Tag Archives: life

Messy Art

Posted on by vgemmell

This year has been a bit of a messy and frustrating writing year. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve started a new project, then abandoned two different versions after the 11,000 words mark. The idea was there, but the characters weren’t coming alive enough (even with experimenting with two different main protagonists), so I’ve put that on the back burner for another time. I’m back to writing what I feel most familiar with now; a new Young Adult mystery, but this time it’s got a bit more of a supernatural slant. The words are flowing slow, but the plot and characters are now taking enough shape that I know I will see this first draft through to the end. Now that I’ve committed that goal to words on here, it has to happen!

Summertime never feels like a productive time to write. I don’t know if this is a Scottish guilt thing, but when it’s sunny and light outside an internal nagging voice tells me, ‘I should be outdoors enjoying myself, doing something active’, not hiding away indoors, staring at a screen, whiling away the hours with imaginary friends. Add on hay fever (with even the non-drowsy antihistamines making me drowsy!), sleepless hot nights during the mini-heatwave, a day job which at the moment is mentally exhausting me, and you can see the challenges I’m facing trying to keep the creative energy burning bright.

I decided to stop beating myself up about my slow progress, and instead turned my focus to ‘filling the well’ ~ a metaphor author Julia Cameron uses in her book ‘The Artist’s Way’ when talking about the importance of replenishing our creative energy. Funnily enough Julia Cameron wrote the foreward in the book I just finished working my way through, which is called ‘The Creative Cure’ by Jacob Nordby. This was gifted to me by my Mum, and I really enjoyed the exercises peppered throughout, designed to ‘heal the vital connection to your creative self.’ Every once in a while I like to read books like this, to remind myself being creative is a really important part of who I am, and I need to give more priority to this part of my life (in order to stay sane, and stay content!).

In the book Nordby talks about adopting ‘A Creative Practice’. The focus here is on the word Practice which equals Improving (not completing or reaching an end goal). (pg 122) A reminder to ‘Go on adventures, take risks, try new things… broaden your scope and connect with your hidden joy.’ He suggests little tasks to start, as well as posing questions such as what creative things and creative habits could bring more joy into your life?

I used to be really good at setting myself fun creative tasks, like blog themes, photography challenges, writing challenges, and so on. It made me realise how important it is to keep my creative brain active and equating writing and creating to joy, not pressure. One of the tasks in the book was to choose a photograph and write a poem about it. It’s been a long time since I’ve written poetry and I was nervous about producing garbage. This feeling was revealing in itself – that putting pressure on myself to create something perfect, is often stopping me from creating anything.

After the task he asked us to write how it made us feel. And for me it was a feeling of exhilaration of being able to express myself (I ended up writing quite a personal, poignant poem), and I felt relief and happiness; that I had actually managed to form words, and words that I actually quite liked. It was a small step towards making sure I give time to my creativity, even if just for a small portion each day, or week. And to also embrace the idea of producing not perfect art, but messy art. This also feels like a rebellion during times where AI is dominating creative conversations. I don’t want to create stilted, perfect sentences that have no soul. I want to create works that are rough around the edges, with human error.

When the new August issue of Writing Magazine arrived on my doorstop yesterday, (see in the photo at the top), I thought it was very timely that a theme running through this issue was to ‘Find the Joy in Writing’. I started reading it over a cup of tea this morning and loved Holly Ringland’s article, ‘Writing for Joy in five faces of fear’, with key reminders of how to re-kindle the joy of writing she had as a child, when free from the ‘fears’ that can block our progression. Her article ended with the motivation to keep going, ‘Our work as writers…(is)….to take the next tiny step on the page’.

Then a few pages later, Lynne Hackles ‘Novel Ideas’ column had the theme of not putting things off until tomorrow. ‘If you find yourself saying, ‘I’ll start that tomorrow’ you are simply putting off something you should start right now….’

A book I had looked out of my bookshelf this morning was ‘The Pocket Muse’ by Monica Wood, thinking this could be a good way of setting myself some new creative challenges. The first page I opened to, tied to both of the statements I pulled out above, so I’m going to end on this phrase, in the hope that if you are reading this post feeling a bit stuck, and unable to move on, that you can take this as a sign to at least start something today, no matter how small. For me, it was getting back on this blog, to write a much overdue post!

‘What are you waiting for? If not now, when?’ ~ (Monica Wood)

Inspiration is Everywhere Part 2# (blog post 5 of series)

Posted on by vgemmell
An old observation diary

Today’s post is a continuation from last week where I shared some creative exercises that have helped me understand that when it comes to writing, and creating, you can find inspiration in the everyday ~ if you pay enough attention, stay curious, and let your imagination run wild!

When I deliver creative writing workshops I encourage participants to think of fun ways they can experiment with their writing. Often writers can put a lot of pressure on themselves, especially if working to deadlines, or expectations. It can also be daunting if you think a story should contain ‘complicated’ words or be a certain length.

I find a good way to take the pressure off, and to stop over-thinking, is to engage in writing tasks which don’t require a lot of words, and in fact make you start to look at words in a completely different way.

A challenge I took part in years ago, (just for fun, with friends), was to try and write stories composed of only three letter words (which then extended out to write stories with four letter words, five letter words – you get the idea!).

I amazed myself with being able to write not one, but quite a few, very short stories composed of three letter words. I’m sharing one of them below, which turned into a bit of a philosophical story.

3 Letter Word Story Example

Pat Woo and the Sun


One day Pat Woo saw the sun dip and tip out the sky. 
”Wow! See the sun!”

Pat Woo saw the sun run and Pat ran too. The sun set off for the day. One sun ray hit the ill cow. Pat saw the cow fly – set out for the sky. 

“Moo! Pat Woo! The cow can fly!”

