You Are Not Ark Fleet B

In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams describes an overcrowded planet whose inhabitants decided to relocate. They divided the population into three groups: Ark Fleet A, all the rulers; Ark Fleet C, all the people who did the actual work; and Ark Fleet B, the rest – all the middlemen, such as the telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, and management consultants. Ark Fleet B left first, to prepare the new home planet for the others, and… Ark Fleets A and C settled back into life, in a less overcrowded planet. Rid of the fluff.

At the start of the pandemic, we all got a fresh perspective on whose jobs to value. The bin collectors, the delivery drivers, the medical staff. With a cousin in the army, helping with logistics, and his partner a front-line nurse, I jokingly but sincerely referred to myself and my work as “Ark Fleet B”: the inessential fluff that an indulgent late-stage society has developed, which the planet and its people are better off without. I even named our group-chat that.

They were saving lives and keeping people alive. I was stuffing handouts in envelopes and arranging absurd stuff on a slice of wood on a lazy susan and filming it while I pushed it round with a wooden spoon. Spot the difference. I know a lot of creatives felt similarly.

But during that same period, everyone, including me, was turning to the arts, and specifically to immersive stories, to keep ourselves sane, to look after our fraying mental health, so we could all do the life-and-death essential functioning we needed to. At the same time as I was mocking myself as a pointless Ark Fleet B person, I was recording creative-writing audios for my students, creating a Poem-a-Day project that offered respite from anxious thought, filling my website with free writing resources, and advertising those instead of my courses.

I knew that writing helped people find a respite of calm, absorbed flow, which they urgently needed. Likewise, I was writing daily poems myself, as a constant essential practice to hold myself together. Likewise, my partner and I were mainlining stories in the evening: books, TV series, whatever could absorb us and give us respite so we could carry on.

When my army cousin and his nurse partner got home, shattered from what they’d been doing, rigid with worry – they also sought stories, in film or TV or books, so they could recover, so they could carry on.

When people needed poems for funerals, because they needed to say what this meant and couldn’t find the words, those were there too. Written by people who probably felt they belonged on Ark Fleet B, recommended by people who felt their knowledge of poetry was 100% Ark Fleet B candidacy.

The arts in general, and stories specifically, were a mental-health lifeline. People had made those stories. People who were probably also feeling like they belonged on Ark Fleet B. We can call it “escapism”. We can call it respite. We can call it mental health. We can look to the physical health benefits of easing stress, and how much that heals, how much it wards off. We can look to the societal benefits of not going berserk with cabin fever, not fighting with the only person you’re allowed to touch, not blowing up the new group-chat with stress-induced anger, not tumbling into conspiracy theories out of boredom-meets-helplessness-meets-terror.

This isn’t the indulgence of a late-stage society either, of people whose food is delivered in crates and whose refuse is carried away by trucks. Stories, poems, music, art, have been vital to every society throughout history, especially in the hardest times. They’re not the tip of our societal Hierarchy of Needs: they’re part of the foundation. All that’s changed is how we name the different ways that stories-poems-music-art combine, from cave art and bards to films, books, lyrics. It’s always been essential, and healing.

Your writing – you, writing – isn’t inessential fluff or indulgence. You’re not Ark Fleet B. You’re a healer. Even if no-one ever reads what you write, society is better for you writing. That strange half-hour of filming the Display of Curiosities left me calmer than I’d felt in days, which meant I could support other people and not crumble / start screaming / snap. If all it did was restore me, that was already enough to be a help to others. But it did more: it helped other people find that space, so that they could help others, and so on, rippling outwards.

The arts do so much else besides, but if ever you doubt, remember this: you’re not Ark Fleet B. Or A, or C. You’re more like trees: you help people breathe. Filling your leaves does good.

How to feed your creativity

If you need a creative boost – if you're feeling a bit humdrum and low, if you missed out on your holidays with that rest and fresh stimulation, if you want to feel more bubbly and blossoming again – how about a Creativity Project? Here's how.

When I designed the Starting Points course, I decided it was vital to include an introduction to creativity as well – not just at the outset but to run that throughout the eight-week structure. I was thinking of students who might be entirely new to creativity, who might need permission to "squander" time like that, who might not yet know how those seemingly unrelated activites feed our creativity, who might be so habituated to efficiency that they accidentally cut out of their lives the exact stuff they need for their writing. So alongside the whistlestop tour of types of creative writing, I put together a whistlestop tour of essential creative practices to give my students each week, as "Creative Activity vouchers". Actual little vouchers, on coloured card, that they could tuck in their purse or pocket.

