Writing Parents

Parenthood and Creativity – Staying Creative As a Parent

Writing Parents — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:09:08 +0000

Everyone who has children knows that life after birth (or adoption) is dramatically different and changes you as a person. People often talk about the sleepless nights, the nappies and the financial cost of having children but often the biggest and most dramatic changes that occur are not ones you can see at all but changes to how we see ourselves and our place in the world.

: From Story of Mum’s excellent series, I’m a Mum and a….

We all strive to find a balance that suits us between work and parenthood and some of us may even succeed, but often it can be time to indulge your interests and creativity that suffers the most in this balancing act. I would argue that for many of us, this is an area of our lives we can derive the most satisfaction and pleasure from and should therefore be prioritised.

Because it is hard to make time for yourself when you have so many other demands, we’ve come up with some ways that you can try to retain – and develop – your creative side. Parenthood and creativity don’t always sit together well. Here are some ways you can combine them. These ideas should work whether you find your creative outlet in writing, art, crafts, drama, music or anything else that inspires and excites you.

1. Decide what your creative passion is – if you’ve lost touch with this area of your life, think back to what you used to enjoy doing before you were so busy. This might even be something that you’ve not done since school or university. All adults can be guilty of letting their passions dwindle in the face of work pressure, so you might have let this area of your life go even before you had children. Think back to what projects or hobbies used to excite you and see where your mind takes you.

2. Allow yourself to see this as important – the next step is to realise that rediscovering or developing this creativity will help your sense of wellbeing and should therefore be taken seriously. Try to make some time to try it out for short periods of time, if this is all you have. So, for example if you want to write poetry just set aside ten minutes at the end of the day to sit down and see what comes, or to draw etc.

3. Find other people who share your passion – for me this has been key. I set up Writing Parents precisely to meet this need and have been lucky in meeting other mums who also want to rediscover their writing. Some of us have even set up a writers meet up where we have agreed to meet up regularly to share our writing. Because we are all parents, we understand how short and precious time is. I also have friends who have set up a mother’s crafting circle to share and inspire each other with their craft projects and I know mums who have started doing amateur dramatics and found it inspirational. If no such group exists, start your own even if it is just two of you to begin with it can be a real inspiration.

4. Use your children as inspiration – if you really find it hard to make time for yourself, then you can intertwine your passion with your children. For example, I write poems about the things my children do that I want to preserve for posterity – like a written snapshot of them at a certain time. Because it sometimes feels hard to make time just for you, this feels like a good way to do something that is for you and for them. Equally you could paint them, photograph them, record songs for them or make things for them if that is what you enjoy.

5. Seize every moment – this last one might sound obvious but I have found that having a pad with me at all times is very useful so I can jot down inspiration as it comes and then revisit it later – sometimes weeks later, and maybe even years – when I have more time. This is a very busy time in our lives, but there will come a time when our children need us less and if you store up ideas now you can use them later when your time is freer.

Above all, remember that your creativity is still inside you somewhere even if you are too tired or busy to access it at the moment. If you nurture it, even in a small way it can sustain you when you are feeling overwhelmed with the pressures of parenting. Recognise the importance of your passions as part of you and one day when your life is less busy, they will be there waiting for you.

Other organisations you might find interesting as well as Writing Parents are:
Desperate Artwives and Story of Mum, the excellent site where this post first appeared.

You can also read our post about The Pram In The Hall – Motherhood and Creativity which explores whether parenthood and creativity can ever compliment each other or are always in opposition.

Writing Parents Creative Writing Class in North London

Writing Parents — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:30:22 +0000

Are you looking for inspiration? Do you need some help with a current project or want to rediscover a lost creativity?

This is the class for you. Join our friendly creative writing group for parents in North London where we explore parenthood through writing and learn new skills in a relaxed, informal environment.

Writing Parents is a new organisation that provides a journal, thinking space and courses for writing parents or for those who want to start. We run creative writing classes in London and will soon be running online writing groups too.

We know that there are a lot of creative writing classes in North London and you might wonder what we can offer that is different to others. Our aim is to provide a learning environment that supports busy parents and all our classes are designed with this in mind. You will also find us a very friendly and supportive group.

Our next creative writing class is on 3rd July in Muswell Hill at 8pm and is for anyone at any stage of their writing career, even if you’ve never written before. Classes are held in the idyllic and peaceful North Bank House and facilitated by tutor Nicola Charalambou of Creative Writes. Nichola is an experienced tutor with a supportive style and her workshops are good fun as well as stimulating. One participant recently said of Nichola’s class that it was a “Very emotional session. I’d recommend Nichola’s workshops to anyone who wants to write from the heart.”

To book or find out more information, see the flyer below or email us on info@writingparents.com.

Win a free place on our first online writing course

Writing Parents — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 21:52:44 +0000

Would you like to win a free place on our first online writing group? Just tell us what you want from an online writing group and we’ll pick one entry at random to get a free place on the first course starting in October. Simple!

Writing Parents is currently running writing classes in London but we know that there are parents all over the world who want to reconnect with their creativity, or who are already writing and would like some inspiration and support to spur them on.

