Creativity is a joyful reminder of all that is positive and fun in life
THE wheels have come off the exercising ever since the sportive, but I have not my lying off idle sunbathing, dear reader. A lot goes into the day job and to try and improve my work and shed bad habits, I’ve been taking a long, hard look at my writing. And
I am not the only one!
Having joined a creative writing class around a year ago, I have been filling my iPad notebook with snippets of stories, observations, comments, free writing (where you just sit and write without any planned theme in mind for a few minutes), household budgets and, on occasions, poems.
I find the very act of writing great for externalising what’s on my mind – so often clogged with the white noise of social media and other stresses. The monthly writing class affords me a great opportunity to focus on the craft of writing by listening to other writers, many of whom are far more talented than yours truly at crafting short stories.
We read out our works which are based on prompts given by a fantastic upand-coming teen fiction author named Tina O’Callaghan and group members comment, providing constructive criticism.
At our last get together I was nearly knocked off my chair by the powerful stories some of the people were reading and went home in an inspired daze.
Having started the year with intent, my creative writing started to take a back seat to the day job, which tends to end up in my creative writing journal, at times, when – having gotten a call at 9.30 p.m. by someone I’ve been chasing for some information all week – I have to use the most available pieces of paper to hand.
Tina made a great point at the session, saying that anyone working on a story doesn’t have to adhere rigidly to completing our monthly writing exercises, but should be spending time ‘bums on seat,’ as she put it, finishing their stories.
This is true of all things in life, no doubt, and there is a lot to be said for completing each task at hand before moving on to the next.
It is sometimes levied at me at social gatherings that the job of the journalist is not real work. I am usually burger-half-in-mouth when the comment is lobbed surreptitiously into the conversation, and not wanting to spark an argument, go along with the line, but there are times when the job does take a toll.
As a journalist you meet people at their lowest. I recall meeting one father once whose child had died tragically and being told: ‘I wish I had never met you’. On other occasions you know the family involved, but still have to cover the story which is no cake walk.
The only constant is that you can never keep everybody happy all of the time, despite your best efforts. I enter the office with a positive mindset but like most journalists get accused of being wilfully negative. Beyond the politics, be they in an office or in a family, there is a genuine bond between people and a genuine hunger for love and affection and this is where the arts come in.
The act of writing a story, whether it is ever published in print, or not, is something to be cherished and I, for one, plan to use this summer to read more, write more and be more creative.
It may not be the day job, but I know it is a worthy hobby and a passion that has sustained me in difficult times and in great times also. My worn holiday diary contains some fantastic accounts of amazing places I have been fortunate enough to travel to and I will be filling its pages this summer.