Why Creativity Takes Courage

Posted on June 11, 2019 by Heloise Jones

Some of my best ideas come in the shower. Characters show up, share stories I couldn’t have guessed. I get downloads for blogs, word for word. Answers to puzzles, insights on questions, things to explore. The shower’s my creative power spot, and this morning I got this: Creativity’s not for sissies.

I was pondering a comment by a client about how people dismiss her as a writer. “I feel bothered when people tell me it’s my hobby,” she wrote. “It means more to me than that.”

I knew no amount of words would help. I could say it’s about them, what they don’t understand, and it wouldn’t matter. Because I get it. This expression of hers is a diamond in her genetic code. It’s serious stuff. Even for hobbyists. We gotta be like ducks, let stuff like this roll off our backs. It takes courage to be creative!

We have to accept we see things most others don’t.
And may see in ways others can’t comprehend. We’re often called weird, different, flighty. . .or creative, with special emphasis as if it’s an explanation for something not right. Until our weird gets redefined. . .think Steve Jobs or Iris Apfel. What to do? Own It. I mean Capital O. Capital I. The world needs our creativity.

Sometimes it takes time to find our Creative Soul Song.
I’ve been an artist my entire life. My mother said from the time I could hold a pencil, the thing I loved most was to draw. But Writing is where I landed. It’s the Soul Song that answers Yes for me every time. Everything in my life feeds it. We have to be patient, and feed our creative spirit.

Your creative life is your life in the real world.
We carry multiple realities at once – the one from our creative spirit, and the one living in the real world. They’re both as real as real can be to us.

Creativity takes loving yourself, unconditionally.
Whether our signature is visual, movement, words, music, biz, solutions, gardens, healing, name it, it’s part of who we are. We love it, we gotta love ourselves. It always amazes me folks think the book easy to read was easy to write if you’re a writer. Or that painting was done because someone has talent. That dance done so beautifully by a natural dancer. The smart biz person lucked out. And the master gardener just knows. Yes.Yes. And the truth is skill & getting good at our craft took digesting a metaphorical million page manual. And hours of practice. All ongoing. + It’s passion (heart) and belief (mind) that keep us creatively alive. The fantasies persist in people’s mind, even when we tell them.

Deadly potholes are everywhere, despite our accomplishments and triumphs.
They’re always there, and we fall in. Again and again. Comparisons, doubts, fears, performance anxiety, questioning, fraud syndrome, feeling selfish for taking time to create, the failure that erases the long line of stellar works. Like a secret society, those who’ve been there & understand are the ones to get us out.

We want our work seen and valued.
And that often takes what seems like unfair stamina, persistence, self love, loneliness, giving pieces of ourselves away, and getting up from a fall too many times. The hidden hours learning, daydreaming, envisioning, honing and refining are discounted when someone asks how long it took, or asks for a discount when they pay. When our work’s dismissed or someone says anyone can do that, vs. asking, “What does your writing mean to you?’ it hurts. Even with a thick skin.

We humans were all born to create. A home, a family, a path thru life….and some of us, well, we swirl to a special tune we hear, offering something unique to the world in the process. New ways of seeing, an experience that awakens, enlivens, and touches others. It takes a fierce heart. And it’s worth every minute of it.

“I always felt that writing––it just felt magical to me; it felt like alchemy: that you could take mere words and end up creating a feeling or a sensation or evoke a memory.”
~ Susan Orlean

How does your creative spirit show up? What does it mean to you?

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Unexpected Trip Back to Myself

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Heloise Jones

The calendar has turned another year. I’ve had no hesitation writing 2019. It’s been a roller-coaster of highlights & lows the past 7 years. Looking ahead feels good. In no small measure because I took a journey to Kenya in December. A return to travel after nearly 5 yrs. and no ordinary trip. A mix of awe, wonder, beautiful connections, and unexpected challenges, I came back changed.

