My regular post this month isn’t about writing. It’s about doing anything other than writing!
My husband and I love antique shops. We haven’t walked into one yet that hasn’t had something in it with my name on it. A few weeks ago, it was an old Mulberry ‘Roxanne’ handbag that I got for an absolute steal (seriously, a **steal** at about 10% of what I last paid for a Mulberry bag—I have a small addiction where they’re concerned!). Among other things, we bought an even older basket chair for our bedroom, and last week I finally got around to repainting it and thinking about reupholstering the seat.
To be honest, it was the seat that provoked me to think hard. The ‘Roxanne’ was a nice extra.
Five or six years ago I did a multitude of crafty things. I’ve done two year-long courses at the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace (the diplomas are in a drawer somewhere), I’ve done beadwork and made jewellery, dyed silks and lace with over-ripe blackberries to make embellished book covers, made cushions and fabric handbags, and created embroidered, beaded boxes. I had time to garden, do a year-long photography project capturing London’s Victorian cemeteries, and time to just put my feet up and read.
And in the middle of all that, I wrote.
These days? Well, these days the writing is all there is.
When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember the last time I got out the trestles and my embroidery frames. I do know I’ve had a crazy patchwork cushion front on a frame for the last 9 years, waiting for me to embroider the seams (I know that because the photo I found of the first one I made was labelled with a 2010 date!), and a 3-D embroidered knot garden, half-finished, for even longer. I barely ever pick up the camera, and I gave away all my jewellery-making stuff to my niece. Everything has narrowed down to getting words onto the screen.
I hadn’t realised how much so until yesterday. All the time I was rooting through the embroidery stash for fabric for a new seat cover, I was fretting because this was taking me away from working.
And that’s what’s stopped me short.
When did writing, my favourite, most satisfying creative outlet, become mere work? When did it stop being a joy, but an obligation? When did become the only area where I was creative? When did I get so narrow and confined, so pinch-lipped and focused, that I’ve forgotten all the other things I loved?
It’s happened gradually, but it has happened. Time to do something about it.
I’ll never stop writing. But I don’t want it to be work, to be something I feel guilty about not doing if something else, like that embroidered cushion, catches my eye and I decide to spend some time on finishing it. I’m lucky in that my royalty income isn’t something I depend upon to pay bills or put food on the table. I don’t have to view writing as work. I can go back to having a broader, more varied creative life—and I’m willing to bet that if I’m refreshing myself there, then my writing will benefit too. With the sense of obligation muted, the pure joy can come back. I’ll be astonished if that isn’t reflected in my output!
So, my plan at the moment is to set aside one day a week to finish that darn cushion cover. And maybe even the knot garden. And when they’re done, I’ll be pulling out all the needlework squares I completed to make a tapestry rug and starting afresh on that, too. The first embroidery day happened last week, and to celebrate I hauled out that patchwork cushion cover, found the neglected camera to show you the corner of my study that’s become my crafting space.
I can’t say I didn’t have a few flutters of guilt and an anxious glance at my computer, and a moment or two of thinking I should really get back to Rafe and Ned. But I stood firm and achieved quite a lot that day. I’m pleased as Punch about how quickly my fingers remembered their old skills, and one day soon I’ll have that second cushion done to join the first. I’m hoping that as a side benefit to more cushions, I’ll be less stressed, less strung out, more relaxed.
So tell me, what do *you* do to enrich your life? Paint, knit, stitch, dance, sing? Do share, and if you have pictures, share those too!
About Anna
Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from marketing employment schemes to organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.
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