The Creative Identity

Try This

The centre that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. –W.H. Auden– One of these days I shall tackle The Artist's Way on here. Well, obviously, I am going to need to because every time I talk about The Creative Identity there is always someone who says, 'I've seen the list of books, so why isn't The Artist's Way there?'. The truth is this dear reader: I'm not blocked. I've never been blocked. I don't know what block is. I've always been a champion at procrastinating and, yes, on occasion it is lovely to over-analyse one's own procrastination but in reality I know exactly why I postpone and don't do when I ought to and I feel that Julia Cameron's masterpiece is for those people who still don't know themselves. This is not to say that it ain't brilliant. Today we are going to try something straight out of this seminal book. This comes from 'Recovering a Sense of Integrity', where the author focuses on our changing self-definition. Remember yourself at eight. What did you like to do? What were your favourite things? Now, write a letter from you at eight to you at your current age. What would you tell yourself? Let me add one thing before I leave you with this exercise: I always find writing exercises about my past self painful. And I really do mean Painful. I wrestle with nostalgia a lot and when I think of myself as a child I feel that... Read more →

A Tomato Doesn't Sit Down

If you get The Creative Times once a month, you will have already read some of my thoughts on Tootsie, therefore I should apologise if what follows will sound a bit too familiar for your liking. Not everyone gets The Creative Times though, right? And why not of course? Sign-up on the left dear reader! Tootsie is often referred to as 'that movie with Dustin Hoffman in drag' but I must tell you that every time I hear that one, my heart plummets all the way to my heels. How about this: frustrated unemployed creative proves that with hard work and perseverance one can accomplish anything. Believe me, the 'in drag' side of things isn't something that ever struck me as the most important aspect in Tootsie, for Michael's plea is one that is painfully felt across the creative world, superseding geographical, historical, sexual and religious boundaries. In other words: if you've ever struggled to meet your basic needs while dying to follow your creative call, this is the movie you should watch. When I wrote a little piece about Ignore Everybody, one of the things I decided to focus on was the author's message regarding creative output and financial obligations, the upshot of which was don't quit your day job. I began watching Tootsie as a child but I must have probably notched sixty viewings over the years before I realised that in the beginning Michael (and his flatmate Jeff) is working as a waiter. Of course the grand... Read more →

eCourse Log Ins

If you have signed up for the online course, you should have received the invitation to create your username and password on the course's site. If you didn't, or are experiencing any problems, do drop me a line. If you have not signed up for the online course, you still have two days left, as the fun and games start next weekend! Read more →

The Accidental Creative Identity

When I cast my mind back to the first few weeks in 2008 when I was job-free and yet not job-less, as I was working on my PhD, I don't exactly remember what that time was like. Apart from the PhD notes and my first editing jobs, I don't remember what I was doing with my time. It was during those neither-here-nor-there weeks that my supervisor suggested I started enquiring about posts within various universities because nobody waits (or should wait) until the VIVA to get a job, no matter how unrelated to one's own research. Yet, I wasn't getting anywhere. Not only was I not getting anywhere with the peripheral jobs (I would have quite happily been an undergraduate secretary, I am not too big for such jobs regardless of the PhD, I can assure you), I felt like I was getting nowhere in general. While I never felt the need for a bona fide permanent full-time job, it was the first time in my adult life when I did not have to spring out of bed in the dark at 6.30 am, and even though all of this freedom was, in a way, delicious, I was feeling displaced. My mind was thrilled with the latest developments, yet my body felt like a carcass that was hanging between the alien no man's land of the house and the buzzing outside world where I did not belong any more. When I discussed this with a friend of mine she pointed... Read more →

Try This

Sometimes people think that when you write a movie, you only write the dialogue, [...] but writing a movie is writing in images. –James Mangold– This week I thought about movies a lot. Not only have I been thinking about what I want us to do during the course (fab things, that's what), but I then wrote a post I had been really looking forward to reading. Each evening since Monday I also took the opportunity to listen again to some of the commentaries I mentioned and from Pleasantville to Walk The Line... oh man, it is so fantastic to listen to creative people and their processes that even at the lowest ebb of my own creative output I always feel uplifted by their words. Then I got thinking about my own script (un-written, of course) and about my own writer's commentary and wouldn't it be ace to tell everyone how I created my story, my characters, the jeopardy, the resolution? And perhaps today's suggestion will seem a little odd but... why not giving it a shot? You may surprise yourself... Grab a movie you know well and comment on it as if you were the writer. Granted, you will feel stupid at first, probably very stupid (I know I did), but trust me when I say that this little exercise will really focus you on structure, development, characterisation and narrative. You may even want to write some key points down. Read more →