After a few days adjustment, I slept 9 hrs. a day for days in a row when I returned. No ordinary sleep, tho. I was deep in the ethers and nether realms, with dreams I couldn’t remember. Like I was catching up on years of no sleep. I didn’t return to FB right away, either. Even after a 3 week absence, first time since I started ages ago, I’m still not back full-time. I’m finding new space.

Truth, the entire trip was the final leg of a journey back to myself, only to be seen in hindsight.

I’d been saying all year I was going to Africa, albeit with no answer how or when. Then, an email arrived from a writer friend about a writing contest, 48 hrs. to deadline. I won a partial fellowship to a writing residency.

I was thrilled. I’m intensely interested in culture and how it shows up in both works and a writer’s voice, so the chance to meet Kenyan writers excited me. Plus, we’d reside in the lower rift valley for part of the journey. I was enthralled with the idea I’d be in the place that inspired Karen Blixen to write “Out of Africa.” As time got closer, there was evidence and strong intuition all my surprises may not be pleasant ones. I was too far in, too invested with desire and money to back out, tho. I needed this trip. I needed to unplug, step away from work. To write my own work, again, and talk with other writers about writing. To be inspired by the shifts a new-to-me place brings. I’d been feeling anxious about life for too long. I left ready for something good.

Oh, my. I was not prepared for how deeply I’d feel a connection to the land and people I encountered in the silences. Africa became a part of me as if my DNA changed. Several people have told me since that this is what happens. It’s deep, or not at all. No middle ground.

In a weird kind of way, one of my discomforts turned into a blessing. Most who meet me think I’m an extrovert (or weird) because I’m authentically curious, interested, and expressive. The truth is I spend most of my time in solitude, and typically travel alone. Long periods with people talking in groups feel overwhelming for me. One way I dealt with this was to sit up front in the seat next to the driver on our group drives. I didn’t run, scream ‘shotgun,’ it seemed to evolve. Like the angels watched my back, even in a lucky invitation by the guide when we went on safari! I was happy sitting there quietly where I could see, have questions about what I observed answered. Things like history of the land & people, rhythms of African life & traffic/travel, the city, the country, animals. All the things I was interested in.

My experience on The Maasai-Mara National Reserve was perhaps my biggest surprise. I saw bones gleaming white on the savannah and they captured me. Strings of them behind black-horned skulls, everywhere. Sitting beside our Maasai guide who was educated as an animal and land conservationist, I learned the close cropped, tawny colored grass covering the ground would rise tall and green with the rains in the fall, and the animals would safari (to travel, from the Arabic safara; to journey in Swahili) across the hills from the Serengeti. That the plains would blacken with thousands of animal bodies, and one could see a wildebeest brought down by lions once every hour. And how when the lions were done, the wildebeest fed waves of hyenas and jackals. In the end, beautiful vultures unlike any I’ve ever seen, white-backed and gray-backed, picked the bones clean. What struck me was every skull rested chin forward. I thought an animal in death would lie on its side. Who knows, perhaps the weight of the horns righted the skull after the flesh was gone. I didn’t invite a logical explanation. It was a spiritual experience. The bones talked to me of sacred offerings and the cycles of life.

When we returned to the rural rustic accommodations on the Maasai preserve where we stayed, a poem flowed thru me. The only fresh thing I wrote on the entire residency. When I got home, I edited it, added a dedication to my Maasai ‘teachers,’ community leader Simon Metekai Masago and safari guide Jackson Kayionni Letiol, shared it with them. It’s been accepted for publication this spring in The Wayfarer, a beautiful professional journal with the tagline “Reimagining the Possible – Charting the Way to Change.” Could this be any closer to what happened for me?!

With all the good stuff, I’d be remiss to not admit there were moments of deep challenge on the trip. Things that hurt and couldn’t be fixed. And in the end, I had a choice. I could let them take me back to what I know for sure: Sometimes we can’t fix things in the moment. We gotta own what’s ours, learn and move on, without putting up walls. We all look thru a lens created by our experience. And ultimately, the best we can do is find our way to who we are in our Heart, and BE that. My choice, fierce hearted.

