[GC Insider] A deep dive to profound change
The end of month summary where I share the good, the bad and the ugly of my own creative process
Hello
Long time, no speak!
Thank you for bearing with me while I have taken a hiatus from the Gentle Creative newsletter. I am hoping to return, sometime after Easter, with two newsletters a month.
For the new subscribers among you, ever since getting covid-19 in August 2021 my health hasn’t been great. I suffered with post-viral fatigue for 4 months, got better for a few months, then plunged back into chronic fatigue last summer. Nevertheless, I managed to write a weekly article and eventually returned to working on my latest novel.
But then things went down again at the beginning of this year and I decided to pause my newsletter at the end of January and just focus on getting started on the latest draft of my novel. As the Gentle Creative it just didn’t seem right to force myself to do both. That’s one of the useful lessons from this period – I don’t force or make myself do anything now!
I have to confess that in February, I hardly did any writing. But I did a lot of playing and self-care. And it was fun.
I have gradually tiptoed back into working on my novel. I tend to do four sessions a week of between thirty and sixty minutes. So it’s not a huge amount but I am very pleased with the quality. Last winter I wrote an incredibly rough, first draft of this book. To be honest it was just fragments and although I knew some of the events that happened in the book, I didn’t know what it was “really” about.
Last year I bought the Story Path course from Pages & Platforms and it has been brilliant. It is run by an all-female team of two editors and a mindset expert. All the other story gurus I have come across have been men and I love how these women have trained in and absorbed various story-telling methodologies and then distilled their own from it.
The programme helped me crack the code to what the theme of the book is and now I’m working on a more polished draft with more confidence. I’m currently 10,000 words in and I’m just now hitting the crunchy, challenging part of the story.
Despite the fatigue, by last Christmas, I had regained a fair amount of energy and physical capability. Even though I’m not as strong as I was, this year, and this hiatus period, has really been about profound inner change.
I’ve made great inroads on self-love and respecting and praising my body rather than cursing it. Thanks to an amazing book – Outrageous Openings by Tosha Silver – I’ve learnt techniques to park more of my worries and trust the universe to deliver solutions. This has brought about two miraculous moments which have delivered the practical and therapeutic help that I require.
I’ve been bogged down with anxiety for years. I know that my current health is a result of all the years I pushed through exhaustion, worked too hard and just kept going, no matter what. As my anxiety increased (thank you menopause!) it took more energy to battle my decreasing confidence and stay in the game. Until one day, two years ago, thoroughly burned out, I dropped out of the game. Everything since then has been about recovery and learning a new, kinder way of living.
While this period of extreme fatigue has been incredibly hard, traumatic and frustrating – and it’s still ongoing – I know that I am building a foundation to a kinder life, which embraces rather than eschews rest and recognises my value of just being me, irrespective of productivity and achievements. I think this could lead somewhere rather wonderful in the future.
So I am hoping to return, after Easter, with two articles a month. Since the end of January, I have paused the billing on all paid subscriptions and I will keep this paused for now until I am sure that I can deliver consistently again. Like everything to do with Gentle Creative, it’s an experiment, and we’ll see what happens!
Finally, despite my hiatus, one of my articles has had excellent traction on Medium:
Don’t Shy Away From Tricky Topics - Are you nervous about where your novel is heading?
I re-posted it back in November from an article I originally wrote here on Substack and it is suddenly garnering a lot of attention. If you haven’t read it, and are a bit worried that your writing is too dark, too macabre or just a bit weird, you might find it useful.
See you again soon
Plodding gently
Cali xx
Thank you for the book recommendation, I ordered it immediately and then read it in 2 days - it’s been pretty amazing and my thought process is already shifted!
'I’ve made great inroads on self-love and respecting and praising my body rather than cursing it.'
What a sentence! What a fantastic mode of being! Thank you.