What I didn't expect was what an amazing boost this would give me, every time I run the course. As any good teacher would, I give myself a voucher too and carry out the same activities across that week. Suddenly, my life and my creativity blossom. I thought I was pretty decent at maintaining my creative practices... but what a tonic those vouchers and that little extra commitment are!

A selection of my creative activities from a past Starting Points course

On the surface, none of the activities have anything to do with creative writing and most of them seem an indefensible use of time. (That's why I made the vouchers: to help people defend that time.) Efficiency is the enemy of creativity, though. Firstly, to be efficient, you have to be doing something you've done before. I can make a very efficient dinner if it's something I've made twenty times before. A new recipe or a new technique is going to be slow and kitchen-chaos. Doing anything new is "inefficient". Secondly, efficiency relies on routine - you know what you need to do, you rattle through the steps in the right order, you walk the route home you know, and so on. It's efficient, but after a while it becomes stultifying, even deadening, as routine slowly dessicates into a rut. And thirdly, efficiency depends on stamping out that "loose" time. Walking home? Catch up on a work podcast! In the shower? Yell your shopping list at Alexa! Waiting for a friend? Whip out your phone and clear some of those emails!

Efficiency is not a bad thing. I'm unbelievably efficient in my admin time and my housekeeping – so that I can spend the rest of my time more fruitfully. But you can't be creative and efficient at the same time. If I'm writing or creating a course or a workshop, the clock-watching stops. Idea-time doesn't get measured. And of course, in the inevitable creative paradox, the less "efficient" I try to be while creating and the more "inefficient" I allow my creative practice to be, the easier the ideas come, the faster the insights leap.

Even more joyfully, the same things that feed our creativity are also the things that make our lives more relaxing, more interesting, and more fun. I remembered that in the nick of time in April 2021. I had two weeks off, barely able to leave the house much less go on holiday anywhere, and my partner would be working the whole time. I thought, "Oh, I'll just write for two weeks," and then I pulled myself up short. I already knew I was both dog-tired and creatively starved by a long year of pandemic. So I figured, "Physician, heal thyself!" and, using what I teach in the Starting Points course, brainstormed a wildly various list of possible activities for myself, for my staycation.

On the eve of my first Staycation day, I jokingly wrote an "itinerary" on Facebook, holiday-brochure style. The next day, I found having that little plan already set out was hugely helpful. So I kept on with it, the evening before or that morning each day, while my Facebook friends indulged me and cheered me on. Here are four of my Staycation Itineraries:

I tried to make sure that each day included something outdoors and physical, something cooking-based (one of my favourite ways to relax), something new, something I hadn't done in ages, and something where my mind was left to float, whether in its own stories or into an audio drama: in short, variety. I also felt that a bit of effort was necessary. I really was tired enough that without making a plan and making an effort, I could've spent the two weeks drinking endless coffee and scrolling through my phone. But that's not rest, that's ennui. Refreshing rest does, oddly, take a bit of effort. It's the same effort, I reasoned, as when you're on actual holiday and you do bother to look up opening times, to go see that ruin, to climb the hillside to see the fires, and so on. And knowing myself, I made extra sure that I didn't overplan the days: most of the "activities" were about 20 minutes max, with plenty of time to stop for coffee in a "pretty little coffee shop" (the kitchen island). So those were my principles: variety; a bit of effort; not too strict / packed. I also had a fourth principle: I didn't map out two weeks of projects, I only planned one day's "itinerary" at a time, with that initial brainstorm to refer to.

I had a frikken brilliant time. After the two weeks, I felt completely rejuvenated and bubbly. And lots of the little activites I'd returned to hung around in the weeks and months after, continually enriching my days. Some of what I'd done was extremely useful (the gardening). Some, pretty mystifying. (The covered boxes are very pretty, and completely mystified my partner, who kept asking unhelpful questions like "What are they for?" They stayed in the conservatory, very pretty, and empty, for several years, and have since began to house assorted student materials: 12 little staplers with googly eyes; 6 one-minute sandtimers; colourful dice; vital creative-writing-teaching stuff.) Some of it was useful (learning to make pies) but with time pressure, would have been absolute hell. The point was giving myself the freedom to play. Sometimes playing means we're allowed to do stuff badly or we're allowed to do purposeless things. Sometimes, playing means allowing enough time: without the pressure of time bearing down, everything can feel like play.

