Hello and welcome, my lovely creatives! I hope you had a couple of weeks of creative fun times! I was the busiest with work that I’ve been since pre-pandemic, which is good for the pocketbook but bad for focusing on creative things, including this newsletter. I think I wrote a sentence or two and I was out of juice. Sometimes I just have to admit defeat. Work won that round. I’m winning this one!
This week, I switched gears from what I was going to write about. Sometimes it just happens that way.
Dear Lovely Creative Person,
I have a lot of conversations with people about creativity and what it means to be creative. I love it when someone broadens my own ideas of what that means.
But it also means I'm observing how many people think they need to fit in with certain parameters in order to be a creative person when there is no one way. There's not even only a thousand ways. There are as many ways to express creative energy as there are people on Earth. Probably more. It's inherently human to be creative and find new ways to express it.
I'm not saying I'm some kind of auteur but I've definitely taken some creative risks in my own work. One published work of mine that comes to mind is writing one of my favorite pieces in the form of a list in second person these are things that are not generally done nor things that are hugely successful. But yet it's my only piece I've had published multiple times before I finally threw it up on Medium so that anyone could read it. Is it perfect? No. But am I proud of it? You betcha! Does it fit within the normal conventions of storytelling? Not at all. But does that matter? Not even a little bit!
Sometimes a little bit of creative risk has more reward than you can imagine.
I know I wear some of my creative influences on my sleeve, but someone I think of often is Jim Henson. He was captivated by this new fandangled thing called television and by golly, he wanted to be a part of it. Instead of going a conventional route, he found his in with puppets. His offbeat humour and wonderful whimsy captivated the hearts of many, likely because his Muppets had heart, despite being made of fabric and string.
He created characters and stories that spoke to people in a way that no one else was doing at the time. Puppets were for kiddies, but yet they became spokes Muppets for ad campaigns, stars of their own television shows, and beloved characters in people's lives not by following what had been done before but by following his passions and inspiration.
While it's often a great way to learn by following what others have done before, sometimes it's good to go outside of what's always been done. You never know what will come of it!
Much love and permission to hop outside your creative norm and see what happens,
t :)
Inspiration Of The Week
This week, I was reintroduced to someone in a most unusual way, which, by this point, I should just think is usual for me. But I digress.
I knew he was a musician who works on music for movies and I was able to ask him more about it this time around. He used to travel around with various bands which was fun but tiring. Now he’s composing music for movies he wants to work on as well as making his own music and he seems pretty happy with that arrangement.
I love finding ambient music to listen to as I write. I often listen to binaural beats for that background noise without the distraction of lyrics. I love lyrics, of course, but sometimes they can be distracting if I’m listening to the words instead of writing my own. So when he had me look up his Bandcamp link (see below!), I was pleased as punch that it’s ambient music. Thank you, Mac! Definitely bookmarked this link for future writing sessions.
What inspired you this week?
Creative Prompt For The Week
This section is a weekly prompt to nudge you to do something creative this weekend. Sometimes we want to do something but just don't know what to create so we need a starting point. I'm going to help the creatively challenged by providing a word, phrase, or some other starting point where you can focus and create something. If you'd like to share it with me, please do, but there's no pressure. I'm here to inspire, not judge or tell you how or what to do.
Your prompt for this week, should it inspire you, is:
PIZZA
At work last night, I had a funny interaction with a customer who wanted me to hold onto his pizza. Instead, I told him where he could leave it and sold him a ticket. We had a fun time bantering and I definitely helped set the tone for how the rest of his evening was going to go with his friends. I called him Mr. Pizza Man which he thought was the greatest thing ever (and no, I don’t think he was drunk, haha).
But now, of course, all I can think about is pizza. Sorry if I’ve used it as a prompt before but it’s on my mind so that’s what you get.
Some ideas for pizza pizzazz inspiration: draw your perfect pizza (would it include pineapple?), make pizza out of Play-Doh (remember that Play-Doh pizza making kit? It was something I always wanted!), or perhaps you could make your own gigantic pizza sculpture. This one by Tom Friedman sold for $270,000!
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