Conjuring the contents of a new character’s pocket or handbag? Wondering why a character might take a tennis racket on a train trip to Switzerland in 1947?

Where did that go?

Cue that slightly dazed feeling that something is missing, like a limb, but you can’t quite work out where is has gone, or how, or even when.

I know that what I am doing right now is deeply necessary to my future wellbeing, and that of Husband.  I know I need to step up to the challenges that face me.  I need to delve deeply into my Unravelling.

But I don’t want to do what I did this morning, and sit there, staring at a photo of coloured pencils on a blog post, and feel a yearning that took my breath away.  Somewhere in all this, there has to be space to create.

Sometimes, I forget.

But from now on, I intend to remember.

Happy creating,

EF

Be Open. Don’t Try So Hard.

Leave a reply
On Ardnave Beach, Islay, which I am yearning for dreadfully at the moment.

On Ardnave Beach, Islay, which I am yearning for dreadfully at the moment.

Lately, I keep coming back to the same thought:

Be present.  Turn Up.  Be still and open.  Don’t try so hard.

I was watching Jamie Ridler’s morning vlog, in which she talked about how people strive so hard to find their Life Purpose.  We make such a BIG DEAL out of it.

What if we just let it happen?

I’m not saying you can just expect your art to pop up out of nowhere.  You have to be present, make yourself ready.

You do your core practises.  Your morning pages.  Your writing exercises. Your artist dates.  Your scales or your practise sketches.  Your barre exercises.  You make sure that you are ready when the inspiration comes.

When I used to read about writers who sat down at their desks in the morning and stayed there for an alotted number of hours, regardless of whether the work came or not, I used to think they were mad.  It seems like working too hard. It seems like self-punishment.

Maybe you don’t just have to sit at your desk.

Maybe you can cultivate a mindset of being open.  Where ever you are, and whatever you are doing.

Maybe we are all trying too hard.

Forcing it just doesn’t work.  Every writer who has ever been blocked knows that.  But if you keep up the practises, the ideas come.  They come because your mind is constantly in a place where it is curious and open, and like a lamp in the darkness, it attracts the fluttering moths of inspiration.

So keep her steady as she goes.  Turn up for your daily creative habits.  Relax into them, and don’t panic.

The work will come.

Happy Creating,

EF

Losing myself amongst the ‘Woolves’

Leave a reply
Virginia Woolf as a young woman. I keep a copy of this portrait on my desk.

Virginia Woolf as a young woman. I keep a copy of this portrait on my desk.

So I spent Monday in London, escorted by my wonderful fangrrrl niece Amelia, at the ‘Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision’ exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.  And it was wonderful.

We saw innumerable portraits and photographs, but I think the personal papers were the most moving.  There were pages from her diary describing the bombing of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Tavistock Square home in October 1940, the original manuscript of ‘A Room of One’s Own’, love letters from Leonard written before their marriage,  and most moving of all, the little note she left for him when she set out to drown herself in the River Ouse in 1941.

One of the things that particularly struck me was that Woolf bound all her own notebooks and manuscripts, having taken bookbinding lessons in her teenage years as some kind of therapy for her mental illness.  The result was that she could make the perfect notebook for her own needs – which is, for a stationery addict like me, absolute nirvana.  Her books are big, too, slightly larger than A4, leaving plenty of space for her to explore her ideas.

Another interesting detail for me was that the page from her diary about the bombing had no crossings out on it at all.  My diary is a veritable Somme of scribblings-out, but she wrote a stream of consciousness with a self-assurance that seems absolute.  She had no doubts about what she was trying to convey.

The original copies of her books, published by the Hogarth Press, which she ran with her husband, still with their book jackets designed by her sister Vanessa Bell, look crisp and radical even now.  Amelia (a bookseller) and I both commented on the fact that the many editions of the novels for sale in the gallery shop had an assortment of different covers, none of which were so attractive, expressive, and frankly Modern-looking, as the originals.

Woolf is my writing hero for so many reasons.  She battled mental and physical illness, misogyny, and childhood sexual abuse to become one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century, reinventing the novel form in a way that would be emulated and built upon in succeeding decades.  She was self-educated, too, and could read Greek and Latin, despite the fact that her parents refused to send her to school as they did her brothers, a fact she railed against.

