Learning to Fly: Inspiration and Motivation

‘Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness.’ Julie Cameron
There is a saying that in order to fly you must first be willing to fall. Over the past few days I have seen this illustrated first hand in my row of terrace houses just behind the castle ruins and the busy promenade in Aberystwyth. With the sun bright in the sky and the sounds of children splashing and squealing in the water it is hard to believe there has been a life and death drama unfolding in the form of a fledgling crow learning how to fly. I have watched it flapping its wings awkwardly, only to find itself sliding down roofs, bouncing into bushes and eventually sleeping exhausted on the tops of parked cars, while mother and father crow shout their warnings from rooftops and fly down in quick forays to nudge their baby back into action. For a few days I was woken at 4am by harsh cries as the parents fought pitched battles with prowling neighbourhood cats that are always on the lookout for an easy catch. Then one morning all was quiet and when I looked out of my attic window I could see the fledgling crow perched proudly on a rooftop before lifting gracefully into the air, delighted by its new found skill.
Whether it is learning to fly or writing a novel, starting a business or choreographing a dance, the creative process demands risk and good timing, openness to discovery and a lot of hard work. As Stephen King wrote, ‘amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.’ He is right of course but inspiration is important too, the first step in a much longer process that requires a constant and often unconscious shifting back and forth between intuition and intellect, heart and head. Inspiration is the mystery behind the creative process, the spiritual element that is such an important balance to the practical slog of day-to-day work. It is a gift, the spark that sets our creative juices flowing, the moment when an idea descends and we know beyond doubt that we can bring it to fruition. We must hold onto that moment because almost immediately the doubts will surface, niggling away at our confidence so that it can become a battle against ourselves just to begin, let alone to finish.
‘Making things happen’ is the essence of the creative process. It is making something from nothing, or at least bringing all of ourselves to a task, using our imaginations to transform what we already know into what might be, and in the process manifesting our ideas in the physical world. It is magical and it is transformational. And yet so many of us don’t believe we are capable of creating anything, or at least don’t see that our own versions of ‘making things happen’ are creative. We are not all writers but we are all story tellers and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we are capable of, have a profound effect on whether or not we are able to bring our ideas to fruition. Most of us impose limitations upon ourselves through the stories we repeat over and again, the ones that have wrapped themselves around us, tangling into a mess of threads that are almost impossible to unravel and that restrict our understanding of our potential. These are the stories that define who we are at any given time. Unconsciously we repeat phrases until they eventually become negative mantras: ‘I am not creative’. . . ‘I will fail’. . . ‘I am afraid to succeed’. . . ‘I am not worthy’ . . . ‘This is not how it should be done’. . . But it is important to follow the threads back through the tangle to the source of these restrictive stories and then to let them go, for as writer, Salmon Rushdie says, ‘Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.’
Our stories have the capacity to be restrictive, holding us within the perceived security of our ordinary world. However, paradoxically, they can also be liberating. Edward de Bono, writes that ‘creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.’ Inevitably there is risk involved. We might step off the roof only to find that our wings aren’t yet ready for flight and we might come face to face with predatory monsters but eventually, if we persevere we will succeed. By taking our ideas and running with them, by putting our faith in ourselves and the creative process, we can see where we have become stuck, see the patterns we are repeating and begin to rewrite the negative stories. In the process we will both liberate ourselves and create something harmonious from the chaos of our lives.
The ideas that come to each of us do so for three reasons. Firstly, we must have our ears pricked and our eyes alert, listening and looking out for them. As Philip Pullman said, ‘I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.’ We must be there, waiting for our ideas and when they come we need to receive them with gratitude and accept the responsibility for their maturation.
Secondly, we are the one person who can bring that particular idea to fruition at that particular time. Each of us has a unique combination of experience and skills, of themes that resonate within us and dreams that draw us onwards and inwards. The ideas that come to us do so because somewhere in the fusion of all that makes up our selves, lies the possibility of creating something that speaks beyond our limitations.
