Word Saucery

I spent a couple of hours on a quiet Thursday evening last week entering some of my books into my new online library at LibraryThing.

In fact, you can now see a nice widget dsiplaying a random selection of them down there in the right hand sidebar of my blog.

LibraryThing is a rather funky site with all kinds of interesting features. Not only do your books look rather beautiful in the Covers view but you can also join Groups and connect with Locals in your area. Sadly, I don’t seem to have any fellow York-dwellers online yet but I am sure that is only a matter of time.

I find it fascinating to see what other people are reading and to trace that book trail between shared favourites to find new suggestions.

I firmly believe that what you read is very important to what you write. Books feed your mind like… erm… tomato salad or a nice slice of tarte au citron or a glass of chilled white wine… or porridge.

Sometimes I even prescribe myself books. A nice fat novel or an inspiring biography or a poem produce very different effects. Now that’s an idea: a book precription service. Maybe I should start one!

This time of year is the time when my favourite flowers, the peonies, are opening. Each year, they continue to take me by surprise. They begin as such tightly furled bud-balls, and then slowly unfold themselves, when I’m not looking, into quiet explosions of petals.

I loved these so much that I just had to set them against the white chair  and take a photo.

And it gives me such pleasure, this bringing together of objects. I suppose that’s also what I’m doing when I write.

Looking into the ruffles of the petals, I’m thinking of a poem by Mary Oliver, which is not about peonies at all, but about moccasin flowers. (In England, I think we might call these flowers ‘lady’s slipper’):

‘But all my life - so far -
I have loved best
how the flowers rise
and open, how

the pink lungs of their bodies
enter the fire of the world
and stand there shining
and willing - ‘

Yes. That’s what I feel this morning when I look at these peonies.

A very interesting article on Psyblog called ‘Why Group Norms Kill Creativity’ got me thinking today.

Here is the first sentence:

‘Creativity is a much coveted asset for a very simple reason: an idea that transcends orthodoxy has the power to bring wealth, fame and status.’

Hmmm… And there, right there, is where I stopped reading.

Because is this elusive thing called creativity really only desired by so many because it ‘has the power to boring wealth, fame and status.’ Are wealth, fame and status the only outcomes or benefits of discovering and expressing and sharing one’s creativity?

If you are reading this blog, the chances are that you have more than an inkling that creativity is important to you for other reasons too. It’s not just about being published and revered by your peers (status). In fact, for most people, it is especially not about being published. And most poets I know (myself included) would have given up making poems long, long ago if they were doing it for the wealth and fame!

Creativity is more than this. It is about connectign with your feelings, working through them, perhaps finding a form that fits them or constrains them, perhaps sharing our ideas and developing dialogues and conversations with others… so many things that creativity is and is about for so many people.

I am not saying that creativity is not also sought out by organisations and corporations and entrepreneurs in order to make money or solve problems. But saying that creativity is only about that seems to miss the very essence of what creativity is and can be.

The Psyblog article goes on to cite some very interesting research about ways in which ‘group norms kill creativity.’ (Yes, I did go on to read the entire article in the end.)

Here is how the article cites one research example of how groups can ‘kill’ the creative process:

‘When groups are asked to think creatively the reason they frequently fail is because implicit norms constrain them in the most explicit ways. This is clearly demonstrated in a recent study carried out by Adarves-Yorno et al. (2006). They asked two groups of participants to create posters and subtly gave each group a norm about either using more words on the poster or more images.

Afterwards when they judged each others’ work, participants equated creativity with following the group norm; the ‘words’ group rated posters with more words as more creative and the ‘images’ group rated posters with more images as more creative. The unwritten rules of the group, therefore, determined what its members considered creative. In effect groups had redefined creativity as conformity.

In another part of the same experiment these results were reversed when people’s individuality rather than their group membership was emphasised. Creativity became all about being different from others and being inconsistent with group norms. When freed from the almost invisible shackles of the group, then, people suddenly remembered the dictionary definition of creativity: to transcend the orthodox.’

