Constant Creativity

Imagining is like feeling around

in a dark lane, or washing

your eyes with blood.

You are the truth

from foot to brow. Now,

what else would you like to know?

(Rumi, Birdsong)

Coming off the back of last week and a bit of reflection on the year to date, I feel like I’m getting into a good rhythm of activity, and feeling like I have a fantastic balance in my life between family, work and play – of course, it helps that for me the two ‘work’ elements pretty much *are* play.

Balance Beam, Sheilaz413 (Flickr Creative Commons)

Of course, my balance is not perfect. I have wobbles, days when I can’t even find my own centre of gravity, let alone balance anyone else’s needs with my own, and I have great days, when I just float with practised ease through a sequence of apparently physically impossible manoevres to get from the beginning to the end of the day. There are days when I’m too tired to remember, or want to remember, what I’m supposed to do, when I’m stupid and sluggish, and there are days when the behaviour of others pushes me to the limits of what I can tolerate, leaving me physically exhausted and emotionally and mentally drained.

But, on the whole, I am getting closer to a balanced life, when each part is coming together and I feel that I am living a complete existence.

There are three factors at work here.

The first is understanding and acknowledging what’s important to me, the ‘headline’ items that I can’t do without. For me, those things are family, writing, textile arts, home, and garden. Defining this list has allowed me to disconnect from any activity that doesn’t come under one of those headings, and that has freed up huge amounts of time and energy.

The second part came when I moved away from writing lists to ‘time-blocking’. Instead of having an enormous, overwhelming to-do list, I block times of day for certain activities. To give an example: I get home from the school run at approximately 9 a.m. every day, so I spend an hour on general housework and ‘daily’ chores, but instead of having a list or rota or routine or whatever, I will do a quick ‘tour’ of the house and just decide what to do based on what needs doing most. What doesn’t get done in the time available, doesn’t get done – it might get done tomorrow, if it’s higher priority than the other things that need doing. 

And this is where the third element comes in.

Being in touch with my creativity, allowing myself the time and space to express myself, is something that runs through everything I do, and is so closely connected with the ‘enjoy’ element of the intention I set myself at the beginning of the year.

It’s taken me a while to understand how closely the two are connected, and how creativity comes into play to generate enjoyment even in the most tedious of housework tasks. But viewing my life in terms of constant creativity, and trying to make sure that everything I do is driven out of that creativity, has transformed the way I see a lot of things. I read somewhere that artists are the only people in society who are permitted to not grow up, who are allowed to carry on playing way past the time when everyone else has gone out and got a sensible haircut and a safe job, as if we are the guardians of the dreams everyone else has had to set aside. To see my life in terms of a privilege granted, in terms of something that is worthwhile both for my own sake and for others, has let me approach what I do much more lightly, with more sense of play about it.

Because, for me, creativity is so closely allied to the sensual side of life, the transformation of a room from a messy, dirty, cluttered space into an ordered, sensually appealing space is an act of creativity, and I am able to focus on the pleasure I get from a completed chore whilst I am doing it, and at the same time see the chore itself as a worthwhile act that feeds my own sense of wellbeing, and that of my family. Gardening is a creative pleasure, because there not only is the anticipation of the taste of the food, but there is also the visual appeal of a well-planned garden and the fragrances and textures of the different plants that combine to make a coherent whole.

In other areas of life, my creativity lies closer to the surface, but it is interesting for me to start seeing how it feeds off itself.

For example:

At the moment, I am in a ‘learning’ phase with my writing. I’m working on Holly Lisle’s ‘Survival School for Writers‘ and I’ve just come off the back of a month or so of administration, editing, short story submissions and critique group work – all these things are good and necessary, but they are not the same as writing – the actual process of sitting down and letting a story flood out onto the page. At the same time, I’m experiencing huge levels of doubt and insecurity about my writing, because of course the higher level of submissions and critiquing activity is leading to more criticism and rejection: whilst I can’t shake my belief that my *writing* is strong, it does all make me doubt my ability as a *storyteller*, but that’s not for discussion here.

What I have found is that, at the moment, I’m generating fewer story ideas than I would normally, but both the ideas and productivity in my textile arts are off the scale. The number and quality of ideas I’m getting is astonishing, and I’m almost resenting having to do paid work for others because it’s interfering with my desire to get on with the work I want to do for *me*.

I figure, in a pretty simplistic way, that my creativity runs at a pretty constant level, though perhaps slowly and steadily increasing the more I use it. What I figure as an extension from that thought is that because it’s not being channelled into writing, it’s diverting itself into textile projects and busying itself over there. This is a good thing – the last few weeks have generated some fantastic refashions and stock items, and some wonderful ideas for bigger projects that I want to try, as soon as I get a space in between commissions .

When I think back, and compare textile art idea generation currently against that in a period when I was heavily involved in a novel first draft, I can see that there’s a corresponding curtailment (I keep a separate diary/sketchbook for my textile work, everything that goes in there gets dated) in the volume and quality of ideas and desire that is generated for new textile experiments.

I’m quite taken with the idea that the apparently unrelenting rush of ideas swirling around me does have its own rhythm and balance, too.

What’s useful for me is to see that the creativity I bring into my writing and the creativity that drives my textile arts are not two separate elements that I draw on as and when needed, but part of the same whole, and that acknowledgement has been like fitting a couple of jigsaw puzzle pieces together and suddenly seeing them fuse together to make a single, complete, picture.

Seeing beyond that to how I can allow creativity into the other areas of my life and let them get absorbed into that same complete whole is something I get in flashes, like a puzzle piece I know fits somewhere here, but can’t quite join on yet. It will come, but it will take more time and more patience and more testing until I get there.

I am optimistic, though, that I *will* get there.

End of Quarter 2 – Progress Report

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Fallen Giant by Duncanh1 (Flickr)

I’m starting the report in reflective mood: perhaps a little negative, but with a clearer picture of both my capacity and desire for work than I had at the beginning of the year. It’s been an odd year – a lot has happened, and with Bellaboo growing out of her ‘baby’ phase into a delightfully cute toddler, balances have shifted around to the extent that I feel I have much more time that I can *choose* how to use, rather than being tied to the intense dependencies of the baby.

I anticipated that this change would happen, but what I didn’t anticipate was the level of demands that arise just on the day-to-day that eat up my time, nor that I would encounter a set of personal issues that have put me back in counselling therapy.