She is often criticised for being classist and racist, but I would argue that she was a product of her time, and it is to her credit that she did so much to counteract the snobbery and distrust of the working classes, which she inherited from her social millieu, through her political work.

Virginia Woolf was a great writer and feminist, a patron of the visual and applied arts, and a creative giant,  as well as a truly great human being who overcame enormous adversity to achieve what she did.  If you cannot get on with her novels, I wouldn’t judge you, but I urge you to dip into her enlightening and often witty diaries for inspiration on how to live a creative life despite so many difficulties.

Happy Creating,

EF

Inspiration Monday: Gardens and Gardening

Leave a reply
Ickworth Garden Temple - take a moment to reflect

Ickworth Garden Temple

(WARNING: photo-heavy post!)

You think gardening is for oldies, don’t you?

Not so.

Go and visit a big garden in your area, a park, a stately home if you have one nearby.  As you wander round, take the time to look at the flowers, plants and trees.  Take the time to appreciate the long vistas the designers have laid out for you to enjoy.  Think about why each plant has been positioned exactly there in the scheme.

The garden house at Ickworth House, Suffolk

The garden house at Ickworth House, Suffolk

Who has walked this path before you?  What is their story?  Read ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ if you can’t think of something better, or watch ‘Downton Abbey’ to clue you in to what might have happened in a garden like this, the secret assignations between the lady of the house and the gamekeeper, the Lord and the scullery maid, or the married gentry who came to visit for shooting weekends in winter, eager to continue their private affairs without their spouses knowing, stealing away into the shady nooks of the different garden ‘rooms’.

Inside the Yew Hedge at Blicking Hall, Norfolk - who might have hidden here?

Inside the Yew Hedge at Blicking Hall, Norfolk – who might have hidden here?

As for public parks, well, imagine all the spies who have met their KGB handlers by the duck pond, the mothers who have pushed their prams through the rose beds and contemplated running away from loveless marriages, the children who have imagined faeries and elves in the trees.

If writing is not your thing, you only have to look at what Monet did with his garden at Giverny to see that gardens can be an endless source of inspiration for visual artists of all kinds.  Maybe your garden flowers could inspire a colourful quilt or embroidery.  There is so much beauty in your back garden and local park – all you need to do is use your eyes.

arbour and urn cropWhat about getting your fingers in the soil yourself?  Gardening is a true art form.  It allows you to create a complete world within the four hedges of your back yard.  You might prefer growing vegetables to flowers, in which case, google ‘potager kitchen gardens’ to see how amazing kitchen gardens can be.

Roses in my own garden.

Roses in my own garden.

There is nothing like actually getting down to business with the mulch and seeds.  Yes, it is often hard work, and it takes time and patience, but it is so incredibly rewarding, creative and satisfying.  Even if you just have a tiny balcony or window ledge, you can fill it with pots of colourful bedding plants and grow-your-own lettuce varieties.  Go to any Mediterranean village, and you’ll see what marvels of gardening can be achieved with a few old olive oil cans, some white and blue paint, and some bright geraniums!

And once the hard work is done, you can get out your deck chair, and muse.  And then maybe paint a picture or write a story about your green empire.

Happy creating,

EF

Journal Friday: Every Moment

Leave a reply

cropped rosesEvery moment is a new opportunity.

Don’t think about all the books you haven’t written yet.  All canvases you haven’t filled, the dances you haven’t danced, yet.

With every new breath, you have an opportunity to DO DIFFERENT.

Didn’t write your diary yesterday?  Do it now.

Didn’t do your writing exercise or sketch.  Do it now.

There will always be an excuse.  Why listen to it?

Every moment is an opportunity to change what you do.  Its a choice.  Every waking moment.  You can choose to keep on keeping on, doing the same old same old, thinking the same old thoughts, being a victim, blaming other people because you never made the time to learn the piano or whatever.

Or you can choose to live the life you want to live RIGHT NOW.