Pat Woo saw the sun run and dip. Its ray hit the old rat. The old rat was lit. The rat got fit – saw the sky; his old eye now new. The rat saw the sun; saw Pat Woo.

“Pat Woo! The rat can see!”

One ray hit the cod. Pat Woo saw its fin dip; saw the cod nod and the cod got out the sea net.

“Pat Woo! The cod will not die!”
”Hot sun you are ace.” Pat Woo had joy for the sun. 

The sun had fun. Pat Woo did too – the day Pat Woo saw the sun dip and tip out the sky.

Why don’t you give this a go yourself? If you’re part of a creative writing group, it might a fun warm-up task to try to wake up the creative side of your brain.

As an extension of last week’s ‘Small Stones’ exercise, I’m going to challenge you to keep a more general ‘observation diary’. This can take the form of visual notes such as photographs, or scribbles (or notes in your phone), of interesting things you notice during your day-to-day. The Small Stones were quite creative paragraphs or lines, but in an observation diary you might want to capture musings and reflections on things in the news, things you overhear etc, anything really which you think one day could form part of a story.

Take a Photograph a Day

Was this a real girl?
Why is there a shoe in the cage with the skeleton?

I’m a very visual writer and I love taking photographs. You can start to build a ‘photographic’ observation diary by taking at least one interesting photograph every day. This could be anything which catches your attention; an abandoned shoe lying at the side of the road, an interesting sculpture you walk past every day, a strange doll in the window of a shop… You can start thinking about the story behind the image there and then, but often it might take a while for a proper idea to form. And that’s fine. Because now you’ve stored the photograph somewhere on your phone, you can return to this later. You might even want to combine the small stones tasks (see the post here for examples), with your photographs.

I’ve shared some photographs above I took when on various trips across the years, which I then later turned into short stories.

The heart photograph was a print which hung in the staircase of a Paris hotel I stayed in during my first solo trip abroad. I spent three nights in Paris and enjoyed wandering the streets alone, and it was during this time, passing by this print every day, I started to form the idea for a short story ‘Only You’ where a jilted bride spends her honeymoon alone in Paris. The story was runner-up in a competition, and broadcast on Hospital Radio. They sent me a CD recording of an actor reading it aloud, which was quite special. I loved hearing my words come to life.

If you enjoy finding inspiration from photographs check out the Scottish Book Trust 50 word story competition here They provide monthly photographic prompts

Listen to conversations

When I say listen to conversations, I mean within reason, as obviously it’s a bit rude to invade others’ privacy. But if you’re on a train or bus where your fellow passengers insist on talking loudly to one another (or on their phone), then naturally you will probably pick up interesting snippets of conversations throughout your day.

In an old ‘observation diary’ (where I used to write down thoughts that randomly popped into my head, interesting facts or stories I came across on social media or in the news, as well as overheard conversations) I found these snippets:

A man and a woman in conversation: “Tommy, you’re being really unfair. You’re stopping me from going to Hollywood. You’re being really bad to me with the brain transplant thing. I know I’ve had at least four brain transplants behind my back.” On the surface, most passengers would dismiss this woman as talking nonsense. But what if the man she is with is a mad scientist, and she’s the subject of numerous experiments, and is starting to rebel?

A teenage girl was sitting behind me on one train journey, talking loudly into her phone, “She fell out with me when I was camping because she said I never texted, but I couldn’t text because seriously I didn’t have reception… and then I ended up sitting with her all night on a night out so she never felt left out… I hate falling out with people, the thought of someone hating me, or having a problem with me…” At this point a boy nearby asks me if I’ve got a pen. He then returns to his seat to scribble something on a bit of paper and when he gets up at his stop he chucks a note at the girl before walking off.

The girl then shrieks into her phone, telling the person on the other end, “Oh my f-ing God. A guy just threw a note at me on the way off his train. Wait, wait. His name is Ryan. I swear… wait… he must have been listening to my conversation. How rude, haha.” (Newsflash girl, I think we’re all now listening)… “He’s said, You are too beautiful to have friends who are mean to you. Add me to facebook and let me make you smile.”

Now depending how your writer brain works, this could either be the start of a romantic novel or a true-crime type stalker thriller….

Next time I’ll be writing more about the inspiration behind my books.

Happy writing!

There will be days

Posted on by vgemmell
Pixabay photo by TemperateSage (Harmony Lawrence)

Today’s prompt is a combination of two: Write a commencement address for girls graduating high school/college and write a letter to your younger self

There will be days when you fail but when you pick yourself back up you will feel even more determined

There will be days when you feel everyone is moving faster. Don’t worry about speeding up to follow them. Slow down and take a deep breath and figure out what you really want. Here’s a hint- usually it is not what everyone tells you you should want. You will get there in your own time.

There will be days someone tells you you’re not good enough. Smile, walk away and enjoy showing them you totally are

There will be days you won’t feel confident in yourself and it might feel like everyone around you has it together. They don’t. They’re probably thinking the same about you. So be kind to each other.

There will be days you feel lonely. Sometimes because you are alone, but often it will be at a crowded party, or with someone who is bringing you down. Some day soon you will realise you are often your best company and the best times can be had alone, when you most definitely are not lonely.

There will be days you wish for things that never come and you cannot understand why. You won’t realise why until much later when you look around you and realise much better things arrived.

There will be days you feel lost and have no idea what you want. Enjoy the unknown directions. Whichever turning point at the crossroads you choose you can always come back again, then walk a different way. Each time you will take away something good, because you’ve been brave enough to move forward.

There will be days you win and accomplish great things, like today. Make sure you take proper time to celebrate and stay in the moment. You’ve done amazing things and your best achievements are yet to come.

You’ve got this.