So, with this in mind we will soon be launching online writing groups where you can get inspiration from some great exercises, connect with other likeminded people across the world and hopefully write some great things too. All courses will be facilitated by experienced writing tutors.

Before we do this, we’d love to hear from you about what makes online courses good, great, or terrible and what you’d like to see from us.

Please leave a comment below, on Faceook or twitter telling us what you’d like to see from the course and any other things that are important to you.

One person (who comments either here, on Facebook or Twitter) picked at random will win a free place on our first course.

Competition open until 1st July. Winner announced 2nd July.

Thanks!

Writing Parents

Putting Love Into Words: Some Poems on Parenthood

Writing Parents — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 21:37:35 +0000

Ever since we started our Writing Parenthood classes, I’ve been even more attuned to seeking out excellent writing about parenthood. Becoming a parent is such a transformative experience that it’s unsurprising that so many people have written about it’s impact on their lives and tried to put into words the immense feelings it inspires.There are so many poems that I love, but here are just a few that really stick in my mind for various reasons. I’d love to hear other recommendations too.

The first one I’ve chosen is a very simple poem by Adrian Mitchell called Beatrix is Three.I read this long before I had children of my own but it always stayed in my mind because of the beautiful image it paints of a father’s love. Now as a parent I really empathise with the sentiment of time speeding on and how you want to press pause on the beautiful moments and preserve that time where they totally trust and love you.

Beatrix is Three

At the top of the stairs

I ask for her hand. O.K

She gives it to me.

How her fist fits my palm,

A bunch of consolation.

We take our time

Down the steep carpetway

As I wish silently

That the stairs were endless.

The second poem is a very different one by Grace Nichols and again I read it before I had children. Now I appreciate even more the way she evokes the image of the two women supporting each other through motherhood – I know now how good friends can pull you through the hard times, especially those who can help you to laugh.

Waiting for Thelma’s Laughter

You wanna take the world

in hand

and fix-it-up

the way you fix your living room

You wanna reach out and crush

life’s big and small injustices

in the fire and honey

of your hands

You wanna scream

cause your head’s too small

for your dreams

and the children

running round

acting like lil clowns

breaking the furniture down

while I sit through

it all watching you

knowing any time now

your laughter’s gonna come

to drown and heal us all

I’m certain that I will always find comfort in that poem. My next choice is not one poem but a selection of poems by the Irish poet Eavan Boland called Night Feed. These are beautiful quiet poems that evoke that still time of night when you wake to feed a baby and feel like you are the only two souls alive. I won’t quote whole poems as they are long but here is the beginning of Domestic Interior:

This is dawn.

Believe me

This is your season, little daughter

The moment daisies open,

The hour mercurial rainwater

Makes a mirror for sparrows.

It’s time we drowned our sorrows.

I tiptoe in.

I lift you up

Wriggling

In your rosy, zipped sleeper.

Yes, this is the hour

For the early bird and me

When finder is keeper

I also really like the poet Sharon Olds and the way she reflects motherhood in her poetry. There are so many great examples and I’ve picked this one because of the very physical sense of love that it evokes:

The Daughter Goes to Camp

In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept
creeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning-
nothing, nothing, waves of bawling
hitting me in hot flashes like some
change of life, some boiling wave
rising in me toward your body, toward
where it should have been on the seat, your
brow curved like a cereal bowl, your
eyes dark with massed crystals like the
magnified scales of a butterfly’s wing, the
delicate feelers of your limp hair,
floods of blood rising in my face as I
tried to reassemble the hot
gritty molecules in the car, to
make you appear like a holograph
on the back seat, pull you out of nothing
as I once did-but you were really gone,
the cab glossy as a slit caul out of
which you had slipped, the air glittering
electric with escape as it does in the room at a birth.

And finally, a poem from Joanne Limburg that at first glance appears lighter but in fact cuts to the chase of the difficulties of being a parent and the sacrifices we must all make. It’s another long one so I won’t quote it all but here is the start..

Mother Chicken Soup

God forbid

her family should starve,

so mother is boiling herself down

for soup,

slicing the carrots

with an upward stroke to the thumb,

rolling perfect kneidlach,

mixing up the stock.

After so many years

nothing needs to be measured.

Hasn’t she been rehearsing this

for years?

Divided herself, leg and breast,

one, two, three ways

to make three children’s mothers?

Put aside her book,

her job, her time?

Taken the food off her own plate

A thousand times?

I hope you enjoyed these poems. I’d love to hear recommendations for other good poems about parenthood and hope you also find some of these inspiring for your own writing.

The Pram In The Hall – Motherhood and Creativity

Writing Parents — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 21:30:39 +0000

“There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall” the critic Cyril Connolly once famously said. Was he right? Is parenthood so very hard to combine with creativity? These are my thoughts on whether motherhood and creativity can be successfully combined. I’d love to know yours too.

It is 10pm when I finally get to sit down and start writing this. That’s after a day in which I was up at 4.20 with daughter number one, then up again (for good) at 5.20am with daughter number two. It’s been a long day and so it’s unsurprising that I am not feeling at my most creative now – thoughts of settling down in my bed push aside any other thoughts that might have come to the fore otherwise. It’s hard to write when your brain is so full of other things – what do the children need for nursery tomorrow, what do I need to get at the shops, how high is the laundry pile, how can I possible do everything I need to do this week?!