Amazing lyricist (poet) and musician Bruce Cockburn says it best in his song, When You Give It Away. “I’ve got this thing in my heart, I must give you today. It only lives when you Give it away.”

This turning inside me feels like the animals must feel with the promise of fresh grass.

Wishing you All Things Good in 2019.

The photos are O’Hare Airport, Chicago, USA. This is what I saw when I entered the terminal. I swear, after 25 hrs. travel, I didn’t see the affirmation facing me on the globe ’til I got there & looked up.
Africa.

Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life.

This blog is dedicated to my friend Johnson Mwangi Mathenge, who I sat beside for probably 22 hrs. as we drove thru Kenya. He shared so much about what I saw,
and brought me the best Kenyan tea.

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Lessons from Sam Shepard

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Heloise Jones

July 27th was the one-year anniversary of the death of Sam Shepard, writer-actor-director. Someone I always felt in my bones. On the 29th, I sat in what looked like a ‘pieced-together’ theatre in a warehouse space bordered on one side with a gallery showing fabulous works, and a market of crafts and cultural goods on the other. There were black walls, and rough wood risers with rows of seats clearly salvaged from another theatre, their glory days long gone. The stage was a large platform two steps up.

I love this sort of space. To me, it always says ‘earnest art performed here.’ I love the intimacy, too. Here, 200 seats in a wide semi-circle around the stage. Perfect for the series of readings billed as An Evening Honoring the Work of Sam Shepard.

I thought about that night for days afterwards.

I’ve been to readings of plays before. The distillation to the heart of the work they present appeals to me. How the action’s pared down to words, facial expressions, tone & inflection in the voice. How they require a different level of engagement when there’s no set or scenery to distract. The hotel room is the one I see in my mind. That sunset she gazes upon out the window is the one I see in my mind.

There were 19 readings over the 90 minutes. Three actors each time. Each choice showcasing what I’d not seen with such precision before…full character, story, and stakes embedded in the scene. I didn’t need to know the entire story. The mysteries remained a mystery, and I was still satisfied. I believe it’s what he meant when he said he’s not interested in the explanations.

“I’m interested in the provocation. Explanations are a dime a dozen. I think it’s a cheap trick to resolve things. . .stick to the moment to moment thing of it.”

The provocation keeps it going for us. Our mind and heart feeling the full story. As a writer, it blew me away. Where the story really is.

I’ve never seen a play written by him, tho he’s written 44, and received a Pulitzer + multiple Obie Awards for his plays. And yet, I recognize his work when I see it onscreen, every time. I’ll watch a movie and think, this feels like Sam Shepard wrote it, and I’d be correct. It’s his Voice.

I talk a lot about a writer’s Voice being their SuperPower. Both as a tool for empowerment, and as a way of expressing one’s authentic self in the work. Sam Shepard’s is a clear, true signature of tone, subject, theme, pace, timing, and atmosphere. We know he knows what he’s writing about. We know he’s in it. We are always in our most authentic work.

He was living here in Santa Fe when I briefly met him. A friend worked at the Santa Fe Institute where he was a SFI Miller Scholar. He wrote on a typewriter in the library there. A window facing the Jemez mountains above his desk. Cormac McCarthy sat and typed on his own typewriter close by. I admit I was in awe, standing in that inner sanctum where masters create. As luck had it, another friend wanted to off-load two vintage typewriters I thought he may be interested in, and he walked into the building before I left.

What impressed me most from that seven or so minutes we talked was his presence to the moment, and to me. I viscerally felt his attention.

Later I thought how I’m drawn in every moment he’s onscreen. His manner holding my attention through each movement and word, whatever the role, so that I lean in. John Sayles is the only other person I’ve ever spoken to and observed interacting with others who has that same sort of presence to the moment & person. It’s something rare to experience. Total Presence.

