Torn between two loves: a question and a confession - Liz Kessler

WARNING: this blog contains gratuitous use of my photographs, scattered throughout the text for no reason other than to share my passion. Their relationship with the words is at best tenuous, but the photos are keen to be seen and have pushed their way onto the blog, despite my best efforts to hold them back. 

I’m at that stage again. The very, very beginning of writing a new book. So early on that it’s not even really the beginning. The pre-beginning, let’s call it. The part where the winter of planting seeds and trusting that growth is taking place underground is beginning to give way to the spring of possibilities; where colour is creeping out and tiny shoots are beginning to show. It’s rather like the change of season in the outside world. In my garden, daffodils and crocuses are coming up. In my creative life, I’m reaching for my notebook to jot down random scattered ideas that pop up when I least expect it. Tiny ideas creeping over the horizon like the hint of a new day.

As well as being a time of possibility and hope, of fresh beginnings and new paths to explore, I also find this quite a scary time. The new growth is so delicate and so vulnerable, I’m not sure it will survive. This is the part of the process where I have to keep the faith, and the part where I am most likely to ask myself on a daily basis if I really will be able to write another book.

And this time, I have a new problem. I have a new question. And a confession.

My question is: where does creativity come from, and can it run out? Is creativity like money, and we need to use it with care, investing it wisely, spending it carefully, always conscious of the possibility of losing the lot? Or is it like love, where the more open we become to it, the greater our capacity for a never-ending flow? 

And this is where my confession comes in. You see, I think I might have started being unfaithful. I have a new creative love, and I’m worried that my writing might see it as a threat and decide to leave me.

The new love is photography. It’s kind of crept up on me. (We tried to stop it, honest – but it just happened, you know how it is.)

In the old days, my writing was the thing that kept me sane. It still is – I don’t think that will ever change. Writing is part of who I am and is the thing that helps me make sense of the world. It is a bit like meditation or religion – it is magical and if it was taken away from me forever, that would honestly feel like taking away air or water or, I don’t know, chocolate or something.

But yes, I admit it. My eyes have begun to wander. I have started to feel that way about photography too. I look at my camera and I feel a kind of longing for us to do wonderful things together. I wake up early and want to go out and photograph the sunrise; I go away for a weekend’s photography course (will this get it out of my system or just make me want it more?) and spend the whole of the following week desperate to upload my photos and share them with friends. I have recently had my first photograph commissioned for a magazine. I have even started to think about the possibility of putting on an exhibition, maybe making actual money from it. This isn’t a fling – there are real feelings involved.

And yes, all of this scares me. Me and writing are a marriage of nearly two decades. (Four decades if you count my early poems, but I’m talking about full time commitment.) It’s perhaps understandable that others come along and catch your eye after that long together. But can I love them both? Can I share my commitment between two passions like this?

I just don’t know if I’m allowed. You see, if I’m honest, the thing that bothers me is that these early stages with my new book are proving to be a bit stubborn. I have pages and pages of scribbled ideas in my notebook, hundreds of random thoughts – but they all seem to trail away into dark, unfathomable chasms or dead ends. And I’m wondering if I’m blocking up the path with my camera.

Which brings me back to my question. Where does creativity come from, and can it run out? (And yes, I do realise that, actually, this is two questions. I’m taking liberties to make a point. I’m a writer; we do that.) And if you’ll allow me to mix my metaphors a bit (we do that, too) let’s add a well to the dark chasms. So how does it work? Do you go up to the well and get your allocation of creativity handed out to you to use as you like, and if so am I spilling it all out on my sunsets and rocks? 

Or when you fetch your pail, if you use it carefully, with love and passion and commitment, are you actually pouring water back into the well, thus refilling it more and more with every act?

When I sit on a cliff top as the day ends, my camera poised as the sun slowly edges down from the sky, does the peace and joy that I feel enhance the creativity within me, giving me more to offer to my books, or does it elbow my writing out of the way, telling it that I no longer have the same need and desire for it that I once had?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. I know that I don’t want a divorce. I want to figure it out. I think that the three of us can work together, possibly creating something even more beautiful than I can do with just one of them alone. But we have to tread carefully. If I want my new book to open up to me, then I have to show it that I have not left it. I have to sit on a cliff top as the sun sets with my notebook, not just my camera. I have to write about what I’m seeing and hearing and feeling, not just want to photograph it. I have to be willing to explore the chasms further, to enter the darkness with my words, not just turn round and photograph the light. 

If I do these things, I have a feeling the well will soon be overflowing.

All photos taken (by me) on a Photography Workshop with Carla Regler. 
Check out Carla's website Here

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It’s Not About the Price Tag…Or Is It? - Liz Kessler

If you are tuned into the world of the UK writing community, you’ll probably know there has been a lot of talk about money recently.

The thorny issue of authors being paid to do events at literary festivals was put firmly in the limelight by Philip Pullman when he resigned from the Oxford Literary Festival in protest against their policy of not paying authors.

There has also been talk amongst bloggers about whether they should be paid for the work they do to help promote books for authors and publishers.

I don’t want to get into the ins and outs of those arguments. There are many places where you can read about them, including fantastic blogs by Lucy Coats and Lucy Powrie amongst others. Do take a look.