I've returned to the subject of time repeatedly, but you don't actually need swathes of time to feed your creativity. The Creative Activity vouchers are each for one hour, for that week. That might be an hour in one chunk. It might be two half-hour sessions, or three twenty-minuters. It might be ten minutes a day each day except class day. And yet those brief sips are enough to be transformative. Within the classes, I try to allow a bit of time to think about each activity in advance – a couple minutes of brainstorming, loosely coming up with ideas rather than Assigning Tasks To The Week. A menu, not a schedule.

If you need a creative boost – if you're feeling a bit humdrum and low, if you missed out on your holidays with that rest and fresh stimulation, if you want to feel more bubbly and blossoming again – how about a Creativity Project? You can even name it, Bond-style, Operation Creativity. Set yourself a month, or eight weeks, or twelve weeks: something clearly defined, because that clear definition helps galvanise you to do it. Give yourself an hour a week, divvied up as you please and as suits your life. Brainstorm a variety of things to do, as many different things as possible. Decide what you're doing a week at a time, or a session at a time, not everything in advance, to keep that lovely element of surprise. Join forces with your writing group if you have one, to inspire and encourage each other, or report to indulgent friends, like I did with my staycation. Keep adding to the brainstorm throughout: more ideas of fun things, new things, silly things. And little by little, feel your joie de vivre bubble back up and your creativity increase.

If you want more external structure and motivation, if you need the boost but don't have the energy to give yourself the boost, the Starting Points course will give you exactly that. Plus, each week, a different type of writing to dabble in, a writing skill, a starting point for ideas, and a writing maxim. You can read about it and book here.

Creative play: folding a little book

Make a tiny folded book out of a single piece of paper, with no stitching at all – just a magic bit of folding. These tiny books inspire all sorts of uses: writing flash fiction, a series of haiku, a week of daily doodles or tiny poems, pretty to-do lists for a particular week or as a regular reuseable reminder, and if you turn them inside out, they become a dual perspective on something, or a secret story underlying a story. You can also use them to decorate your Christmas tree!

The video shows you how to make them and the written instructions are underneath.

How to make a little folded book

Some people prefer written instructions, but for this one watching the video is going to be much easier! When my mum first taught me these, she tried to explain it to me over the phone and I nearly lost my mind with bewilderment before we had the bright idea of switching to video. So if you're struggling to follow the instructions... switch to the video above.

You'll need... an A4 piece of paper; scissors.

• fold the paper in half vertically, then open it up
• fold the paper in half horizontally, then open it up
• turn the paper over
• fold the short sides into the middle fold, then open it up
• fold the paper in half on the short middle fold and cut horizontally to the first set of folds
• open your paper and gently tug on either side of the cut to open it like a mouth
• as you pull, the folds you made earlier will slide into place to create a star shape with four spokes - those are your pages
• sharpen all the creases
• fold all the pages onto one side and press down to sharpen the creases some more

Creative play: sewing a little book

The second little creative-play video is how to handsew a little book – a very useful skill for whisking together a little book and another creatively soothing thing to do. I'm inviting students on the Creative Play workshop on 2 August to make a little blank book as optional prep for the workshop, and it's a lovely thing for any writer to be able to do. For the workshop, we'll be using just two sheets of paper folded over. You can use as many as you like, up to about 8 sheets of paper. (More than that gets tricky to fold and to cut through.) The video shows you how and instructions are beneath, for those who prefer that.

How to sew a little book

You will need... paper; a needle; thread; scissors.

• Fold your paper in half, and pierce five holes along the spine, evenly spaced. (If you have a thicker stack of paper, you can push your needle's eye into a cork, to create a makeshift awl.) 
• Measure the thread twice the length of the spine plus a bit extra for tying. 
• Thread your needle and push through the middle hole, leaving a small length of thread sticking out for tying with later. 
• On the outside of the spine, go up to the next hole and back through, then on the inside up to the top hole and back through. 
• Repeat in the reverse order to go back down the booklet, to the middle, and repeat on the bottom half.
• Finally, tie the two pieces of thread together, either with a knot or a bow. The tied bit of the book can go on the outside or the inside.