I believe the #1 question we must answer for anything of note we do is ‘What does this thing (writing, teaching, fill in the blank) mean to me?’ Because the answer is the key that opens us up, and keeps us moving to do the thing. It’s what keeps me at this desk editing draft after draft. + The answer gives us purpose, whether we’re aware or not. I found his answer to the question in the program notes from that night:

“I started writing to keep from going off the deep end. I was breaking ice with myself. I can remember being dazed with writing, of finding I had these words inside of me, these voices, shapes, light, elements that cause anyone to make a journey.” Connection.

And of his early works,
“They were chants, they were incantations, they were spells, or whatever you want to call them. You get on ‘em and you go. To say they were well-thought-out, they weren’t. They were a pulse.” Follow the Pulse.

Years ago when he and writer/singer Patti Smith were collaborating on a play, she told him she was nervous writing for the stage, this being her first time. What he told her is my mantra.

“You can’t make a mistake when you improvise,” he said.
“What if I screw up the rhythm?” she said.
“You can’t. It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.”

No fear in screwing up. Create your own beats. Support one another.

Sam Shepard was poetic, real, and full of contradictions. A reviewer said we get a chance to explore the hidden pieces of ourselves when we view his work. Perhaps that’s what I’m always looking for when I see him onscreen. As if these pieces are hidden in plain sight, to be found if we look long or hard enough. It’s the biggest lesson, because it’s exactly what living life fully is about.

Sam Shepard
November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017

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Found Between Pause & Doing

Posted on February 13, 2018 by Heloise Jones

The daylight is more than halfway gone as I listen to the snow melt on the flat roof of this Santa Fe house. The stream from the roof is loud as it hits a puddle beside the raised concrete slab of the portal. This day there’s something about the snow that says it’s okay to slow down and meander thru the rooms in my small home. Pretend it’s a holiday. Let go the stomp of shoulds that other wide-open days engender. Even with the sun shining, the sky blue and clear of clouds over the glitter of snow covering the ground, let your mind wander. Perhaps it’s the cushioned silence, or the soft edges the snow puts on the world that makes me feel this way.

What if I simply wrote stories today, I think. See what comes. What if I forget work and soften into this thing twisting me inside out, turning my middle to stone. A feeling I’ve never had before in my long journey with writing.

I was in second grade when I planned my first book. I had a title, table of contents, and several stories written. My parents thought this little book and me brilliant. I abandoned it when it stopped being fun.

I was in third grade the first time I had writer’s block. I sat outside at wooden table and bench composing a poem, inspired by one I saw in the school newsletter. No one ever saw that poem. I didn’t know if I’d done it right, had no sense if it was good or bad, and wouldn’t allow myself to find out.

My first award for creative writing was in 6th grade. My story displayed at an arts fair. ‘Heloise is good at creative writing’ was the note my teacher wrote in my report card that year. At 18, I failed creative writing in college. Our one assignment each Friday in class was to write, anything. Each Friday I turned in a blank sheet of paper. I didn’t know what to write. Didn’t know how to start.

Nine years later, poems flew in like birds and angels as I navigated a painful divorce. Spontaneous, rhyming, complete. Unbidden. I had no way to call them at will. Once I was strong, they disappeared as quickly as they appeared.

Never during these years did I think I was a person who wrote. Even as I journaled. Even with the poems. I was an artist. Visual arts my creative expression and aspiration. It didn’t occur to me that all my jobs involved creativity and writing as I listened and helped people get what they desired.

In my late 30s, in school for the 5th time to earn my bachelor’s degree, I heard a new word – patriarchy. I listened to young women talk about date rape as if it was normal, an accepted risk. I thought of my own experiences. I ignited. I took my Voice and became an activist on that huge university campus. Organizing, writing, speaking to groups, meeting with administrators & professors, founding a campus-wide newsletter for women students & faculty. I was known for my Voice. It was my Superpower. And I used it to lead, and as my instrument to establish a Women’s Center on campus. My experience on that campus is what led me to being a writer. Because six years later, I realized I’d lost my Voice.

In a round-about way I joined a circle of women who met Tuesday afternoons to write to prompts. We read our raw work aloud, responded with a few words to what we heard. And for a year the group sat mute after I read. I vowed I’d quit. I was encouraged to stick with it.

