Love Letter

So I found a notebook entry the other day and it got me thinking about this creativity caper and how we get around to doing whatever it is we do. Some of us just do it (I am envious of these people) and the rest of us embark on a journey much like our little friend Frodo Baggins.

First, a few thoughts on journals. I’ve never been able to keep one. I am way too paranoid and more than a little fanciful the world is gagging to know my inner most thoughts. (A blog is entirely different. It’s edited.) Over time I have discovered that if I keep a Notebook rather than a Journal, I’m far more likely to scribble things down. Yes, call it something different and bibbity-bobbity-boo, suddenly I’m writing all sorts of things.

Random bits of research, pieces of ideas and other scribble merge with secrets and epiphanies (I think Oprah calls them ‘Aha! Moments’ which are not grand enough for my Frasier Crane-esque pontifications partying on inside my head). Plus, notebooks are mandatory. It took me a while to get over feeling that it was totally pretentious whipping out a little book and scribbling in the middle of the main road. However after enduring the forehead slapping, gut stabbing experience of the fabulous idea I had on the train disappearing because I’d felt too self conscious to write the bloody thing down, I began to whipping out that notebook with all the fervour and abandon of a man lost three weeks in the desert who stumbles across a crystal clear water fall.

For most of my life I had done everything I could to shake the need to sit down and write. This need always showed up as the same thing: being tapped on the shoulder. Not a ‘tap-tap’ and that’s it. We’re talking about a kind of tapping that just wouldn’t stop.

A few years ago I dramatised my unfair plight to a friend. I really let her have it. I cried, I shouted and did everything bar beat my breast and hiss, ‘As God as my witness’. Basically I behaved like a self indulgent tool. My friend exhaled the last of her Winfield Blue, stubbed it out and said, ‘Yeah, well, I’d love to have something that keeps me awake tapping me on the shoulder. Its called talent Fran.’ I’ve kept those words close to hand ever since and for a long time after that conversation, I ran even faster.

Lets just stop for a minute and dispel a few notions that may be flying around. Never have I wailed, ‘Oh God I’m so talented I just can’t take it anymore!’ It wasn’t like that and, hello, still isn’t. What’s that quote about the percentage breakdown between talent and hard work? Something like 10% talent and the rest is work? Its true. If that tapping was indeed talent, it didn’t bring me a whole lot of ‘success’ because ‘success’ involved me doing something about it. The tapping is just the call to arms….to the page, I mean.

All this belly-button gazing didn’t count however whenever the world felt like it was collapsing around me or I was incandescently happy about something. Whenever the feeling was strong enough, I forgot to run and the page was the first thing I reached for. Why I didn’t join the dots there I’ll never know.

I think we’re all ambling around with a purpose. It’s the acting on that purpose which proves tricky sometimes. Once I had a whiff my purpose involved writing I discovered I was in immediate need of more air, a brisk walk, food, sleep and shock therapy, preferably all at the same time. Not all of us run towards what we’re supposed to do. If you’re anything like me (a gutless turd), you are seen streaking away into the middle distance screaming your head off.

A few years after the breast-beating incident, I came across two fantastic pieces of advice. I’m always looking for quotes, tips, anything to out-fox my ability to conjure excuses faster than a cat tearing up a carpet during mad-hour. The first was: writing is not a party trick. The second was: no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to do this.

I got over myself and started to get on with it.

And the other day I discovered a love letter of sorts tucked away inside my notebook. Overflowing with relief and gratitude that this annoying thing - which for so long I wished would bugger off and leave me alone - ended up saving me in more ways than I can count, which has evolved into the most significant relationship of my life so far. This stout hearted partner, the keeper of this place I turn to, a place where I get to reach inside myself and unravel my insides. I’ll never quite understand my need to do that (pull out my the insides of my imagination and try and make sense of them, although it does have the same morbid fascination element as documentaries showing what a shark has inside its stomach). As a partner, I’m not someone who instinctively knows my worth. I’m clumsy, foul mouthed, impatient and cursed with an imagination that would frighten the bogey man. That’s the great thing about creativity: there are no curses or downsides. All it requires is you.

I couldn’t believe it stuck around and waited for me. It didn’t run away, make new friends or tell me how much of a crap person I was (that latter honour goes to my ego). No matter how badly behaved I was, it stayed. I wonder if the creativity guys inside us get together for weekly support groups by cyber link up. Hi my name is Nancy and I have a procrastinating writer. Hello Nancy….

As with any relationship, sometimes we need to do a whole lot of running away before we’re ready to sit down and show it - and ourselves – a bit of respect. Anything else we add is our own smoke and mirror machine amusing itself. The tapping on the shoulder, the running, the angst-ing and fist shaking is something we do until we are ready to sit down and get on with it.

So instead of running, I show up. Some days I get it. Some days I don’t. Some days I write without thinking and other days my pen is six feet tall, made of concrete and covered with angry wasps.

We’re all involved in a relationship with ‘that’ side of ourselves. How it comes out: painting, writing, knitting, parenting, landscape gardening, teaching, cooking or bee keeping is our expression. Our inner landscape is based on the same thing and when we dare surrender, it feels just like home.