Creative play: Making "parchment"

The more seriously we take our writing, the more we can forget how much it relies on play – that our inventiveness has its roots in playfulness, even silliness. Taking a little time out to play can inspire us with new ideas, relax and calm us, and help us write in new ways. I can pretty much guarantee that you'll write differently on your own handmade "parchment" to how you would in your usual notebook or Word doc! For the Creative Play workshop, I'm sending my students some fun, silly, and creative things to do as optional prep, and I thought I'd share them here.

First up is making "parchment", for all your wizardly, monsastic, piratical, or historical needs. The video shows you exactly how; if you prefer written instructions, they're underneath it. And I can personally vouch for how calming it is: the ten minutes I spent making my parchment and trying it out left me feeling more relaxed than I had all week!

How to make "parchment"

You will need...

• a teabag and hot water
• plain white paper
• optional seasalt flakes
• any props that help you get into the mood (I gathered up a candle, my pirate chests, and a small orrery)

Prepare the tea "paint" by soaking the teabag in half a cup of boiling water and leaving it to cool. Once it's completely cooled, you can use the teabag as your "paintbrush" to spread the tea over the paper. Make sure you're on a surface that won't suffer from tea stains – the kitchen counter rather than a wooden table! You can get different effects by crumpling the paper before you tea-stain it (it makes the crumpled lines darker), scattering salt onto the tea-stained paper (it creates lighter patches where the salt falls), and scattering tea-leaves from the bag onto the tea-stained paper (it creates darker patches where that falls). When you've tea-stained it, put it somewhere to dry, held down with rocks / coasters / mugs to keep it from blowing away. When it's completely dried, it takes all kinds of ink well, without bleeding or scratching the pen nib. I tested it with my fountain pen, a gel pen, and a Sharpie, which all worked beautifully. And then you can discover what kinds of things you write when you're writing on your very own parchment.

How to create an abundance of ideas

How do you conjure up reams of ideas, ripe for the picking? You take a leaf out of magical realism's book, of course. Among its features is "abundance" or "plenitude": it soaks ideas up like a sponge. Anything you want to throw at it, it just absorbs, gleefully. And the kind of fanciful, unexpected, incongruous ideas it likes best aren't the kind that come from frowning at a piece of paper and thinking very hard – they come from the bouncy bit of your brain leapfrogging around. (That's the kind of thinking we traditionally call "right brain", even though it's actually the left brain doing it.) It's a kind of careless, carefree, giggling, half-cut freedom of ideas. So how did I create that space, for the Summer of Writing Magical Realism workshop? And how can you use that to create an abundance of unexpected ideas?

This is something humans DO

If you'd like to step back in time and across space into that candelit backroom of a pub in Oxford, you can listen to the musicians that were playing the night I had this epiphany here on Spotify.

The first time I came to this event, I was an arrogant little tit.

In the back room of The Gardener's Arms, an assortment of humans curled on sofas and perched on stools. The grab-bag of people included young narrowboat dwellers, embryonic hipster Angry Young Men, retirees, coiffed and courtured North Oxfordians. The point where our curving tangents met was this: everyone had poetry somewhere about their person.

The first time I came, as a rather young and very arrogant little tit, I'd spent several hours choosing my best poetry and had secret fantasies of being Discovered. I mentally evaluated every poem I heard. I listened, quietly appalled, to one person's first attempts at poetry, mortified on their behalf - behaving like a self-appointed opera buff sneering at someone's sing-song. As I said: arrogant little tit. I cringe with shame at the memory. Mortified, at myself.

The next time I came, I was prepared for the unexpected breadth of quality. I read two intensely personal poems, curious how they'd feel read to a roomful of strangers, unsure if they were good enough. I was vaguely expecting some kind of appraisal, praise or condemnation. I got what everyone got: a warm, attentive reception. I puzzled over how to use that to measure my poetry.

The next time, I finally got it, like a clash of cymbals: poetry is something humans do. Like a sing-song in a pub, like cooking food to share, it's not about whether you're "good enough" to take part, no-one is standing in judgement over you, it's something humans do and something everyone's allowed to do. My arrogant-little-tit elitism, my anxious evaluating insecurity, were soundly and happily kicked to the curb. Perhaps the founder's Quaker background helps create this open atmosphere, supported by the fairylights, lamps, and candles in bottles they set up each time. It is, as its website says, a warm welcoming space for the spoken word. This does not mean the quality is bad, far from it. It means this is a space where that's not the only point, where you're not desperately striving, where you're not trying to measure everything, where you can do this because it's something humans do.