One day, wanting badly to understand why people had nothing to say to my writing, I asked the right question: what can I do to connect? ‘Give them something grounded in the physical world to hold on to,’ the answer.

I started observing the world in a new way. I worked at finding the words to describe what I saw and felt. I stepped close to my experience, wanted to bring the reader & listener close in with me. I studied my craft. Stuck was never an issue to worry about. It was something to ride out. Until now.

These past two weeks since I came out of an intentional two-month pause have bedeviled me.

I know the value of pauses, have written often about it. We put distance between us and our work, come back with new eyes & perspectives. They’re periods of gestation and/or assessment. Ideas & thoughts take form within the relief of space and time. Intentional Pauses are an action. What happened next is where I got lost.

I jumped to the next action phase as I saw it, tasks. . .my interpretation of a favorite quote, ‘When you’re in motion, the form will emerge’ by Michael Hyatt. And something went wrong. I wasn’t moving. Couldn’t make myself move. Even with wanting it and seeing how my intentions dovetailed who I am, what I love to do, my skills & genius, and my beliefs & purpose. This was more than fear, or procrastination, or perfectionism. It felt so.darned.hard. I flogged myself, then decided to feed my soul.

I saw author Colum McCann in conversation with actor Gabriel Byrne. Their entire conversation about STORY. Colum McCann struck me deep when he said, “The best writing makes us sit up and take notice and it makes us glad that we are––however briefly––alive.” Yes, oh Yes.

I went to a monthly talk put on by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. That day’s presentation called ‘Color as a Verb.’ It featured a well-known artist, Sam Scott, and the Museum’s preservationist. I loved it. Especially the part about the science of color in the brain, and how our brain creates most of the colors we see because it wants all the primary colors. That reminded me of hunger and longing in a story. When Sam Scott said, “See art with the eye of your heart, not with your expectations,” I substituted Story for art, heard the echo of my own words.

Once I relaxed and followed my intuition, what I needed to move forward arrived in wondrous ways – Bam! Thank you! with a big Yea. My brilliant ideas had legs.

I was lost in that middle ground of awareness and receptivity – the action between pause and doing. The place that asks the all-important right questions for connection. And it’s where I got found.

This Folk art birdy has been with me since 1998.
We’d left Santa Fe for Asheville, NC. The house we bought was owned by a collector. The birdies were permanently attached to branches along the windows of a closed-in porch. I still have three. Their beaks & tails are chipped. Their metal wings bent. Scars. All results from falling from high places, the perches I chose for them. And still they smile. I love them. In a way, they kinda remind me of Me.

We’re alive. We’re in motion.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Photo: Thought Catalog

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Stories, Our Connective Tissue

Posted on January 23, 2018 by Heloise Jones

So it surprises me now to hear
the steps of my life following me ––
so much of it gone. . .
as though a prayer had ended
and the bit of changed air
between the palms goes free
to become the glitter
on some common thing that inexplicably shines.
~ Galway Kinnel (from ‘The Still Time’)
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I saw the author of ‘The Artist’s Way,’ Julia Cameron, give a presentation recently. A friend who knows her introduced us. I was thrilled. I’d read her book in the early 90s when it first came out, and participated in a weekly group around the its principles. These groups grew into a worldwide phenomenon, and continue today. When she heard about my book ‘The Writer’s Block Myth,’ she wanted to know more and where to get a copy. I gifted her one. Somehow that felt special.

My take-away of the evening was the value of ‘morning pages.’ Three pages written in longhand first thing upon rising. Clear the mind, get the frets and broiling stuff up and out. What if you write 4 pages, someone asked. We get full of ourselves, Julia said. You’ve hit the real (sometimes hard) stuff by 1-1/2 pages. At three you get the heart of what you need and the magic happens. Seems there’s always a number before it’s too much or something else, doesn’t it? I made a vow to get back to morning pages.