As a result, I’ve achieved less than I hoped I would. However, what is undoubtedly a massive benefit that by far outweighs the slower progress is that I feel I am settling into a good routine of working and playing, that I am holding to my two intentional words for the year – COMPLETE and ENJOY – and that I feel I am making good progress.

Not only in my writing and in my business, but in personal terms as well, I feel more settled than I did at the beginning of the year, and whilst my passions for writing and sewing will continue to drive me, I feel less crowded by other demands on my time, and that I am able to pay more attention to the ‘big rocks‘ and as a result I am getting more done.

It seems counter-intuitive to do less to do more, but actually I’m doing less of the stuff that really doesn’t matter – the sand, if you like, and so I have more time to work on the big, important stuff. Half the battle has been seeing my way clearly through all the attention grabbing clutter – mental and physical – that fills my life, as I guess it does for most people, and by disconnecting myself from those distractions, I’ve set myself free.

It’s an exhilarating feeling, and I just hope that I can keep it up. I just have to keep reminding myself that I am incredibly lucky: I get to spend my days doing the things I love the best, and with the people that mean the most to me. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

And so, to the meat of it …

1) Writing

Standard tasks:

- maintain schedule discipline of write/edit/submit a story every other week – I have a total of 12 stories in ‘finished’ inventory, and have clocked up 43 submissions this year. Sadly, no acceptances, but I keep the faith that they will come.

- maintain current crit group commitments - on track

- complete the “How to Think Sideways” course - I’ve fallen behind on this, but I’m planning out the next month to catch it up

 Anneth: I had hoped to have this out on the submission rounds by now, but a round of critiques has highlighted that I still need to make some changes, so it’s pencilled in for another rework in August, and then out on the submission rounds in Q4. It’s a bit frustrating, but I think worth the effort to polish it up to its very best before I send it out.

 Serpent of Colchis: edit completed in Q1 as planned, it’s now in the hands of my ‘Novel Club’ critique group over at FM Writers. I’m bracing myself …. whatever the comeback, the edits won’t get worked through until late Q4 this year, possibly even early next year, depending on how everything else goes – if I don’t get to it before Nanowrimo comes along, it won’t get touched until after the ‘Sere’ project is finished in first draft.

 Disconnection – the planned rewrite was completed at the beginning of May, so obviously the edits haven’t been started yet. Those now look like they’re dropping to the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Contain This Hour – this one is coming online. I’m spending the next few weeks catching up the HTTS course, and then I’m working on the Anneth edits, and thenI’ll be writing the revised-concept first draft of this novel. I have nothing scheduled yet for the edits: I’m going to wait until I’ve finished it, and then prioritise it into the list.

The list I generated back at the beginning of the year is pretty much out of the window at this stage – I know I’m not going to do half of what I hoped, but equally I’m not beating myself up about it. I’ll continue to schedule things along a timeline, because if I don’t set myself deadlines then I know I won’t perform: however, I’m considering them more as guidelines and not beating myself up about missing out on them – planning is an iterative process, after all .

In terms of outline priorities, the rest of the year looks broadly like this:

• July – HTTS
• August – Anneth edits
• September – ‘Contain This Hour’ novella revised-concept first draft
• October – ‘Serpent of Colchis’ edits
• November/December/January – ‘Sere’ first draft
• February – ‘Disconnection’ edits
• March - ‘Lest Ye Be Judged’ edits
• April – month off!
• May – Storyteller of Akal rewrite
• June – Sere edits
• July – Contain This Hour edits
• August – month off!
• September – writing – new novel idea codename Ziggy Stardust
• October – Storyteller of Akal edits
• November – new novel idea, based on expanding short story

Textile arts/crafting – from a business perspective, this is more or less where I want it to be right now, though I have branched out to an Etsy shop this year. There are a couple of objectives I want to state, though they feel a little nebulous at this stage.

- try 1 new stitch, technique or craft I haven’t tried before each month - done

- stick to my ‘buy handmade’ pledge I haven’t been buying much of anything, but what  I have bought has been handmade

- stick to my ‘wardrobe refashion’ pledge on track – haven’t bought any new clothes for me or the children this year – NCT sales, charity shops and ebay have kept us kitted out in fine style at next to no cost. It’s all good.

- do at least one of Marysa’s lovely courses at the Otter Bindery - the timings just haven’t worked out for me so far, but I’m retaining the intention …

For next year (2010), I’m thinking that with Bellaboo starting pre-school, I’ll have more time on my hands, so I’m going to gear up for doing a couple of craft fairs, and will also get myself organised and apply for full membership of both the Embroidery Guild and the Surrey Guild of Craftsmen.

This is pretty much on track. I’m withdrawing from Etsy for now, simply because I don’t have the time to market myself effectively there, so it’s a waste of time and money when I’m drawing sufficient business from the galleries. I’ve spent a bit more time and attention on smaller, ’stock’ items to try and draw people in – I’m not sure it’s working, but I’m certainly drawing a fairly steady stream of low-level income to supplement the commissions, so I’m happy that sort of activity is more beneficial than the Etsy adventure.

Personal - not so much here, though with so much going on in the above two, one of them must be:

- REMEMBER I HAVE A FAMILY

- I will take at least 2 weeks holiday this year - I’ve already taken 1 week off over Easter, and enjoyed it, and we’ve got 4 weeks of holiday booked over the summer, one way or another. I will do my best not to work at *anything* on these (1 of them is camping, which pretty much precludes writing and sewing, so I’ll be forced to meet my pledge like it or not ).

- I will try at least 1 new thing with at least 1 of my children every month I haven’t really been doing this, but we have been spending time together, so I think it counts … I’d rather not be doing things just for the sake of novelty …

- I will work through the “How to talk/how to listen” book – SHAME! I still haven’t opened this book …

- go to bed before midnight at least 4 times a week – I’ve got that nailed now, I’ve been forced to accept that I need more sleep, I simply don’t have the stamina I had 10, or even 5, years ago.

- Books/Reading

- I will read at least 20 books this year, and I will (try to) not buy any more books (excl below) until I’ve caught up my backlog hmmmm. I’m just not very good at ‘not buying books’, although I am using the library more than previously ….