I say "Writing is my life" and mean it, absolutely. I believe passionately in striving for excellence, I wrestle with the balance between creative process and product, my perfectionism is alternately a spur to quality and crippling paralysis. And sometimes, I need to chill the hell out.

All of human activity seems to have its artistic heights and its daily use. Cooking at home and Michelin-starred cheffing. Handwriting and lettering art. Singing in the shower and professional opera. When we're little, we're allowed to do all of it, but in some areas we lose our sense of permission as we grow older. Even in the areas we keep, we sometimes forget their origin. When an art form loses its roots in human activity, its blood supply is cut off. This is true for the art form, but also for us, as artists.

Too much time on Twitter and I start to believe the hype: that it's all about publishing, publicity, profile, all the exteriors. My writing withers. Too much time with my own ambitious perfectionism and my writing tenses, hardens, freezes. But it's not about either of those, at its core: it's about this being something that humans do.

Ian Trinder and Josie Webber performing in the music slot in the middle. You can hear the album they were playing from that night here on Spotify. I could peacefully drown in their music.

Every time I go to Hear the Word, it resets me, regrounds me. Every time, I come away floating a foot above the pavement, buoyed with relief, my love for writing resanguinated.

In Walking in this World, Julia Cameron recommends an exercise for the kind of overexposed / perfectionist freeze we can so easily slip into, without those reminders: stop being so bloody grandiose about it and use your precious cultivated skill to do something little for someone. Write a little story for a kid you know. Draw a picture for a friend. Take it from its elevated heights back into the realm of human activity. Whatever the thing you love is, remember, it's not only an art form: it's something humans do.

The Joy Is In the Doing

Product is the drug de jour, our ego and superego hit, the crack of creativity.

The joy is the doing, not the having done: the long hours alone, spent in delight and creation and the pleasure of doing hard things.

The battle between process and product rages at the heart of the creative life. The creating, doing, inventing, and trying-out, versus the finished thing we want at the end: the complete published novel, collection of poetry, or final painting. The two can’t exist without each other, but product always seems on the verge of killing process.  

For the last few years, I’ve been chewing over ideas about creativity, ego, and that war between process and product. The more demanding life becomes and the harder it is to protect writing time, the more important this question becomes to me. What I want is to write more, more creatively, better, and finish more – but the product-driven thinking that serves me so well in other areas backfires in writing.

Process-driven thinking and product-driven thinking can feel almost identical, but use a completely different focus. Try these examples:

Process-driven thinking	Product-driven thinking
I want to spend the evening writing.	I want to write 2000 words this evening.
I’ll try this and see how it goes.	I don’t know if this will work.
Ooh, this is an unexpected direction.	It won’t go the way I want.
I want to…	I should…
Look what I’ve been doing!	Look what I’ve done!
I want to enjoy it.	I want to get it right.

Being product-driven helps us achieve things and evaluate success. It satisfies our ego’s need for achievement and its fear of failure, and our superego’s need to control and to obey rules.  But it also prevents us from exploring, experimenting, and doing new things: the risk of failure.  It inhibits enjoyment: our satisfaction comes briefly, at the end, from having done.

Ars longa, vita brevis, wrote Hippocrates: art is long and life is short. Creating art and writing takes a long time: finishing is a momentary thing, a brief list-ticking satisfaction. That’s not enough satisfaction for all the time we’ve invested, so the ego starts roaming around, demanding more: admiration, reviews, sales! These aren’t guaranteed, though, and they can never repay enough for what we put in. The ego sulks: “Why should I carry on creating? What do I get in return, huh?” The superego says, “What did I do wrong? What did they do wrong? Work harder!”

Being process-driven, however, is a sacrifice of ego: it allows exploring, experimenting, playing, doing new things, and making mistakes.  It disobeys the superego by “wasting” time, being “inefficient”, and breaking rules. It’s essential for discovery and invention: the new thing doesn’t exist yet, so the product isn’t guaranteed. It may go wrong. It may come to nothing. It may not work. The joy is the doing, not the having done: the long hours alone, spent in delight and creation and the pleasure of doing hard things.  It is liberating, risky, and much more fun.

My students often hesitate, when we start exploring process versus product thinking. If you just concentrate on the process, where’s the product to come from? How do you ever finish anything? I feel the same sense of alarm and hear generations of Protestant-work-ethic ancestors shouting over my shoulder to work, finish it, stop playing around, make a plan! We do need both – but I’ve yet to meet an adult writer who focuses too much on process. Product is the drug de jour, our ego and superego hit, the crack of creativity.

