Friday Speak Out!: Staying Alive

by Carolyn Lochhead

Sometimes, I think I am dead.

It’s all Neil Gaiman’s fault.

It comes from an interview I read, in which Gaiman was asked, “How do you get your ideas?” He replied,

“Everyone has ideas. If you don’t have ideas you are dead.”

Because sometimes, I don’t. For days and sometimes months at a time, not a single notion pops into my head. It makes me feel flat. Empty. Disconnected. Quite possibly, dead.

It usually happens when I’m in a groove. Going to work, looking after the children, doing things I know, broadly speaking, how to do. Not encouraging the creative side of my brain to wake up, poke its head out and take a look around.

But last week, I had a day off work. And it was a revelation.

I:

- Went to a modern art gallery


- Read the music section of the paper


- Wrote in a cosy basement library


- Attended a lunchtime performance of Mendhellson.

In the morning, a couple of ideas came to me, and I noted them on my phone. During the concert I thought of several more. By late afternoon, I was whipping out my phone every few minutes. In the six weeks preceding my day off, I’d come up with maybe two or three prompts for writing. On that one day, I wrote down fifteen.

Although my activities that day were enjoyable, they weren’t novel. I had been to the library, the gallery and the concert hall before. So what was different? I’ve been thinking about that a lot, because I don’t want my newfound creativity to disappear.

The answer is, I stopped. I existed in the moment, not projecting my brain forward to my next task, appointment or intention. I noticed what was going on and let my mind chew it over, whether it appeared significant or not. And because my mind was less agitated, there was space for curiousity. Without an endless marching band of tasks crashing through my brain, it dared to turn its attention to minor details, to conjecture, fancy and just a little bit of nonsense.

So how to maintain this pleasing productivity? I can’t take every day off work, and I can’t - and wouldn’t want to - put the kids into nursery at the weekend. But I’m trying to build in peaceful moments. My youngest daughter is almost three: old enough to be left to her own devices for moments at a time: moments when I could notice the birds in the back garden, instead of snatching up a broom and sweeping the floor. And my husband is a perfectly competent parent, so there is no reason why me and my iPad can’t nip to our local coffee shop for an hour on a Sunday - as, indeed, I have done to write this blog.

Everyday life is not going anywhere. But if I make a few moments for myself in amongst the tasks and the duties, my mind may blossom still further. And at the very least, I will know I am not dead.

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Carolyn Lochhead’s writing credits include Mothers Always Write, Mamalode and Hippocampus. She recently published her first essay collection, Three Toothbrushes And Other Essays on Motherhood, Mindfulness and Making Sense of it All. She lives in Scotland and works in mental health. Follow her @theshooglypeg and read her blog on Medium.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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