I’ve been thinking A LOT about empowerment lately. This is no secret. I’ve written about it here. I’ve planned a retreat around women’s empowerment. I wrote a book of empowerment for writers and creatives. Behind my thoughts, the power of our words, spoken and written. How our stories are key in the narrative of our lives, and in a society’s narrative. Because stories are the glue of relationships and cultures. They drive us. They guide compassion and fear, biases and action. In the best of worlds, they have the power to light us up inside so we feel strong and confident, and we see we’re not alone. They’re a way to connect with ourselves and others, and have a Voice.

The truth of this is everywhere. I asked the lab tech if it was an iwatch I saw on her wrist as she drew my blood. It was. Do you like it? How do you use it? I asked. The questions I’ve had about this thing I perceived as frivolous, mainly because I couldn’t see a reason for it except as a gadget to further bombard one with info. She changed my mind with her story. ‘I have a special needs kid. He’s sight impaired,’ she said. ‘I get messages from his teachers during the school day. Now I can respond fast when I couldn’t before because our phones have to be off in the lab.’ A moment of connection with another person. A shift in perception for me. And for her, she had a voice, was more than her lab coat to this stranger.

I have a friend whose son is autistic. Speaking to people, especially in public, is hard for him. She home schools him, and posts some of her experiences with him on Facebook. The kid is brilliant. His response to his environment fascinating. Such as he knows and spells words I don’t have a clue the meaning of. Words far longer than the four & five letter words they had him read in public school. He saw a need, and decided he’ll found a university when he grows up.

I particularly love his answer to a woman who posed the question whether it’s OK to explain her child’s autism to strangers, or if privacy is more respectful and less ‘labeling.’ His spelled response: MY STORY IS SO TOTALLY WORTH NICE PEOPLE HEARING BECAUSE I REALLY LIKE MY DIFFERENT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD. (caps his) It’s not just his answer I love. I love the message inside it.

He’s a kid with no throwaway comments like you and I have. This one sentence took significant time and energy to say. And it was important to him to share it. Because he wants the world to hear it. He has a Voice, he sees and processes the world differently than most, and he’s empowered with that knowledge. He’s OK. I rather like that he says ‘nice people,’ too. As if he knows some people aren’t owed an explanation of who he is. The simple fact is his brain works differently, his way of communicating is often difficult to understand, and that makes him different. I think different is OK.

It always gets down to how we stay focused and move toward the goals we desire. How we live a creative life. Especially for writers. What’s the secret for seeing and listening with the assumption the story will be interesting, and ignoring, as poet Maya Stein says, the catcalls of the deadlines.

My intent for morning pages the day after I saw Julia Cameron didn’t happen as planned. I wrote 2 pages the first morning. The following two mornings, I forgot. It’s been off and on sporadic since. I heard others’ stories, and wasn’t hearing my own. Then last week, I got pulled deep, deep down into sleep. A nap in the afternoon, and again all thru the night. My dreams full and fat with presence and lots going on. My limbs weighed a thousand pounds when I rose the next day. Mid-afternoon, the BLUES came on with all caps. They curled up inside me, made a nest of my heart. I felt inconsequential and questioned myself, what I’m doing, & not. Those stories felt more real than all the good stuff in my life. At 2:30pm, I decided to write my morning pages.

I followed the pen, didn’t lead when I wrote, as I know to do. I was present and paid attention, resisting the urge to judge words or myself. I connected with both sides of the narratives running thru me. The one that squeezed my heart, and the one that stood in the shadows and needed a Voice. My perspectives shifted. My view of myself grew. I felt the blood move thru my arms and legs once more. I didn’t have answers. I had my Voice back. I wrote myself back up & onto my feet.

I live with these truths. . .Our Voice is our Superpower. Our stories are our connective tissue.
Tell your stories. The true ones. The ones in your strong heart without fear.

In the morning when you rise, write 3 pages longhand – your morning pages. Stick with it, finish the three. Note what you discover, what shifted, and how you feel at the end.

Photo: Jonatan Pie

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