The thing that has occupied my mind in all of this is the issue of the blurry lines between our passions and hobbies and our jobs and financial standing, and how, somewhere amongst all of this, we find the hooks on which we hang a lot of our sense of identity and status.

About fifteen years ago, I left a permanent job in order to free up enough time to commit myself to writing a novel. I spent the next couple of years working in a part-time capacity as a teacher and editorial advisor, whilst attending an MA in Creative Writing. During that time, I wrote a YA novel which would take fifteen years to get published, and the first book in a series which would go on to sell in more than twenty countries across the world. I wasn’t being paid to write. I was being paid to teach, and to work on people’s manuscripts. This meant that when I met someone new and they asked the question that we so often ask, ‘What do you do?’ I felt stuck. I wanted to say I was a writer, but that felt fraudulent. How could I say this was what I ‘was’ when no one was paying me to do it? So instead, I would describe myself in terms of the thing I did to pay my way, rather than the thing that fuelled my passion, filled my thoughts and occupied every life goal I had.

My home town is full of people who make their living in the tourist industry, managing bars, waiting on tables, cleaning holiday homes. Many of these people also paint beautiful pictures, create gorgeous jewellery, take stunning photographs. If you ask them, ‘What do you do?’ many will find it hard to answer, ‘I make necklaces,’ or ‘I paint sunsets’, instead falling back on, ‘Oh, I just work in a café.’

Beautiful St Ives, where many talented artists 'just work in a café' 

And I’m wondering if this is OK. If this is right. If this is how it should be. And I think the answers are no, no and no.

For some of us, we are lucky enough that our passion and our jobs overlap. I think that seeking this overlap is partly what is behind the recent campaigns in the book world. Authors are generally delighted to be asked to take part in festivals, and perhaps many of us see it as such a pleasure and an honour that it makes it easy for those running them to get away with not offering a fee. Book bloggers generally get into doing what they do because of their passion for reading – but does this mean that we should expect them to devote hours of their time to promoting people’s books without any financial acknowledgement of their work and their time?

I think there’s a tipping point. There is a moment when, ‘I do this because I love it, and will fit it into my life in any way I can’ becomes, ‘I do this because I love it, and I wonder if there’s some way of making money doing it, so I can afford to put even more time into it,’ which eventually merges into, ‘I do this because I love it, but it is taking up so much of my time, and people are now making demands of me, and it’s about time I was properly acknowledged and paid for my time.’

Of course we all need a roof over our head and bread on the table, but I believe that the aspiration to be paid for our time is also about a natural desire that we have for acknowledgement, for status, for a recognition of who we are, what we are doing, the difference we might be making in the world. Money is society’s way of saying, ‘You are appreciated for this.’

Earlier this week, I received a letter that filled my heart, from a girl who had just read my YA novel about a girl coming out. Read Me Like A Book was published last year, after a very long road to publication. I have always said that my biggest hope with this book would be that someone might read it who really needed it, and that it would help them to feel they weren’t alone in what they were going through. This letter was that person.

The lines that stopped me in my tracks and brought tears to my eyes were these: “I felt that I could relate to a lot of Ash’s experiences in the book and that’s really helped me to feel a lot more, for want of a much better word, normal and happier and more accepting of myself. Thank you, thank you, thank you again and again and again!”

This letter tells me that what I am doing has value. That I have a place in the world, that the thing I put my time and my passion into is worthwhile. This letter says, ‘You are appreciated for this.’ Putting aside the need to eat, have shelter, be warm – this letter, frankly, is why I am a writer.

And yes, the fact that writing books is my job does mean it’s easier for me to say ‘I’m a writer’. But my argument is that we should be able to say that regardless.

My other passion is photography. I spend almost as much time on this as writing – but I have never made any money from it. Even so, when people ask what I do, I often want to mention it. My Twitter profile, for example, now includes ‘Keen photographer,’ and it feels important to me that I do this – that we do this.

The kind of thing that gets me up and out of the house early in the mornings

Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that we should all be happy to know that we’re doing something creative and not try to get paid for it. Not at all. I am fully behind all attempts to receive financial reward for the things we put our time and efforts into – whatever they are and however we feel about them. What I am saying is that we, as a society, should rate people’s passions and dreams as highly as we rate their method of paying the bills.

So, try it. Next time someone asks ‘What do you do?’ try saying, ‘I review books,’ ‘I crochet mermaids,’ ‘I take disabled people horse riding,’ ‘I help save lives out at sea,’ ‘I write, take photographs and surf.’

Perhaps if we all do it, then as a society we might one day come to value the contribution that people make to their communities and to the lives of those around them as much as we value the hunk of metal they drive to their day job and the size of the building they live in.

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Out of Season - Joan Lennon

Many of us have done author events at the Wigtown Book Festival but if you're like me, you rarely leave the centre of town, where the action is fabulously, alluringly booky.  But the festival is over for another year and I'm here instead to house- and dog-sit.  And I'm seeing a whole different Wigtown, which I'd like to share with you.  From sunrises to sunsets, with some cows in-between - 

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

No Words for Spring - Joan Lennon

I have no words for spring, except perhaps bravery.


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

(Photos from in and around Ellenabeich, Seil Island, this time last year.)