The Gift of Creativity
A simple principle to guide your creative process in 2025.
A WARM WELCOME to new subscribers and followers! I post motivational articles, writing/creativity tips and news of upcoming retreats and workshops. You can find my current writing projects on my page menu: Brush with Fame, Letters to Leftie Bestie (My Left Breast), The Everyday Musings of Louisa Greene. Plus all eps of my travel memoir, Looking for Duras, a Mekong Journey.
WARM NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS from our Aussie summer to all, especially the longterm members of this list! I hope you had a great break and are ready for a creative year in 2025!
REMEMBERING THE GIFT OF CREATIVITY
I love the way New Year’s gives us flawed, pathetic humans, another chance. And if we are not prepared on Jan 1, there’s another chance at Luna NY, on Jan 29!
We get to wipe the slate clean, forgive ourselves for the mistakes, misdemeanors and disappointments of the previous twelve months in the hope that in the coming year we will do better.
That we will —
turn up at our desks everyday
eat less junk
stop mindless scrolling
lift more weights
drink more (water)
be kinder to ourselves and and others
When looking for guidance on how to approach my fresh clean slate, I often return to Gail Sher’s great little book published in 1990…
Sher, a poet, psychotherapist, teacher and ordained zen monk, was a student of the Zen master Shunryo Suzuki Roshi. His classic Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, another of my favourites, was first published in 1970.
This year I’m taking the emphasis off setting goals for tangible results and concentrating more on how I approach my writing practice. As Sher says in her Four Noble Truths for Writers:
Writers write
Writing is a process
You don’t know what your writing will be until the end of that process
If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.
So why do so many of us find it so hard to show up at the desk when it’s the thing we love to do most in the world? Why do we engage in all manner of avoidance then beat ourselves up for doing so?
Like fellow Zen-ster Natalie Goldberg, Sher has tricks for getting mind out of the way. When our writing is so tied up with our fragile egos, the negative critic can take hold and have a field day. If we are continually asking the question ‘am I good enough?’ we underminine any good writing that’s coming through.
Tibetan Buddhists dedicate every meditation practice for the happiness of all beings. And if writing is your meditation, Sher suggests we follow the advice a Tibetan Lama once gave her — to dedicate her writing.
‘ Dedicate.’ he said. ‘Before you write and after you write, make sure you give it away.’
The same goes for any kind of art making, indeed any kind of creative activity you may be involved with.
Sher says this single act of dedication transformed her writing practice. ‘ Dedicating your writing and your efforts to write resituates your primary intention within a larger context. It becomes the vessel through which creative spirit flows’.
I’ve always loved the notion of creativity as a gift. I often use a guided meditation for writers where they visualise their book launch as a gift-giving to the world. It instantly dissolves all the am-I-good-enough drama and gives your oxytocin a boost.
Make up your own dedication, it doesn’t have to be elaborate or high-falutin. Dedicate your daily writing to your cat, your dog, your pet hamster, a loved one or a total stranger. Mix it up, each day it can be someone new or use the one below — it covers all bases!
The world needs all the help it can get right now. Let me know how you go!
Tibetan dedication prayer.
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness;
May all be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow;
May all never be separated from the sacred happiness which is sorrowless;
And may all live in equanimity, without too much attachment and too much aversion,
And live believing in the equality of all.
A person who totally embodied the principle of creativity as gift was my friend, Bob Daly who passed away suddenly last week. An artist, musician, set painter, woodcarver, instrument maker, cartoonist, screen printer, raconteur, humourist, joke writer, topiarist, and the list goes on… Bob was the people’s artist —anti-establishment, anti gallery, anti-award, anti-hoohaa and gave most of his art away. He wasn’t on facebook or instagram, didn’t have a website — but his art lives on — on the walls and in the personal archives of friends, colleagues, artists and the community organisations he served. See some examples on my facebook page. A self taught artist cut from the same fabric of my friend Simone from 2 posts ago, Bob is an inspiration for so many of us. Every day he went into his shed with a black coffee and a rollie and made art. How lucky I was to visit him in his garage studio only days before he died.
Another creative who left us on New Years Day was the inspirational author and writing teacher Joyce Kornblatt. Like me, Joyce brought buddhist principles to her teaching and was admired and respected by all who came in contact with her. Because of the ‘J’of our first names and the Korn/Corn sound of our surnames people sometimes confused us. One writer even signed up on my Bali retreat thinking I was Joyce. At the airport when she realised her mistake, she wasn’t bothered in the slightest and went on to write and publish her memoir with help from both of us. Joyce leaves behind the huge legacy of her work and writing wisdom passed on to all her students and colleagues.
WRITERS JOURNEY NEWS
DRAFT BUSTERS ONLINE — A special edition to start the year! We begin again on Mon Jan 13, 10 am, AEST with a two week intensive on how to prepare your draft MS for submission, culminating in Draft Swap on Frid Jan 31 AEST. Motivation Mondays: 10 - 11.30 am AEST, set your goals for the week, discussion on various aspects of writer’s craft plus a meditative writing exercise. Feedback Fridays: 3.30 - 5.30 pm AEST, readings and feedback on up to 1000 words of your writing project. Workshops are held on Zoom. Contact Jan if you would like to join.
MENTORING — If you need some individual help or attention on your draft MS in 2025 get in touch. I have a number of mentoring packages available which can be tailored to your current needs. See here for what’s possible.
HEADING OUT IN 2025
NEW!! The Healing Journey, South East Tasmania, April 3-8, 2025.
A seaside residential retreat with cancer navigator and researcher Grace Gawler and me. The first three days with Grace offers a safe space for women to explore, discuss and integrate their physical, emotional and psychological experiences with cancer. Followed by three days with Jan on transforming the healing journey into powerful writing. Find all info here. Send expression of interest and request booking form here.
Creative Immersion in Ischia, Italy, May 3-10, 2025 for writers and artists.
7 nights, 8 days. Five nights staying at the extraordinary Castello Aragonese of Ischia! We’ll be in Elena Ferrante territory, catching a ferry from the Port of Naples across to the volcanic island of Ischia to arrive at our accomodation. Don’t go any further without checking it out here! A most extraordinary environment in which to write and make art. Daily deep dive workshops designed to envigorate your creative process and rapidly progress your work. In collaboration with the Create Escape. Booking fast, don’t miss out. Early bird price offer ends mid Jan! All info here.
Haiku Walking in Japan, 5 nights 6 days. Change of dates and location!
For writers, poets, artists,creatives. We are still aiming for autumn 2025, but we will most likely be in November instead of December as previously announced. More info coming soon! See our last Haiku Walk pics here.
Check out 21 years of Writers Journey international journeys and retreats. See where we went, what we did here.
Follow us on www.writersjourney.com and Instagram: @_writersjourney
What have you got planned for 2025? Write your creative wishlist in the comments and let me hold you to it!
Wonderful advice here, Jan! I also offer dedicate writing to the benefit of all. It helps expand that tunnel vision feeling that happens when I’m alone with a work-in-progress can’t see the point.
Great suggestions here Jan - love the idea of dedication!