If the life you want to live involves living in a villa on a Greek island painting huge abstract canvases, (confession: this is my dream retirement) and maybe you can’t run away to the sun just now, well, just get some paper out of the photocopier and some coloured pencils or pens and make some colours on the page.  Be the change you want to see.

You can be the person you always wanted to be RIGHT NOW.

You have a choice RIGHT NOW.

Be your own hero.

Choose now. 

Make your choice and be it.

Happy Creating,

EF

Its Never Too Late…

Leave a reply

Whenever I see an article in the paper about some young person who has won an important first novel award, or got a massive advance on their first book, I have a mini meltdown.  Its not that I would take their achievement away from them.  Its just that I am now 46, and still struggling to finish a book that I am happy enough with to publish.

But how old is too old?

I could probably quote a dozen examples of authors who didn’t publish their first book until they were in their 60s or 70s.  There are always the exceptions.  I keep telling myself that its never too late to fulfil the dream of that first novel I wrote at the age of 16.  But you have to really understand the fact in your heart, as well as in  head.

Let me tell you a little story about fulfilling your dreams at any age.

The other day I went to my first Masked Ball.  I’m not a dancer by any stretch of the imagination, but we had been invited to go by friends who are.  It was an event run by the dancing school our friends attend, and as part of the entertainment, several of the school’s students danced exhibition dances.  To uproarious applause, there were paso dobles and waltzes and tangos.  (And there were lots of sparkles too, and I just love sparkles!)

Marvellous.

And then a tiny little old lady in a lacy top and a bow in her hair got up, and danced the foxtrot with her lady teacher.  And it was lovely.  She got the biggest round of applause of the night.

Then the evening’s compere told us about her.  How she had fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition recently by dancing in the British Ballroom Championships at the legendary Tower Ballroom in Blackpool.

Turns out, this lady, who reminded me a great deal of Mrs Pepperpot (if you remember her), was 86.

Eighty-six years old and still ballroom dancing.  Competitively.  Eighty-six years old and still pursuing her creativity.  Eight-six years old and still fulfilling her dreams.

How old is too old?

Ask me when I get to 87.

Happy Creating,

EF

 

The Perils of Getting Lost

Leave a reply

There is no SatNav system for the artistic life.

Most of the time, we creative people complain about the problems of not being able to get into the Zone.  Not being able to find the door into the imagination.  Not being able to make our art.

Or we complain about not being able to get out of our own way.  We get hung up on the avoidance tactics and displacement activities we use so we don’t have to think about the empty page, the blank canvas.

Be honest, how many loads of washing have you done to avoid that novel you’ve been meaning to write?  How many drawers and cupboards have you cleaned out as an excuse to get away from your easel or your desk?

Seriously, its amazing how interesting cleaning can become when you need to be doing something else.

However, one of the perils of the artistic life that we rarely talk about, let alone complain about, is that of getting lost.

Lost in your imagination.

Lost in that place where the stories never end.

Lost where the romance and the passion and the adventure and the danger go on and on, and there is never, never washing to be done, unless it is in a picturesque stream with the sun sparkling on its surface, and requires both hero and heroine to divest themselves of their clothes in as romantic/modest/passionate (delete as appropriate) way as possible.

Suddenly you will wake up one morning and realise that you have been trapped on the island of the Lotus Eaters, so lost in the pleasures of your mind that you have forgotten to live.

Marriages founder this way.  Bankruptcies are forged, friendships lost, loved-ones go unmourned.  It happens all the time.

We lose ourselves constantly.  Often it is complusive shopping, gambling, drinking, eating or other drugs that claim us.  Addictions can be apparently harmless.  Surfing the internet seems harmless enough, until you realise you have lost days and weeks of your life doing it.  We lose ourselves in meaningless busyness, in rushing round fulfilling empty tasks, in competing with friends and neighbours, in acquiring the latest TV, sofa, car, clothes.  Modern life encourages us to find an addiction to dull the ennui.

Being present is hard.  Its even harder if you have an over-active imagination.  It is so much nicer to be lost in a story than facing the reality of life.  Doing the work of living.  Being real.  It is so easy to slip away and not come back.