And finally, we receive an idea because we need to undertake that particular journey for reasons we may not understand until well after the journey is completed. In my experience as a writer, a mentor and a teacher of writing, I have found that the ideas we accept and run with generally bring us face to face with something within us that needs resolution. This has certainly been the case with my own creative projects, particularly with novel writing which, because of its length and the inclusion of a character arc, enables me to weave a number of seemingly disparate ideas into a single unit. Unlike a short story, which so often starts and ends at a turning point, a novel explores the lead up to a turning point as well as its consequences and the conflicts and changes that are wrought on the character/s. I am intrigued by the mystery of this process and the discovery that, as with most of the characters who inhabit a story, it is impossible for the author to emerge from the writing of it unchanged.
When our children were young, we returned to Australia for a number of years. I had already been writing for some time but my work reflected my own existential crisis, exploring the numbness I felt inside myself but at the same time resisting change. My stories were dark and hopeless. They were fictional. And they were about me. Only I hadn’t realized that yet. I hadn’t understood the power of story to heal and instead was stuck like a scratched record, going over and over the same point, telling myself the same stories, living fearfully and unable to liberate myself. Returning to Australia was a turning point for me because I was forced to face much of what I had been running from for years – my past.
Back in Australia we set out for fourteen months in a campervan to explore that vast continent. Sitting in our tiny home on wheels, I felt a rush of excitement mingled with fearful anticipation. We were heading into the unknown. Embarking on an adventure that would take us out of the structures of the ordinary world we normally inhabited and into a new world filled with different dangers and rewards. As yet I had no inkling that I would find a novel in this journey: that the idea would lodge itself in my mind; that the strands of character and plot would form and weave together as we drove; or that the themes and issues relevant to my own life would be explored and understood through the process of fiction. It didn't cross my mind that my writing would eventually help me to resolve the past and learn how to live well in the present.
I can still remember the moment when I received the idea for my first novel, though if I’m honest there were already intriguing themes circulating in the back of my mind, questions that needed answering about belonging and place and identity, questions that arose from my own sense of lack and the baggage I was carrying. We were in the van, travelling up through central Australia and I was scanning the horizon for a tree, just a little shade to shelter us while we stopped to eat our lunch in the scorching heat. There were no trees. When we pulled over to the side of the road, the temperature outside was in the high thirties and in just a few minutes the temperature inside the van rose to the mid-forties. In desperation, Tim started the engine again and left the air conditioning running while we sat huddled inside, eating our droopy sandwiches and drinking lukewarm water, surrounded by a vast dazzling heat which made the air wobble into luscious mirages.
Stepping out into the sunlight I inhaled and gasped as hot air burnt all the way down and into my lungs. My husband undid Freda's seat belt so she could come out and stretch her legs for a few minutes. She was wearing only a nappy so the sun was fierce on her skin but she didn't seem to notice, just looked around eagerly, unaware of any danger or discomfort. Where Freda in her innocence and immediacy, saw the potential for adventure, the nervous mother in me saw the potential for disaster. The ground was littered with bones, bleached white by the sun and glistening. Bones. A landscape of death. It seemed to me that this was a world entirely without sentiment, a place where death was inconsequential. I shuddered and reached out to catch Freda as she made a barefooted dash for freedom and the termite mounds.
When the idea came it was a moment of synchronicity, a gift, from within or without, I could never tell. I stopped, almost afraid to breathe in case it disappeared. It was fragile and formless as yet, but nevertheless, the beginnings of a story. Instinctively I knew that I mustn't force it or even try to grasp it, so instead I took little sideways glimpses. It was in the form of an image. A toddler about the same age as Freda, perhaps a little older but abandoned out here by the side of the road. The contrasts were extreme, the harsh unforgiving desert and a fragile, vulnerable child. As a mother of young children I felt sick letting my imagination take me there but it was already clear that this was an idea I needed to nurture.
Back in the van, I wrote a few words in my journal: toddler found wandering among the termite mounds on the Stuart Highway. Abandoned. Whiteness standing out against the deep orange earth. Threats: snakes, termites, sun, road trains thundering by. Looking around and understanding she is alone. Who finds child? Piece together her history. I drew a box around these words and wrote NOVEL above them, then shut the diary. But an idea is not a story, it is the seed of one, so I had to tend to my idea while it grew, helping it on its journey towards the light, making the necessary connections and forming it into a story ready to be told.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website: http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/