It wasn’t always like this. Before my children were born I was always writing. I would say that throughout my life the things I have enjoyed most have been reading and writing. In fact the first surviving poem that I have was one I wrote at age 5 for my sister who had just learned to walk – “You are good/you are sweet/you can balance on your feet” was how it went. Ok, not award winning but it definitely showed signs of promise! From then on I was always writing poems, stories and songs and throughout my school years, teenage years and university years I wrote reams of bad indulgent poems and over dramatic short stories. I just enjoyed writing and gave very little thought to who might one day read it, whether it was good enough or what it was for. It was really just for my own enjoyment and as a way to reflect on my life and myself.

I have folders full of my writing and it is great to be able to look back over it and see my development as a writer (still fairly limited) and as a person.

I didn’t notice it stopping. It was only when my first daughter was about one that I realised how long it had been since I had written anything. I’d noticed that I’d stopped reading so much, but once she started to sleep through the night and I regained my powers of concentration I rediscovered my love of books. Writing was different though. Writing meant sitting down, reflecting, taking time out of a busy life to focus on my inner self and use my imagination. That didn’t come back naturally and has had to be coaxed out.

So is Cyril Connolly right? Is the pram in the hall really the death warrant for creativity? I think for me that there are two reasons that my creativity has been (hopefully temporarily) stifled. The first is how very tired and busy I am and the second has nothing to do with motherhood and everything to do with adulthood. Whereas once I wrote for pleasure, I now agonise over whether I am good enough to ever get published. If, my thoughts go, I am not then why bother at all. It is hard to overcome this self-defeating philosophy.

But on the flipside, motherhood has awoken a new creativity in me and shown me a whole side of life that I had never previously imagined. I have accessed deep feelings inside myself that I never knew I was capable of – a love so profound and deep that it has changed me to my very core. This is certainly something worth exploring, thinking through and probing.

There was a very interesting Start The Week programme on Radio 4 recently that looked at Creativity. Author Joanna Kavena spoke about how for her, motherhood had in fact awoken rather than supressed her creativity “I think for me what often causes something creative to happen is a defamiliarisation of reality….I found that was something that parenthood gives you, a shattering of your assumptions – you have a new encounter to break you out of it”

I also found a fantastic article written by Damon Young, an Australian philosopher and father who expresses a lot of what I feel:

“As a father of two, I now write more before lunch than I did in a day. I am more prolific, committed, judicious; less precious, dithering, vague. This is not simply because I don’t have the minutes to waste. It is also because in two hours I’ll be cutting out a cardboard Princess Leia or writing spelling lessons for my daughter, and I don’t want to have half my tiny mind still toying with Schopenhauer. I want to be genuinely there.

Fatherhood has also been rejuvenating. Not always physically: oddly, changing nappies at three in the morning can be taxing. But it has renewed my consciousness. First, by nudging me back to my own childhood: to forgotten zeal, haste, venom; to the incredible weakness of absolute dependence and its (seeming) arbitrariness. Second, to the astonishing facts of ordinary life, which are given for adults, but often irresistibly fascinating for children: insects’ zigzagging, human anatomy, the sensuality of sand.”

These are all the reasons that I started Writing Parents. I think that parenthood is an exciting time, a time of huge change to both your inner and outer worlds and one that is fascinating to read and write about. Our groups help people to start writing again if they have stopped or also to pick up the pen for the first time and explore this new world.

The first group was led by the excellent Nichola Charalambou of Creative Writes who has such a gentle coaxing style that I found myself writing from the heart in the way I’ve not done for years. We all wrote until our hands hurt. Some of us cried. It felt very good to write and to share my experiences of parenthood in this way with other mums.

Now that I’ve started writing again I try not to worry about whether anyone will ever read it or not. I try to focus on doing it for enjoyment, for me, possibly for something to show my daughters one day when they are struggling with this intense period of childrearing – to show them that they are not alone in finding it hard. And if anyone else ever wants to read it, that’s just an added bonus.

Do you want to rediscover your creativity? Why not start by trying this simple exercise?

Sit down in a quiet place with a pen and paper. Laptops are forbidden. Just a pen that is nice to hold and possibly a cup of tea and a biscuit nearby. Make time for you.

Make sure you have a watch and note the time.

Now write the line “I am thinking of…” and continue writing for ten minutes. Don’t stop writing. Don’t take your pen off the page, don’t cross out anything, just write and write whatever comes to mind and see what you end up with. You will be surprised.

If you enjoy this exercise (inspired by Nichola) and you’d like to know more about writing parents groups, please go to www.writingparents.blogspot.co.uk, like us on facebook, follow us @writingparents or email us at info@writingparents.com.

I’d really love to hear how other parents stay creative and make the space and time to write. Do share.

This is an extended version of an article that appeared on the fantastic More Than A Mum Blog, which you should definitely check out for inspiration and thought provoking articles.