This year, I have read:

1.  
   1.  
      1. Crystal Line – Anne McCaffrey
      2. Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
      3. Perfume – Patrick Suskind
      4. Mainspring – Jay Lake
      5. Escapement – Jay Lake
      6. We Never Talk About my Brother – Peter S Beagle
      7. Far Bright Star – Robert Olmstead
      8. The Painted Man – Peter V Brett
      9. Wolfblade (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
      10. Warrior (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
      11. Warlord (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
      12. The Nameless Day (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass
      13. The Wounded Hawk (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass
      14. The Crippled Angel (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass

Given that I’ve got another trilogy waiting for me to start in on it (The Tears of Artamon, Sarah Ash), Jay Lake’s Trial of Flowers, Margaret Forster ‘Over’, Kate Atkinson ‘Not the End of the World’ & Stephen Hunt’s ‘Rise of the Iron Moon’ sitting in my tbr pile (and a lot of holiday coming up, apparently ), I think I’m going to trounce this target!! I’m wondering whether I should write reviews of all the books I read as well …. I think it would be worth the extra time, no?

- I will catalogue the existing collection on Library Thing - this still stands at its previous measurement of 8/32 shelves done, with 3 cartons yet to be unpacked. No progress ….

- house and garden

- grow more fruit and veg this year than we did last year – stick to the planting and maintenance plan - on track, though the weeding is killing me, and a good downpour to save me watering & refill the water butts would be appreciated ….

- reduce waste again to 1/2 a bin bag every week - on track, and the council’s decision to introduce wheelie bins in September and food caddies will pretty much take us down to nothing – what we do have will, sadly, be the few bits of packaging we can’t recycle.

- take another 5% off our total energy usage for the year - so far, we’ve only cut it by 2%, but of course over the summer we use everything much less, so I’m hoping we can catch up on the target …

- declutter and redecorate loft, improve my workspace – decluttering is done, redecoration is not started

- list and sort out all the little leftover jobs now the refurb is finished - list is done, and in progress, but good weather isn’t conducive to interior work, so it’s slow progress – will probably pick up once the garden season is over ….

- and last but not least, get my BMI back down to 22. It’s completely out of control since Bellaboo arrived, and I don’t think I can call it baby fat any more. It’s just fat. It must go. GAH! Nothing doing here, although I have got exercise back into my life recently – combination of WiiFit and a weekly dance class – I’ll be starting another 2 dance classes in September, and I need to get some strength training into my routine as well. But BMI is refusing to move … I’m hoping that as I clear mental clutter, I’ll start being able to shift the barriers stopping me giving this the priority it needs.

 

All in all, it’s been a tough but generally productive quarter – I feel decluttered and positive and ready to move forward, so I’m hoping that the momentum will keep going even over the slower pace the summer holidays will necessarily dictate.

Sweets of sun and flower …

 

Noon, hiving sweets of sun and flower

Has fallen on dreams in wayside bower,

Where bees hold honeyed fellowship

With the ripe blossom of her lip;

All silent are her poppied vales

And all her long Arcadian dales,

Where idleness is gathered up

A magic draught in summer’s cup.

Come, let us give ourselves to dreams

By lisping margins of her streams.

(From “A Summer Day”, L M Montgomery)

 

 

Summer has stolen over my garden, and the straggly, underpopulated days of spring have given away to lush, flower-crammed borders and burgeoning crops.

 

Garden Chair by Nutmeg66 (Flick Creative Commons)

For a gardener, it’s a difficult time of year, even more so than Spring’s mad rush to get everything planted.

In Spring, I’m rich with hope and the frantic need to get the planting done so that I can reap the benefits in the summer – the soil treatments and early bug treatments set the scene, and when those first shoots start coming, it’s pure heaven.

Sadly, that Spring euphoria fades and there are inevitable disappointments – something doesn’t germinate (none of my native umbelliferous experiments – angelica, caraway, anthriscus sylvestris, yarrow – amounted to much, and I only got two of the eight hyssop I planted to germinate), or else there are losses following potting on. These are particularly devastating, I think! I had a wonderful batch of 20 rudbeckia seedlings, and Bellaboo got hold of them and de-potted almost the whole lot, and I’m left with 3 now. Very demoralising, as is the realisation that the pace of work doesn’t ease up just because the weather is hotting up and the planting’s over – there’s still a huge amount of work to be done with watering, weeding, maintenance and pest control.

Come the summer, and just when everyone is coming over idle, the second wave of gardener’s enemies invade … weeds and pests come marching in, and the plentiful germination of spring gets decimated unless the gardener keeps a watchful eye out … and even then, there’s always casualties.

I try to take an organic, non-toxic approach to gardening – I use little in the way of pesticides and herbicides, preferring to rely on natural remedies and hard graft to keep everything healthy. I’m happier doing it that, in part because I grow a fair amount of my own veg and I don’t like the idea of ingesting nasty chemicals (it’s one of the reasons I grow my own), and in part because the children are in the garden almost all the time during the summer months, and I don’t want them eating slug pellets or other nasties by mistake. But it’s a labour intensive process and this weekend I’ve been sorely tempted to resort to chemical warfare.

We have a number of perennial pests – from slugs, snails and aphids to brambles, nettles and bindweed – that always threaten to rampage through the garden at this time of year, given half a chance. The slugs and snails I’ve been dealing with using nematodes, and the destruction of every single one of the nicotiana seedlings I planted out this week have pointed out that I urgently need to retreat. It’s also proved once and for all that the ‘Slug Stoppa’ granules I bought as backup this year are worse than useless, so I shan’t be bothering with them again. So far, I’ve been able to clear the aphid clusters on the roses and herbs using my gran’s old remedy of dissolved soap flakes in water and misting the infected plants … I’m wondering whether or not to order a job lot of ladybirds and see what they make of all the little critters. It’s strange that we haven’t seen nearly so many this year as we would normally. I’m a little worried about them.

Another reason I don’t use pesticides is the bees. I grow a fair old range of fragrant flowering plants, including sage, lavender, borage and rosemary, so we get a lot of our fuzzy friends in the garden. Despite the panic elsewhere about the declining number of bees, it’s been very busy with them in my garden – I just hope it carries on that way. Bees are on the list of things I ponder every year – alongside chickens – as to whether I can add them into the mix. This year, again, I concluded against, but I will, possibly when Bella starts school, see if I can spend a day or so with a local beekeeper just to see how I get on with it. It’s one of those things – alongside country wine making – that I long to be able to do.

