And rest....

“Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic.

This is your final DIY Writing Hour of the week.

If you have written every morning this week, wonderful. If you have filled pages, followed ideas and had a minor creative breakthrough while staring out of a window, wonderful.

But if you have written absolutely nothing, that is wonderful too. Creativity is not always visible.

Sometimes it is happening somewhere underneath the surface while we are sleeping, walking, swimming, reading, laughing with people we love or simply doing very little.

I think we can become frightened that if we stop, the creative thread will disappear, but perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps rest is one of the ways we keep hold of it.

So today, if your body or brain is asking for rest, listen.

Your creativity may simply be underground for a while, doing mysterious root related business.

Writing prompt:

What changes when you stop seeing rest as time away from your creative life and begin seeing it as part of it?

NEWS! I will be facilitating The Artist’s Way from Thursday 3rd September every Thursday for 12 weeks at 7pm.

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is the legendary 12-week creative reset that has helped millions of people reconnect with the part of themselves they thought they’d lost. And it has some rather famous fans: Reese Witherspoon, Elizabeth Gilbert and Tim Ferriss are among the creatives said to have been inspired by it.

But you absolutely don’t have to think of yourself as “an artist” to do it. This is about curiosity, confidence and giving yourself permission to make things, dream bigger and listen to what you actually want. Through daily Morning Pages, weekly Artist Dates and a series of brilliantly revealing exercises, we’ll spend 12 weeks firing up not just our creativity, but our lives.

I’ll be facilitating the course every Thursday at 7pm. Before we begin, you’ll need to buy your own copy of The Artist’s Way and to have read the introduction and Chapter One.

I’ve done this course before and I don’t use the words “life-changing” lightly. But this one really can be.

Writing hours will also recommence on Monday 24th August.