Keeping faith

As writers I sometimes think we all fall into the "comparisons trap"; we compare our output with other, more prolific writers or even with ourselves at other stages in our creative careers. When, for whatever reason, we're not turning out what we'd like to, what we'd hoped to, and we hold ourselves up against others, it can be so depressing - and so demoralising too. Far from prompting us into action, it all too often makes it even more difficult to get our own show back on the road, even harder to keep faith in ourselves.

With this in mind, it was very refreshing earlier today to read Jan Fortune's blog, Becoming A Different Story. You may not have come across it, but Jan runs Cinnamon Press and blogs each week about different aspects of writing. I always look forward to it - it's a good Sunday morning read. Today she included an Oliver Sacks quote that I hadn't come across:

"Creativity = time + forgetting + incubation"   

The more I think about that, the more sense it makes. No experience is ever wasted for writers; it may not be of immediate use, but it's filed away (to all intents and purposes, forgotten) then quietly incubates, to be resurrected who knows when. The "fallow patches" we all endure may not be as fallow as we think.

This week I was certainly energised by the creativity of a group of photographers at Newport MIND. I'd been very impressed earlier in the summer when I was given a copy of "More Than Just My Mind", an anthology produced last year to celebrate the organisation's 40th anniversary. Some of the photography that accompanied the poems in that anthology was stunning. I'm now starting a couple of projects with the group, one in tandem with Women Aloud, my Cheltenham based poetry group, and one working on another anthology of my own poetry. The enthusiasm of the photographers is certainly infectious; the ideas I've been incubating for some time have, I think, found their soulmates!