It’s been good fun getting the two older children involved in the garden more this year: both on bee watch – which they’ve thoroughly enjoyed – and in clearing out the nasties. Honey, in particular, has developed a peculiar affinity with caterpillars, and has spent at least an hour every day in amongst the brassicas clearing all the cabbage white grubs into her caterpillar hotel – a move that I’m more than happy with! Rumpus has contented himself with the odd shield bug and a collection of ants in his bug gallery, but it’s a start, and they’re both getting good at spotting ‘good’ predator bugs and ‘bad’ munchers and taking action. I’m enormously proud of both myself and them that they’re much less squeamish about bugs than I am, and they’ve set up a protective watch over a mother-spider guarding her big bundle of eggs under the curved arch of a savoy leaf … they’re desperate to see the spiderlings hatch … I’m just hoping they don’t do what the ‘daddy long legs’ spiderlings do and eat their mother when they hatch out …

Of course, the real joy at this time of year is that we’re starting to pull in our first few harvests. The winter-sown Shenshyu onions and shallots came up last weekend and are drying on racks - I’m looking forward to plaiting them up and hanging them in the kitchen – and it was wonderful to see that my planning paid off and the peas and beans were just coming nicely in between the onion rows and ready to be staked: that bit of successional growing worked so well, I’m thrilled. The sweetcorn and squashes have gone out in those beds, and I’m just keeping a bit of an eye on their performance in case they need a feed. We’ve been getting young lettuce leaves for a while now – I’m so disappointed that the saved seeds from last year of cucumbers and peppers didn’t germinate – and we’re getting the first tomatoes, too, now – my taste buds are just tingling in anticipation, as there’s nothing as sweet as a home-grown tomato, even the organic ones don’t come close!

We’ve had a couple of early cabbage – Spring Hero – which worked so well I shall be putting them on the list for next year, and the first sowing of early peas – Feltham Firsts – is podding up nicely. I keep running an experimental hand over them but I think it will be at least another week before we can gorge ourselves on them!!

But the glory of this season is – and always will be – the strawberries. OH MY, the strawberries. We are in strawberry heaven, taking off a good punnet’s worth every day of the beauties, and most of them getting eaten before they make it to the kitchen … the crop this year is astonishing – such good size and wonderful flavour, and the quantities are just mindblowing. Bellaboo has eaten so many that she doesn’t want any more, but Honey and I adore strawberries and there’s no stopping us! But it is as much fun to wander around the garden with Bellaboo picking them – we have a little basket that she carries, and we pick them together and she carries them into the kitchen for washing – it’s such a precious little ritual we share because she’s so sweetly serious about it all – it’s her (first) very important job.

I’m over the moon that we’ve got little crops on both the blackcurrant and raspberry I planted this year – I really wasn’t expecting anything from them, so it’s lovely to see little cluster of black jewels on the currant, and the promise of a handful of raspberries on the canes. I shall be making sure I get to them before the blackbirds do!

It is gratifying that the hard work of the last couple of months is paying off, if rather daunting that there’s still a lot of hard work to be done when I’d like to be lying back and enjoying the sunshine – the front garden is a neglected, weed-ridden disgrace that I absolutely *must* attend to this week, so if the weather’s good the house may well have to tend to itself whilst I garden – but there’s something so relaxing about pottering one’s way through a vegetable bed and checking out what new delights are on their way – the first of the calabrese are starting to head, for example – whilst grubbing out the little weedlets, that it doesn’t always feel like work.

And, of course, now the summer harvest is starting to set, it’s time to start planning for the next rotation, and the next set of planting …. time to go back and see what worked and what didn’t, and to start pawing through those seed catalogues for the late summer/autumn plantings and the next wave of veggie delights …

It’s true what they say: a gardener’s work is never done, but I don’t think I’d want it any other way.

Sinks & drains

What is this life, if, full of care

There is no time to stand and stare

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows

No time to see, when woods we pass

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass

No time to see, in broad daylight

Streams full of stars like skies at night

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance

And watch her feet. how they can dance

No time to wait til her mouth can

Enrich the smile her eyes began

A poor life this, if, full of care

We have no time to stand and stare.

(W H Davies)

 

I have been stalled, badly, to the extent that I’m barely scratching the surface of the things I want to get done, for some weeks now. In fact, ever since we had the half-term holiday & I was forced to take a break. Ever since, I’ve been struggling to pick myself back up and get off that break and back down to serious work. There are a number of reasons why. Having that time off gave me a little pause: it lifted away the weight of the daily grind – the damn schedule, the to-do list – that demands my time and attention more than any of the children, always nagging away with that must-do sequence of jobs – housework, kidstuff, Magpies, writing, and gave me a taste of freedom.

Lazy Day on the Beach by Ohnasch.de (Flickr creative commons)

When I came home, the weight of it all settling back onto my shoulders was almost unbearable.

And the list stretches an eternity before me, never-ending, an infinite toil without thanks or hope of completion. Suddenly, having had the time to look up at the view, to see what was around me right now and to spend some time in the moment to just ’stand and stare’, has made me feel what dull drudgery I wallowed in before.

I felt defeated, overwhelmed and demotivated. I’m never going to finish that list, so why even bother starting?

And this is where a little past form comes into play: a life littered with half-completed projects, and I’ve sworn over and over again that I will either complete or close the lot of them. A further factor: my ‘Belbin’ profile.

Allow, if you will, a brief digression whilst I explain myself. Belbin is a management theorist who defined, in context of organisations, an assessment that gives insights into an individual’s behaviour in a team environment, based on the expression of traits for the various team roles. These traits are, to a degree, flexible in that most individuals will fit more than one of the 9 team roles, and that their traits will vary depending on the make-up of the team in which they find themselves. A more complete explanation of the “Team Inventory can be found over at Wikipedia.

In my corporate days, I went through several of these assessments (always a favourite on ‘team building’ exercises ), and I almost invariably came out strongest on three roles: my primary role was that of  ‘plant’ – the creative, uncommunicative, off-the-wall free-thinking problem solver (funny that), with secondary roles as the Implementer (as the name implies, the one who puts their head down, gets the job done & delivers the goods) and the Completer-Finisher – the picky perfectionist who insists it’s all done right.

When it comes to getting things done, these three are powerful traits that continue to do me great service.

Where they undermine me is in my core thinking. That damn Plant generates ideas like a little dynamo, always spinning new projects, solutions to old problems, better ways of doing/being/working. Trouble is, the Implementer gets hold of them before they’ve been through any sort of feasibility or practicability assessment and just wants to get at them, and then the Completer-Finisher gets totally frustrated that it can’t all be done in the available time and throws all the toys out of the pram, and I’m left exhausted and feeling like a total failure because I haven’t met the impossibly high standards I’ve set for myself.