It’s so easy to become too product-driven: the ego quickly gets demanding and wants more, more, and more. So yeah, you won a prize last year, what about this year? Two short stories published in a year, big deal, where’s the novel, the two-book deal, the bestseller, give me more! If you have that, Where are the sales? The big book-signings? Why aren’t you more famous? Why don’t you have 1.9m Twitter followers? The ego keeps promising it’ll be satisfied “when X happens” – but it never is. It’s a strong driver but behaves like a hungry toddler. Feed it well at home and don’t give into its demands.  

The superego, meanwhile, quickly gets powercrazy with its lists, plans, and reassuring sense of Doing The Right Thing.  It sees how much you can get done when you pull all the stops out, so it starts whipping you to do that every day. What are you doing, relaxing? Make something up! Oh, you think what you’re reading / watching might be useful for your writing? Make notes! This time could be used. Go for a walk, you need exercise; what are you doing going for a walk when you could be writing?  The superego is the police – essential and valuable, but you don’t want them running the country. More than once I’ve turned my life into a police state, and my writing has suffered bitterly for it.

Turning away from product-driven thinking is terrifying. Surely product-focus is our guarantee of success? Again, if you just concentrate on the process, where’s the product to come from? But try this question, instead. If you just focus on the product, where’s the process to come from? The process is the thing that makes the product. Focusing on process may feel fluffy, a recipe for failure, but it works better. A study at the University of Chicago and the Korea Business School tested goal-focus versus process-focus on exercise, origami, even flossing. It turns out that people who focus on their goal instead of on the process destroy their own motivation and end up doing less. “Revel in the process and you’re more likely to make it to the finishing line,” they concluded. So when your ego and superego start yelling at you, you can shove some nice empirical research at them and tell them to shut up.

How do you shift to process-driven thinking? The trick here is changing your thinking, more than your behaviour (though you may need to curb some of your assessing, wordcounting, and lists).  You need to retrain your thoughts: cut goal-oriented thinking short and deliberately replace it with imagining the process.  If the difference between the two seems strange and nebulous, think about sex. Imagine having sex focused on the product: I want to get this done as efficiently as possible. That’s some seriously rubbish sex. Now imagine focusing on the process instead. That’s the difference between process- and product-driven thinking!

If you’re not sure how to get started, here are some starting points:

• your writing time: think about what part you want to write (not “finish”) and imagine the content
• going to write: think about the experience of working on it,  not The Thing To Tick: think of the papers spread on your desk, the smell of the fresh coffee at your side, the look of the document on screen or notebook under your hand, the juggling and weaving ideas…  Not “Go upstairs and write” but “My colourful notes, leather desk top under my arms, the look of story, shaping reality, those characters alive…”
• in the writing moment: see the time as space cleared for writing, not a scheduled block to get writing done.  Focus on what you’re doing, not how much you’re doing.  Resist the urge to wordcount – at the most, allow one wordcount per session, at the end, and don’t value writing purely by word count. (After all, Lorem Ipsum can churn out word count.)  Think in terms of ideas and content, instead.

This past summer, having superego-whipped myself into a crumbling mess of stress, I needed to write completely differently. Each writing day, I went to an open-air coffee shop in town and wrote by hand. I relished the buildings around me, the buskers, the changing tree above me, the smell of my latte. I didn’t plan the story at all. I followed bad ideas to see where they went, and they turned out to be brilliant. I followed good ideas into cul-de-sacs and left them there while I wrote something else. I couldn’t wordcount, because I was writing by hand, and I didn’t page count. I discovered a completely new voice, dozens of rich characters, storylines that took me by surprise, playful inventions that startled me, and I loved every minute. I also wrote 192,000 words. I’m already starting to salivate about the process of redrafting. And my ego can stay in its box, where it belongs.

The completed wall, after all my playing around with colours and techniques

If you'd like more support and insight with your creative process, The Writers' Greenhouse Community will help you grow and shape joyful stable writing habits. 

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How to make a Christmas star

Small acts of creativity with paper feed your soul. These glories are so easy that my nephew's school makes them with the eight year olds. If you have a group of people, grab plenty of scissors and staplers and make them together, putting your "petals" together to make the finished star. You can also use print-outs from your work in progress for the paper and decorate your writing space with stars of your own writing. (In that case, make squares from the middle of the page, to leave out the margins.)