The air continues to cool but mostly it is the dispersing humidity that has made it begin to feel more like fall. There’s still heat but there’s a subtle change in the light too.
In spite of everything that 2020 is, has been and will continue to be there is something about this time of year that remains familiar and normal.
This time of year reawakens an aspect of my creativity that could be called Muse or Inspiration but also reflects the way that the change in temperature and light produces subtle effects that are impossible to replicate in the bright heat of full on summer.
I’ve never been able to fully pinpoint if I want to be influenced by the cycles of the natural world and have thus attuned myself to it more strongly or if I’m just more aware of it because the nature of my work requires me to pay close attention. I’m not sure the why matters as much as the effect.
October will be full of time earmarked for prioritizing art. November is likely to be more focused on writing but the balance has become easier.
Though it took years to arrive here I no longer wait to be inspired in order to work on creative projects. Shedding the guilt for not sitting down to write or create cleared up headspace that had previously been used for a taskmaster’s voice. It was a shocking amount of headspace and now it is fully a creative space though 2020 has been a bit like branches at the windows making a racket that interrupts the flow. Journaling helps to channel it all away into a place where it can be addressed on my terms.
A further advantage of the season is that the pool I have access to has become even less appealing to others and I have been cautiously finding a routine.
The little quiet things seem to enhance my senses and bring my Muse to me.
But there is also this deeper sense of connection to the work that happens around this time of year. The return to school each year was my favorite time of year. The weather would turn more dramatically and it would be time for cold weather clothes, fires and staying indoors. Much of the discovery that occurred in the colder seasons was made through journeys inwards either through books or my own imagination.
I didn’t expect it this year because I have been as caught up as anyone in all of the many things that are happening right now. The fires in California are on my mind for many reasons. I find myself wanting to comment on threads at times but feel there’s too much I want to say. Knowing that my extended family mostly live in the state, friends live there and it is where most of my life has been lived–all of this bubbles up while I watch from a distance and see so many weigh in. Resisting the urge to talk about it and channeling it into a side burner project I have worked on over the years became the thing that made me notice how creative I had begun to feel during writing sessions.
Keeping track of word count has been something I do because it has helped me feel “productive”. The problem is that it doesn’t work well with editing. My total word count of new words over the year has been 50,000 through a variety of projects and hasn’t included editing sessions that didn’t include new scenes or large scale changes. Though I’ve edited my work over the years I have never edited anything as large as my Verses series and making sense of how to track that progress is still very much a work in progress. Inspiration isn’t as involved in the process. It often feels very analytical but is made easier because of how free I can be in my art.
Categories: Creating, Everything Else, Inspiration
C.R. Elliott - Clara Black Ink 