So there’s the rub.

I’ve been wallowing – unable to get moving, paralysed by the weight of the almighty list in every area, and with little energy to move or change things.

Until last week, when I read Christine Kane’s blog, and, more importantly, her post “Are you leaking?”.

It made me realise that my mind was as cluttered up with ideas and projects as an attic-full of old boxes, and that the amount of energy they were draining off me was crippling me. I need to sort them out, and discard those I won’t ever use again. I realised that when faced with seems like a sisphyean task, I’ll divert my force around the immovable object and start frittering away my time on whatever time-sinks come to hand, so that I don’t have the time to even start the big project.

It also made me realise, obliquely, that it’s not neccessary to delay starting something because I can’t finish it in its entirety in the immediate timeslot available. It is possible to break these big tasks down into smaller, incremental chunks, and to accomplish those in series, over a period of time, will get me there as surely as trying to slog it through from start to finish and paying the price in exhaustion and loss of love in the project.

I’d been so focussed on completing the tasks, that I’d forgotten about enjoying myself.

I’d forgotten that these things on the list are the things I *want* to do, that they are things I *enjoy* doings, and that they are more important to me than all the daft (but fun) ways of wasting time I’ve been indulging myself in so that I don’t have to face up to those realisations.

So I’ve started making some changes.

I know it won’t be easy, and I know I won’t get it instantly right, but I know that it will be worth doing.

I’ll continue to disconnect from all those distractions, to avoid the time-sinks that eat up my minutes and leave me with nothing. And I’m going to carry on attacking the energy drains.

A simple thing I’ve done this week: if I notice a job needs doing, if it takes less than 5 minutes, I do it there and then. I have set times for certain tasks, and outside of those times I simply don’t do them. If they’re that important, I’ll do them in their slot when that next comes around – e.g. housework – but they get prioritised against the other housework tasks that need doing. And I’m building breaks into my day – two periods where I stop working and play with the children, allow myself to have a little fun.

We’re all doing well on it.

I’m feeling more energised and less stressed, and not having a to-do list hanging over my head is making life much, much easier. For the ‘work’ areas – writing and textiles – I have lists, but they’re worked out and prioritised. What I’ve done is to remove the timetables – as far as possible (textile commissions always come with deadlines ) – and just allow myself to take as long as it needs to take to get the job done. And of course the children are enjoying getting to spend more time with a less-stressed parent …

My Implementer isn’t totally happy about the lack of schedule, and my Aspie-self is more than a little uncomfortable with the new routines, but overall, I feel like the weight of tasks has lifted and I’m much, much happier.

Finally, I feel like I’ve got some breathing space.

What is really, really strange – and something I haven’t quite figured out yet – is that by consciously deciding to do LESS, I’m actually achieving more.

Election special ….

This week saw the UK lurch from the expenses debacle into the European and local council elections. Despite predictions that the expenses scandal would precipitate a high voter turnout to ‘punish’ politicians and send a clear message that these sorts of abuses won’t be tolerated, it looks like the turnout will be at a record low.

Why should this be? Is voter apathy making democracy irrelevant, or is a lack of perceived true democracy driving voter apathy?

I’m not sure there’s a simple answer.

Local council elections are rarely well supported. Certainly, where I live, you could put a Conservative badge on a donkey and it would get elected, so there’s little incentive for supporters of opposing parties to stand up and be counted, because there’s never enough of them to make a difference. And, if the main parties can’t make a dent on the Conservative stranglehold, then there’s little point in independents making the running, either. It was sad to see the likes of UKIP and BNP putting candidates up locally, and even worse to see them attracting votes – I find it disturbing that UKIP did better than Labour, though I’d imagine those are votes that would have otherwise gone to the Conservatives, rather than anywhere else. One does wonder, though, which way the 62% of the local electorate who did not vote would have gone, and whether that would actually have made any difference to the overall outcome. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that they didn’t turn out to vote. Aside from the general perception of the local result being a pretty much foregone conclusion, I think there is a general understanding that local councils really have very little power.

I’m not sure that this is correct. Certainly, in terms of big-picture politics, local councils are pretty much hamstrung by the increasing degree of state centralisation in terms of both budget and target setting for local services, but certainly I’d say that local councils are the state bodies with which most people have most direct contact, AND the state bodies who have most impact on the day-to-day lives of most people: things like road and public transport provision and maintenance, refuse collection and environmental services can have a huge impact on quality of life. Grumble though we do at the council tax, it does fund a raft of services that make life workable, and I’ll be the first to say that we are fortunate to live in an area with high property values and therefore proportionately high council tax incomes – this means that the local councils have the luxury of extensive green policies in terms of sustainable development & energy policies and recycling facilities which I know are not common across all councils.

These, then, are worth voting for.

It would be a happy day if control over emergency & healthcare service provision and education could also come back to local councils, instead of being driven by central government. The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work, and it makes a mockery of the supposed ‘user-chooser’ model the government promotes. The reality is that there is little choice available – certainly, in the education system, it is all very well and good that in our local area we have Specialist Colleges at secondary level – one in the sciences, the other in sports – but that is meaningless if secondary schools are, by-and-large, allocated on a catchment basis rather than student aptitude or parent preference. If these came back to local level, and there was the ability to make a real difference in the provision of these services depending on which way one voted at local council elections, voter interest and turnout might well increase.

And this touches on the key of it: potential electors do not vote in local elections because there is a widespread perception that the power of local government is so limited, it makes no difference who is in power, and which is why, in turn, votes for those parties who are not the dominant party in the area tend to be protest votes and/or votes recorded by staunch supporters of the minor parties.

The same could be said of UK national elections. The expenses scandal has exposed a parliamentary system that appears to be almost completely morally bankrupt. Yes, very few of the MPs exposed actually broke the ‘rules’, but when the rules themselves are set so as to allow and encourage a degree of self-interest that few, if any, employments would permit. Here is a system that is secretive, self-supporting, and with little or no accountability, and no sense that any of its component members feel any sense of personal responsibility. I have written before about how large organisations cause personal responsibility, accountability and autonomy to dissipate, and the same thing is happening here.