Lately I have been away.  In the last couple of days, I’ve realised that life is tugging at the hem of my skirts, wanting me back, needing my attention.  I’m fighting it.  I don’t want to come back.  I want to stay in my fantasy world.

But life needs living.  We only get one go.  The art needs making, yes.  But our lives are our art too.

Don’t forget to live as well.

Happy Creative Living,

EF

PS – You might like to know that I have a new story out, The Retirement Party, a ‘Lewis’ romance, which you can read here at AO3 and here at FF.net.

When to Share

Leave a reply

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about timing.  Specifically, the timing involved in releasing our artistic work into the world.  This may arise from the fact that after nearly two years I am still wrestling with the second part of ‘Three Weddings and an Explosion’, one of my johnlock stories.

My natural writing process is to write a story and then let it sit for a while.  There’s no set time limit in my head.  I just like to let it ‘cook’ for a bit.  Then I can go back to it, and edit with a fresh eye.  By then, I feel so much less attached.  I can pick out most of the typos, and identify the things that really don’t work about the original piece.  Letting your work sit allows space for objectivity.  It’s easier to ‘kill your darlings’ as they say – to cut or change the scenes you are really proud of, but that simply don’t work in their current context.

(That is why my recent series of ‘Friday Quick Fics’ has been such a challenge – they are invariably stories I have knocked off the day before and not allowed to rest, but published immediately instead.  That is a real challenge to my writing confidence, and let me tell you, it takes guts!)

I’m also a huge believer in the idea that our writing helps us explore our own psychodramas.  My story, ‘The Case of the Cuddle’ allowed me to revisit a time when I was starting to deal with a traumatic experience, and much of the reactions of Sherlock in that story are actually my own.  Writing that story allowed me not only to come to terms with the original experience, but also with memories of the distressing period during which I processed it.  It helped profoundly with my own healing.

My stories continue to represent what is going on in my subconscious as well as my conscious mind.  I wrote a very long MPREG story while a close friend was pregnant two years ago, work that enabled me to begin to come to come to terms with my own childlessness.  And only the other day, when I came home from visiting my mother for a few days, I sat down and, in a single sitting, wrote a 2600 word story about Sherlock’s relationship with Mrs Hudson.  After I had finished, I looked it over and thought: ‘Oh, yeah, Mother issues.’

So now perhaps you are sitting there thinking ‘I’d really like to read that MPREG story, why haven’t I seen it?’

The answer is that I am not ready to share it yet.

Perhaps the emotional odyssey of my not being a mother is not over.  Perhaps the issue for me is still too raw.  Or perhaps I am just not artistically satisfied with what I have done.  Either way, I am not yet comfortable with releasing that story into the wild.

The other day I was reading something written by Leonie Dawson about being spiritually ready to share one’s art.  About how she made the decision to put her paintings up for sale only when she felt that they had done their work in her own life.  She made a conscious choice to follow her own instinct about when she was ready to sell.

This is something that is really hard to do.  It takes confidence in your own artistic decisions and your spiritual connection to yourself.  But if you can do it, if you can hold out despite all those voices of readers, hungry for more (which means you are doing your job right, by the way), or buyers wanting your paintings for their own walls, you will open an artistic integrity in your work.  You will know when a piece is ready to leave home.  And you will be happy to let it go, knowing it will go on to do its healing in someone else’s life.

And art is healing, believe me.

When I unleashed ‘The Case of the Cuddle’ on the world, I had a number of emails from readers, saying how it had helped them with their own healing.  The story helped me, and now it continues to do the same for others.  Which, to me, is what art of any kind is for.

Part of the skill of being an artist of any kind, in any medium, is knowing when the time is right to release your work to others.  To know when you are ready to let go.  It is not just about being satisfied that something is finished, or about perfectionism.  (That is a whole ‘nother story!)  It is about being emotionally and spiritually ready too.

Letting go too soon, whether it is because the work is not yet finished to your own standards, or because it is still to raw and personal for you, can be a nightmare, as I discovered this summer when I published a story I loved but was not happy with.  It caused me untold grief.  I learnt my lesson.  The work wasn’t cooked.  It was not ready to leave me.  And I was not ready to leave it.

