Category: Creativity

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Erasing the Full Stop

Well, there I was, merrily writing away, absorbed in my enchanted sandpit of words: castles and moats galore, my hair and gusset full of sand, and not a care in the world.

Until I asked the wrong people for feedback.

When they told me my castles were “a bit much”, I quietly left the beach, my creative armbands losing air. I let the tide come in and wash my miniature kingdom away, turning my back on my inner sea.

The ebb came and went, inhaling and exhaling each day’s rich shore of possibility; fresh shells, new rockpools, shoals of will-o’-the-wisps all glistening hopefully. “Come back!” they cried, “We want to play!” But I refused, digging deeper into my own full-stop while those little wriggles of inspiration called in vain.

Until today, when Julia found my little red bucket and spade and threw them back onto the beach for me – plastic gauntlets of play. “It’s your homework”, she told me, smiling through her voicenote. “Write an essay on erasing the full stop.” At last, I had no excuse anymore! I was being told to build sandcastles for the pure fun of it. Who was I to disobey?!

After all, I hadn’t really been asking for feedback, had I?

I’d been asking for permission.

Darn it, I’d been checking – again – whether me and my wobbly creations were allowed, leaving the poor things to prove their worth against the waves. What a bloody drama queen!

I have always valiantly upheld the importance of feedback as a commitment to learning and growth: a point of honour; an exercise in humility. I thought it was noble and virtuous to expose myself to the cleansing winds of criticism.

What a foolish scourge, to sacrifice one’s creativity at the make-believe altar of another’s words.

As the Buddha said, “Even as a solid rock is unshaken by the wind, so are the wise unshaken by praise or blame”. Or as Julia put it, “I don’t want silly old feedback! I just want to do what I want to do.” (I can’t tell you how much I love her take on it!)

I’d hardly given my wonky castle of creativity a chance to settle in the sand before exposing it to the harsh waves of judgement, like unclothing a newborn on a mountaintop.

Really, Clare, did it need to be the moment the poor thing emerged, still blinking and bleating in shock? Freshly delivered from its warm, protected womb into the brittle glare of others’ creative blocks?

All that is new and unsure must be nurtured and protected awhile; given time to grow solid and steady roots.

Creativity is no different.

The Balinese have a ritual where newborns don’t touch the ground for the first three months of their lives. They are carried everywhere as sacred guests until they’re thought to be fully anchored into human life; only then are their feet ceremoniously placed upon the Earth.

I think I might take a leaf out of their book and welcome this guest into my life with a little more care before I plonk it in the dirty backyard of other people’s feedback. After all, when I first started writing my blog, I opened with this statement: “This blog is my intention to share – to open, to risk and to trust – and a commitment to authenticity; a practice of releasing self-expression as freely and lightly as I can, letting thistledown-thoughts drift gently in the breeze of this curious confetti of life experience.”

I didn’t mention asking for permission or making each seed prove its worth. And I’m hardly releasing them freely and lightly if I’m asking for others’ feedback, am I? I’m more like an anxious parent constantly calling my newly fledged teenager’s friends to check my little darling is safe!

And would you believe it? As I’ve been writing this, not one, not two, but THREE thistledowns have drifted in through my attic window and across my desk.

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Finding Narnia: The Wardrobe of Words

I’ve always loved the word crinkle… it has such happy, amiable edges! A charming breed of wrinkle; the friendliest of furrows. It’s so much more compelling than a fold but infinitely kinder than a pinch; the pleated softness of a smiling eye or the puckered crunch of a special-cut crisp. And unlike the meekly silent wrinkle, it has a distinctive voice too – a crackle, pop and ruckle. Such a perky onomatopoeic specimen, like tickle and wink; tiny slips of mischievousness tied up in little wriggles of ink. 

More and more, I’m realising the power of words. We don’t just speak them, we release them into the world like frogspawn; fertile pouches of punctuation that grow arms and legs, all squiggling far and free into the world. The language we birth drifts like plankton through the energetic ether, crossing vast reefs of ever-receptive anemones that digest and release their essence back into our teeming little rockpools of time and space.

Ah, the bawdy gleam of gobble or the sticky lewdness of secrete; the ringleted prettiness of curlicued or the thrilling, breathy sibilance of illicit! Hurrah for the stout clout of thick-witted and the bovine plod of placidity! Though I do pity that poor, misplaced militia (no such sibilant treat should describe something so mercenary and bleak; better a gooey, molten delicacy to be savoured for its sweetness!). So thank goodness for hullabaloo, kerfuffle and rapscallion, all doing exactly what they promised to.

As the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson said, ‘Language is the dress of thought’. And for each of us, there is a Narnia-like wardrobe of words to explore and try on if we choose. No need to don the dreary sacking of a word like exercise; we can experiment with frills, fabrics and finery! As Candace Pert rightly notes in her book ‘Molecules of Emotion’, doesn’t ‘bodyplay’ sound infinitely more fun than exercise?!

Words can enhance and empower like Dynasty shoulder-pads or leave us chill-veined and shivery in our socks and pants: a sharp-suited ‘I will’ vs a threadbare ‘I might’. Words can protect us or expose us, feed or deplete us, nourish or sicken. Just like mushroom-picking, it’s best to choose with great care; the most tempting and accessible are often the most poisonous, and the rarest delicacies must be sniffed from the earth like buried truffles. 

And so they remain, waiting patiently for us to discover them, forgotten presents under the linguistic Christmas tree. Poor weevily, mawkish and gnarly, under-appreciated like the lesser-loved dwarfs in Sleeping Beauty; a motley collection of the roguish and downright grumpy!

Words are a buffet of coloured beads with which to string our necklace of meaning and a merry sandpit of sound-play. Try whispering oink, smudge or clunk like sumptuous jewels, or enunciating the engorged licentiousness of tumescence… oh haughtily naughty word, how I do love thee!

And like a box of beads, each word choice influences the next. Our first pick determines the shapes and colours that follow, and each bead threaded onto the necklace of our lexicon invites more of the same; miniature avalanches of associative energy tumbling endlessly into the jewellery of our subconscious. 

‘Struggle’ is a case in point – a sludgeonly word full of drudge-filled deadweight that I so often catch myself using. What if I choose something a little more flexible, like the fancy performance-wear athletes use? A breathable, moisture-wicking wonder that lets me prance and stretch freely, all while giving my buttocks a gratifying-perky lift?! What if I’m not struggling (which sounds arduous and futile), but rummaging – delving delightedly through the great jumble-sale of life’s possibilities towards those abandoned, mothballed treasures of truth? Yes, that feels better!

And since feelings are the fruiting bodies of our thoughts, the language we think and speak in spreads its spores like fungi; great cankers can bloom forth if we’re careless with our choices. A word’s resonance can spread underground like honey fungus, withering our roots and inner wood.

So may we all be truffle-hogs instead, digging out the subterranean treasures rather than grasping at the familiar toadstools of our lexicon!

And may I rummage through my words the way I do through my tin of Quality Street…

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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