Yes, the electorate is pissed about the expenses, but it’s more that the expenses furore is just the latest in a long line of political incompetencies, idiocies and downright corruption. But when it comes down to it, who do you act against? No one party is cleaner than the other, so there’s no alternative. One party is much the same as the other – there’s so little political ground between Labour and the Conservatives, that it effectively comes down to personality politics. Cameron is no Barack Obama, but when you compare him to the dour Brown and the lacklustre Clegg (who is he? I couldn’t pick him out of a line up – could you?), he’s downright dazzling.

And there’s another nail in the coffin of UK democracy.

There’s no real difference between the main political parties, so what does it matter which one of them is in power?

And it’s true. Not only is there a widespread belief that government exists to support the interests of business and property over the rights of the individual (and an examination of the legal system supports this perception), but there is also the fact that membership of the EU has brought the UK to a point where large swathes of national policy are dictated by Europe-wide treaties. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. Common European social policies should allow for the formation of a huge common ground on which all participating nations can connect with and build on each others’ diverse, unique and precious cultural heritages. Common European trade policies should allow individual nations to play to their own strengths, whilst taking advantage of the wider influence and power of a bigger trading bloc, so that a group of otherwise geographically, demographically or economically small nations can compete with the bigger global powers in a way not otherwise possible.

It is a beautiful dream.

It is shame the reality doesn’t live up to it. When I voted last Thursday, I was saddened to see that of the 14 possible choices, 7 were anti-EU right-wing organisations, committed to taking the UK out of the EU altogether. In part, one can see why. The EU, as an organisation, is broken. The idea of the individual nations coming together to determine progressive social and economic policies, guidelines that enable & facilitate success, is struggling to be seen against a backdrop of non-accountability and personal advancement that makes the Westminster expenses scandal look like a vicarage tea party, and it is this lack of accountability, and the predominance of a few powerful national figures who are interested only in protecting and advancing their own interests, that have opened the door to let the invidious miasma of these xenophobic organisations waft through our political awareness. They feed off the anger and awareness that a large number of our rights to self-determination have been eroded, without the corresponding payback of the benefits that such a union should bring us.

I am not anti-Europe: I think that only by acting in concert can individual nations make a real difference to the globalised environment in which we now all live and work – that is an unescapable reality. However, to make that difference, nations still need to have the ability to take local actions which are right in context of their own populations, economies and environments, and the wider EU organisation needs to have both the flexibility and accountability to deliver that. The hearts of pro-Europeans sink to hear tales of MEP expense claims, and the preponderence of good legislation that is either diluted or defeated by national or business interests, or bad legislation that is passed without debate or consultation at national level by unelected commissioners who hold more real power than the elected representatives.

This is something that needs to change.

However, the voices of the reformers (rather than the refuseniks) are few and far between, and so the electorate is left with no choice and no voice. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that voter apathy is rife. Our democracy is an illusion: not all members of society have equal access to power, and our freedoms and liberties are being gradually eroded in a system with such an uneven distribution of political power that the right to vote has become a meaningless gesture that has no real impact in terms of how that system is adminstered, or in how it responds to internal and external pressures.

We are in a system that is bankrupt in so many ways, that the attempts to patch and salvage it look increasingly desperate and futile, on an economic, social and environmental level. Until the political mechanisms start to accept that, and offer real alternatives to get us out of the current mess, alternatives that recognise the needs and rights at individual and local level whilst taking a broader, strategic and long-term perspective, the electorate will continue to vote with its feet and find better things to do with its time on election days.

Diversity: who are the real winners?

I’m not a regular watcher of television, let alone reality television, but the combination of half-term holidays and Honey’s enthusiasm for Britain’s Got Talent drew me inexorably into watching the show on Saturday night.

Most of the acts left me cold, including the much-vaunted Susan Boyle (Cinderella-like acscension notwithstanding), but I loved the three dance acts – Flawless, Aiden Davies & the eventual winners, Diversity. All three showed a magical combination of musicality, athleticism and storytelling, with so much energy and precision that it looked effortless, and it was a joy to watch. We’d already agreed that Honey could make a single vote on the night, and I was pleased that she chose Diversity: their choreography was amazing.

If you missed it, here it is from youtube

I’m glad they won on two counts: firstly, I did think they were by far and away the best act on the night. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I felt great that a young, forward-looking act had won. There’s no doubt that Susan Boyle has talent, and that she represented the most astonishing surprise package of the series, but if she’d won, I think it would have been a retrograde move back to the staid and stuffy solemnity of ’serious singers’. Diversity’s victory, I think, is an incredible positive because it brings a freshness of approach and direction to the rather dull Variety Show, and, perhaps more importantly, because I think it offers hope to the dance establishment in this country, should they be in as much need of it as they often claim.

Listening to BBC Radio 5 later that night, much was being made about the short shelf-life expectancy for Diversity, that they are a novelty act, and that there’s no money to be made from promoting them. This sort of negativitysurprised me, until I realised that the ‘expert’ they were interviewing was running his own variety show, which was a ‘wartime cavalcade’  of some sort (I’m envisioning lots of Vera Lynn & Dad’s Army/It Ain’t Half Hot Mum acts). His audience is not the audience for a group like Diversity, for obvious reasons (even though I’m sure that my grandmother, a huge dance fan who taught tap-dancing to the over-60’s back in the day , would have loved them) and, perhaps more to the point, if we’re talking about short shelf-lives …. well, it would probably be cruel & tactless to labour that particular point. Maybe Simon Cowell won’t make money out of them (something to which I remain supremely indifferent), maybe he will, but I can’t help but feel that appealing to a younger audience is a better bet in the longer term.

This chimes in with the regular hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth from the dance establishment that they are not attracting enough young people to shows, and that the future of dance is in jeopardy and is rapidly becoming a declining, elitist irrelevance. I know from Honey’s ballet experience, that boys in dance are few and far between (there is one in her class, and none in either of the prior or subsequent grades). Yet here on television we see not only whole groups of boys – dancing – but that there is obviously an appreciation and appetite for watching them. I’d say that there’s an opportunity waiting to happen here, though whether the arts establishment and the media moguls are quick enough to seize it is another matter.

I think that the 3 performances on BGT silenced once and for all the criticisms that street dance is not a valid form. Flawless and Diversity both presented coherent pieces of dance with distinct storytelling elements, delivered with skill and precision. What is not to like? Thye were fast, fresh, attention grabbing, visually and aurally appealing and both made an oblique comment on the experience of living in this society. I see no reason why acts like this wouldn’t fill dance venues that regularly and successfully host ethnic and street dance forms from other parts of the world – I’m thinking of venues like Sadlers Wells’ Peacock theatre.