Try to trust where you are in your artistic life.  Take time to ask yourself whether this is the right time for your work to leave home and begin its new life in the hearts and minds of others.  Maybe you will never be ready to do that – there are plenty of artists if all kinds whose work is never seen in their lifetime.

That’s okay.

Learn to trust the reasons why you release your work in the way you do – or choose not to.  Maybe you choose your timing for purely practical reasons – taking into account such considerations as when you are struggling with a large parallel workload, or major life upheavals such as moving house.  At such times, it may simply not be feasible to expect to present work to the public.  Or maybe the work is too close to raw emotions.  Maybe you just aren’t ready.  Maybe it just isn’t cooked yet.  Trust that.  Sit with it.  When the time is right, you will know.

Happy Creating,

EF

Owning It

5 Replies

Have you been there too?  That cringe-making moment at a social event when you meet someone new and they ask you what you do.

For me it is a doubly difficult dilemma.

Do I give them one version of the truth:  I haven’t been able to do paid work since 2001 because of chronic health difficulties.  Which either makes me look like I am scrounging off the State, or like a whinging hypochondriac.  Either one pretty much means the end of the conversation.

Or do I say, Oh, I’m a writer and artist.  To which I get the next question:  where can I get your books?  So thats a whole ‘nother minefield.  Yes, I have written seven novels.  No, you cannot buy them in the shops. I publish on the internet.

(Oh, well you aren’t a proper writer, then, are you?  You’re just one of those middle class kept wives who plays at being a creative but is actually too mediocre at it to cut it in the real world.)

Admittedly, this last is probably supplied by Nigel, who is only too happy to make me feel like a loser and a waste of space, so that I will never take any risks or put my work out there.

These days, its even worse if I mention that I write fanfiction, because people have finally heard of it, and they always, always want to talk about 50 Shades of Grey.  Don’t mention that book in front of me.  Please.  (You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.)

The other day I was at a social event and met someone new.  She was a fascinating person, and great fun.  I liked her a lot.  She asked me what I did.  I said, ‘I’m a writer and artist.’  Cue discussion about novels not yet published, how I am trying to make a go of this website, and why I am interested in creativity, which happened to be her field of research.

All fine.

I came home and felt like a total fraud.

Why is it so difficult to own our creativity?

I may not have had a novel published in conventional form, but then I’ve never really submitted one to a publisher.  I’ve written and published 42 works of fanfiction on the internet, some of which have novel-sized wordcounts.  I get around 100 readers per day of my fictions, and regularly get daily reader numbers over 500, figures that most conventionally published writers would give their eye-teeth for.  This website has over 300 followers.  What is it about these statistics that makes me not a writer?

What really makes me a writer is that I write.  Every day.  Being published does not make me a writer.  Public recognition does not make me a writer.  Having books on the shelves does not make me a writer, if I am not writing.

Being a writer is not something that other people tell you that you are.

Being a writer is what you do.  Day in. Day out.    I write because I need to write, not for the end result.  I write because it comes to me as naturally, and as necessarily, as breathing.

So why can I not own it?  Why do I not feel entitled to it?  Why am I embarassed to say it in front of someone new because Society says I do not tick the boxes required (ie publications, awards etc etc)?  Will I have to wait until I am as old and lauded as the late Nobel Prize laureate Doris Lessing before I can finally say I am a writer, and feel entitled to it?  (I really hope not.)  Do any writers ever feel entitled to the label?

Do you feel entitled to your creativity?  Do you make excuses that you are only a hobbyist painter or dancer, whether to yourself or others?  Do you feel you must keep your creative projects secret for fear that they will not be understood?  And is it really necessary to have public recognition for our art?

I’m not saying there are anwsers, or even right answers.  I think the answer is different for every one of us.  It is a complex tangle.  I simply think we have to address it in some way as artists in whatever medium, if only to find out what stifles or liberates our own voices.

And maybe this time next year, when I meet someone new at a party, I will feel entitled to say: ‘I am a writer’, and own it.

Happy Creating,

EF