How hypnotic! The group is given a subtle suggestion of a ‘norm’ about what creative behavior might be and - bingo! - the group members act to fulfil that norm.

However,  this article itself is an interesting enactment of the ‘norms’ that kill creativity.

We live in a society that tends to value or ‘normalise’ wealth, fame and status. That is a broad generalisation, perhaps, but most of us live our lives at work and at home, subtly influenced by the expectations of the various groups of which we are members and their norms about what is successful and good: earn more money, buy a bigger house, do the ‘right’ thing, wear this, don’t do this, etc.

In this society or group in which we live at the present time, it can be challenging to make a life for yourself as a creative person because perhaps the very nature of your creativity means that you are not living your life according to these ‘norms’. You are challenging the norms, questioning them. People around you may not validate you or support you  in doing that. You may end up thinking: ‘Perhaps I have it ‘wrong.’

I have certainly worked with a lot of creative people who have allowed the creativity to be crushed out of them by a group norm of one kind or another:

‘Don’t do that or Mummy will be angry.’

‘I won’t play that with you. It’s stupid.’

‘Why do you want to do that? You must be crazy!’

I’m convinced that being free to express our own innate creativity - whatever that means to us - is essential to our happiness and well-being. Some organisations and corporations understand this. Creativity is about happiness, about flow, about being who we really are. It’s about so much more than wealth, fame and status.

The funny thing is that wealth, fame or status often come to those who encourage creativity in others and are free to express their own.

‘When the peaks of our sky come together,

My house will have a roof.’

Paul Eluard

I sometimes think that, when we make a poem or a piece of writing, we are making a safe container for our feelings. We are making something that is sufficiently  bounded to hold our sense of self, but with room to breathe, to move around. These are houses made of breath.

One of my favourite thinkers on poetry, Gaston Bachelard, writes in hs wonderful book ‘The Poetics of Space,’ that ‘the house, even more than the landscape, is a “psychic state”.’ Many psychologists still judge a child’s happiness by the house that he or she makes on the page. What colour is it? is the door closed or opened, or are the windows lit from the inside, is the sun shining above it?

Beach huts, like these at Whitby in North Yorkshire, which I photographed on a rather bleak, cold day, seem to have a psychic appeal to so many people.

‘When the peaks of our sky come together…’

What is the house you are making for yourself right now?

I’ve been working with people using writing for around ten years now and the more that I do this work, the more that I realise that what most people want to create for themselves when they join one of my workshops or mentoring programmes is a creative space, a safe space where they are free to experiment, ‘a room of one’s own.’

We writers and makers also seem to have a fascination with other people’s spaces. I love that series in The Guardian that shows pictures of writers’ rooms, for example.

Here’s a photo of a place that I have made for myself in our garden. It is in amongst the vegetable patch and the flowers and shrubs. I like to go there to write when it’s warm and sunny and just notice what’s growing.

I was sitting there in the sun on Monday and reflecting that a ‘room of one’s own’ doesn’t have to be inside. Your room or space for creative exploration might be outside - or in several places.

I think it’s emormously helpful to have at least one physical space - a room, a corner, a table - that can hold your creativity, support you in your writing or dreaming or painting or whatever it is that you like to do. However, I also think it’s important to realise that this space is something that you create, yourself, from within you.

It may be that life is busy and space is small and so you end up creating your personal space in that hour that you have to yourself each week on the kitchen table.  You can set yourself up with a vase of flowers, books that inspire you, coffee in your favourite cup. You can claim that space as yours.

The space, ultimately, comes from within you.

I have worked with people who had built beautiful garden offices, or spent weeks re-decorating their spare bedroom as an office and they still felt blocked or stuck with their writing. They hadn’t yet made the space inside themselves.

When your physical creative space is a projection of the space you have made for yourself on the inside, you make time to write. You keep writing. You write and write from that safe space inside where all things are allowed and possible.

What can you do today to begin to create that space for dreaming and exploring and writing? Maybe it is as simple as taking a few slow breaths and just noticing how you are feeling right now?