Furthermore, if you combined acts like Diversity and Flawless with other groups that were in the same continuum of contemporary and street dance, is there any reason why those who came to see Diversity wouldn’t be as struck with, say, the Cuban spice of Havana Rakatan or the hot, raw flamenco of Paco Pena and Sara Baras, or cool, controlled Capoeira, or the expressive, polyrhythmic dances of sub-saharan africa, all of which influence the development of the both the street dance genre and contemporary dance?  How could such interest not benefit the wider dance community?

The potential is mouthwatering. I hope I see some of it realised.

There’s a third reason I’m glad Diversity won BGT: I think they offer an alternative vision of young Britain at a time when we need it.

The newspapers fall over themselves to portray the young people of this country as knife-wielding, hoodie-wearing thugs, intent on causing death and mayhem wherever they go; worthless, directionless wasters to be feared and whipped back into line and turned into ‘productive’ or ‘useful’ citizens. So, whilst I’ll appreciate that this might apply to a minority of Britain’s youth, AND that not the whole of that demographic is dancing in their bedrooms (or the streets), I think the presence in the final of that most mainstream of shows of not one, but three, ultra-talented hard-working dance acts who combine that talent with obvious courtesy and decency is a big step towards disproving that unflattering stereotype.

I think there’s little doubt that their generation do not fully share the same values and norms of either my generation or that of my parents, but on what basis should be demand that they should? I do not think we are in a position to take the moral high-ground, given our track-record, and when we are failing so abysmally to solve any of the problems we have created for ourselves, why should they look to us for the answers to any of their questions? To expect them to do so exposes us to the same accusations of arrogance that we level at them, particularly when we exist in a society which actively excludes young people – financially - from so many of its benefits and opportunities.

I don’t think that Diversity’s victory will significantly change things: after all, they are only a dance act, not ambassadors for a generation. What I do hope is that their performance, their talent, and their passion and dedication to what they love doing will make ‘Middle Britain’ think twice the next time they look away rather than make eye-contact with a young person, or cross the road to avoid a group of young friends, or condemn them for not conforming to a lifetime of boredom and drudgery without a struggle. They’re not all bad, and we shouldn’t label them as such.

We should accept them, and welcome their talents and their fresh take on things when we have run out of steam, out of ideas, and pretty much out of time.

Diversity won Britain’s Got Talent. If we take their passion, dedication and enthusiasm to heart, we could all be winners.

Book Review: “The Painted Man” Peter V Brett

The Painted Man, Peter V Brett, Harper Voyager Paperback, ISBN 978-0-00-727614-1

Arlen lives with his parents on their small farmstead, half a day’s ride from the isolated hamlet of Tibbet’s Brook. As dusk falls each evening, a mist rises from the ground promising death to any foolish enough to brave the coming darkness. For hungry demons materialise from the vapours to feed, and as the shadows lengthen, humanity is forced to take shelter behind magical wards and pray that their protection holds until dawn.

But when Arlen’s world is shattered by the demon plague, he realises that it is fear, rather than the monsters, which truly cripples humanity. Only by conquering their own terror can they ever hope to defeat the demons. Now Arlen must risk leaving the safety of his wards to discover a different path and offer humanity a last, fleeting chance of survival. 

I’ve been eager to read this book for some time now – it’s had so many fantastic reviews – so when I saw it in the bookshop, I grabbed it. I’m very pleased that I wasn’t disappointed, as so often happens with much-hyped stories.

This is a demon of a novel: it grabs you by the throat and pulls you in from the start, and spits you out at the end, exhausted and emotionally drained. I went through this novel in two evenings, with illicit, snatched readings in the intervening day whenever I got the chance – I couldn’t keep my mind out of it, and even now it’s still turning in my head. I might have to adopt a policy of not reading trilogies until all 3 books are published: to have to wait so long for the next book (already on pre-order) AND THEN THE FINALE is pure torture.

Brett has built a world so coherent and convincing, and a trio of characters – Arlen, Rojer and Leesha – who are both engaging and credible, so that the unfolding of their stories is as enthralling as an enchantment and as gripping as a boa constrictor. The writing is spare and stark and beautiful, and the descriptions enhance without ever overwhelming the action in the foreground: Brett makes every word of every scene work for its place, and the result is a wonderfully tight and compelling novel.

In this world, there is a very good reason to be afraid of the dark, and this is hammered home in the opening scene through the experiences of Arlen, a young boy intimately affected by the demons’ destruction of his community and his family. Through him, we acquire a sense of the dread and terror under which every human must live, the knowledge that in the dark, hope only extends as far as a good ward, and without one, death is certain, slow and terrible. This sense of fear underpins the entire novel, but it is drawn subtly, a deep, cold current inferred from the characters’ actions and so deep ingrained in their thoughts and behaviour that it is a constant. Only at the end are the seeds of change sown, with fear starting to turn to defiance and action against the demons. However, one gets the impression that this is only the beginning of the war, and that there are many more battles to be fought.

Those battles will not only be against demons.

The extra dimension here is that, despite the constant fear of demons, humankind is riven by political factions and the delicate balance of power between church and state, and between duchy and duchy, are under strain. The demons are killing humans faster than they can reproduce, and the economies of the duchies and states are starting to buckle under the strain. The ruling classes are looking to consolidate their own positions, with little care to the plight of common people, and the church preaches a doctrine of sin and punishment by demon plague, a puritanical and sometime hypocritical position that does little to lighten the burden of sorrow on the people to whom it ministers.

However, this church also delivers the prophesy of a deliverer, who will come to rid the world of demons and reinstate a peace and prosperity that has been long missing. Into this prophecy, Arlen’s decision to fight rather than flee unfolds. His position outside of society – one of the few willing to brave nights in the dark with no warded walls between himself and the demons – leads him to uncover what might be the salvation of humanity.  This puts him into opposition with the established church, who will either condemn him as an imposter or, worse (in his eyes), attempt to force him into the role of ‘Deliverer’.

