Creative Balance

Keeping the Inspiration Fire Lit

I’m about to embark on a 12-week course based on the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The subtitle of the book is “A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.” The sub-sub title is “A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self”. Can you see where I’m hoping to go here?

I’ve been writing this blog for five years now. I have written and published a book of poetry and photography. I facilitate a creative writing group on Substack where we write around weekly themes. I’m working on my second book and learning to watercolor paint to illustrate it. Most of you would probably say I have plenty of creativity flowing. Any of you who are creatives for recreation or as professionals already know that inspiration is the key to every creative endeavor. Granted, we can pound something out if we need to meet a deadline, but that doesn’t carry the same kind of joy and resonance as when we create from a base of enlightenment and true inspiration.

I usually find ways to spark my interest or passion by listening and exploring. My bandwidth for multiple projects is usually healthy. However, a couple of months ago, as I shared previously on this page, I began to feel overwhelmed with the commitments I had made around my writing. I mentioned in December that I would be posting less frequently because I needed to save my creative enthusiasm for my book. I had found that after writing a blog post and poem weekly, my book was sitting on the shelf, not because I didn’t have time to write, but because my inspiration was struggling to stretch enough to stay on top of all of it.

Photo Credit: Industrial Scripts

Because my nature is to fulfill commitments and stay the course, I wrestled with what needed to happen to refill my inspiration tank and devote myself to my book project. Writing a story is way different than gathering a collection of poems written over years and finding the right photos to illustrate them. Telling someone’s story involves immersion into the thoughts of your characters and the flow of their journey. With everything else I was writing, my brain ran out of juice to dive in the way I needed to for the book to be inspiring and captivating.

I have been able to spend the last six weeks or so just focusing on the progression of the book and the watercolor illustrations without feeling the pressure to keep up with everything else. It was hard to let go and admit that my commitments were just in my own head and not what was truly being asked of me. But the act of that release has brought amazing progress on a project that has become near and dear to my heart. I hope all my readers will enjoy the journey as well when I finally publish.

Photo Credit: Snow White Writes

This course in “The Artist’s Way” is a big commitment, too, but one I’m hoping will give me ample creative juice to continue to share my work in all the ways I’m passionate about. I’ll be participating in the course with others who want to grow their creative endeavors as well. To all my faithful readers here, I hope you will be patient with my process and I will continue to share when I am truly inspired and not just “coming up with something” to keep my internal commitment once a week. I’d be happy to host “guests” here who would like to share something meaningful and positive or want to grow their audience. After all, we’re all in this together and I believe that encouragement can be just the spark to set something inspiring ablaze. My hope is that taking this course will give me newfound passion for digging out all those light, bright stories that I love to bring to you here.

Again, thank you all for your patience and support. As I discover whatever I can glean from “The Artist’s Way”, I’ll be sure to share. And in the meantime, my characters are waiting for me to sit down and continue to write their stories. See you back here soon!