It also runs counter to the beliefs and needs of  the ultra-religious Krasians who would rather see him dead than admit that the deliverer might arise from outside their clans. Their fanatical culture has strong Islamic overtones, and whilst the use of prejudiced, thinly-disguised stereotypical portrayals of traditional Islamic cultures as inherently evil/tyrannical in fantasy is not something I enjoy – it plays too much to the cheap seats in terms of ticking the box for an easily identifiable ‘evil empire’ that will both appeal to and strike a chord with a contemporary audience -  this one is more well-balanced than most and does make some attempt to demonstrate the effect of an absolute commitment to faith that makes the importance of the temporal world secondary to the hereafter. This dependence both drives and defines the Krasian’s outlook on life, and whilst it may have unpleasant cultural implications for non-warriors and those unable to achieve the perfection of faith, it nonetheless highlights the vacillations and hypocrises of the Northern kingdoms and places the Krasians in direct opposition to them – the more so at the end of the novel, which promises to expand the personal conflicts of this into a wider, political conflagration in the next.

Arlen’s single-mindedness contrasts well with the other major players in this story. Rojer is orphaned by a demon attack and subsequently brought up by a Jongleur (a jester, or bard) and follows in his trade. Leesha becomes an Herb Gatherer, a medicine woman, for her village after her mother and betrothed betray her trust. Both of these characters, again, exist outside of their society’s comforts, though they are important contributors to that same comfort, but neither of them posess the same certainties and determination as Arlen. Their quest for meaning and purpose both contrasts with and complements Arlen’s driven hunt, and when the three strands of their very different stories come together to make a single, satisfying whole, the result makes for a powerful, convincing finale to this story.

Like so many who have read this already, I loved this story. I am so excited about reading the next one, I can hardly bear to wait until August …

Rejection: the death of hope

Spent some time updating my submissions spreadsheet this evening, following another pair of rejection letters in the last week. So, my stats are now 10 stories, 34 submissions with 30 rejections, 4 still awaiting response and a total of 1,668 days of hope.

No matter what I try to tell myself, rejection hurts.

Rejection by Slushpup (Flickr Creative Commons)

 

There are all sorts of stories I can tell myself to try to ease it:

1) 30 rejections and 10 stories is really not all that much, compared to other (successful) writers. I’ve got to expect it to take some time.

2) Rejections are part of the writer’s life, everyone gets them, I might as well get over it

3) I’m aiming my stories at pro markets, so I’m competing against established writers, and the very best of the newcomers for a couple of spaces in each edition.

4) Sometimes, the rejection is more because of the ‘fit’ of stories within a particular issue than a weakness of the story itself

There are more. They’re all good stories, and there’s a measure of truth in each one. Not one of them is convincing, though. Not one of them really, truly takes away that instant sting of pain, the death of hope, that each rejection brings.

Perhaps each one is a little dart that will harden my hide so that eventually, rejections will become so much water off this duck’s back, perhaps it will continue to hurt so much.

Every time I work on a story, edit it, take the time to look around, review the available markets, see which one fits best with that story, and send that story out, I am convinced that this time, it will place. This time, it will hit the mark, make the breakthrough and I will see it in print and I’ll be able to point to it in pride and say “I did it”. And hope that it will be the first of many, the beginning of my steps on the path of a career as an author.

So each time the story comes back with a “Thanks for your submission, but it’s not quite right for us”, it’s the death of that bright hope. The fire dies and leaves me with ashes in my mouth, and I can’t help but mourn its passing. And then, there must be the act of courage to scrape together enough hope and optimism to send the story out again – sometimes with a rework, sometimes without – and allow myself to hope again.

Sometimes I wonder why it means so much to me. Why the continual striving for publication, even in the face of almost impossible odds, against a vast sea of untold talent striving for the same goal? Why the need to see my work recognised and published in a respected magazine? Why are the stories I tell myself not sufficient to keep to myself – why the need to share them? Why the need to strive and win the prize of publication? What does it matter?

I’ve never really subscribed to the ‘if I’m not going to win, I won’t play’ school of thought. Regardless of whether or not I ever achieve publication, I will always write. It is too great a love, too deeply ingrained in me, to ever be able to stop doing it. I have terrors of blindness, so that I can no longer read or write, more so than loss of hearing or any other sense of smell.

So it’s not for the competition, for a need to win or excel, to earn plaudits for their own sake.

I liken it more to a rite of passage, a painful initiation into the guild to which I am still serving my apprenticeship, something I must endure to become a journeyman. One day, I hope to become a master of the craft, and to do so I must pass the tests.

Magpie’s Laundry

Magpie’s Laundry is my (very) small business. Originally, I was a declutterer and a lot of my work came through local estate agents for people selling their houses. Most of the textile work I did was a sideline of that decluttering / home organisation business – always in demand, but never the main strand of what I did, although I have always loved working with textiles.

Then along came Bellaboo, so I took some time off, and just as I was getting back into it, the credit crunch hit and the property market crashed and there was no more work. People who were selling were trying to minimise costs rather than maximise profit, and were just not interested in spending on what is seen as a luxury service. (I could debate this, but won’t).

So, that particular door seemed closed, and although we weren’t desperate for money, I kind of liked my financial independence and not feeling I needed to account for/justify my spending, so I wasn’t sure what to do next.

Key To The Open Door by Tawheed Manzoor (Flickr Commons)

The answer rather presented itself: I’d carried on doing a fair amount of textile work for various friends, family and other contacts whilst I’d had my ‘time-off’ with Bellaboo, because it generated a little income and it was manageable from the home studio space I already had. About that time, and almost by chance, I got hooked up with a pair of craft galleries via a couple of close contacts, and it’s kind of rolled from there. I’m about as busy with it as I want to be, but I’ve recently been going through a re-evaluation of what I want to do in my life as a whole, and where I want to go, and so naturally the whole Magpie’s business has come under that microscope.

It took a post from WAHMBizBuilder about the Marketing Funnel to bring things into perspective for me. Marketing has never been my strong point, mostly because I’m not great at self-promotion and networking – I’ve always relied on recommendations and word-of-mouth, and a small set of good, influential contacts in the past. So, although the Finance and admin sides are second nature and of course the product is just in the blood, I realised I’d been missing a trick.

Because the whole textile business has been rather ad-hoc and haphazard, I’ve haven’t had anything approaching a coherent strategy or marketing plan for it. This all sounds rather grand and pompous for the size of the business I run, but I think that the size is irrelevant. What it comes down to, is that I haven’t been maximising the potential of my business because I haven’t really thought my way through the whole thing. I’ve pretty much been depending on the top-end sales of big, commissioned items like the baby-clothes bed-cover patchworks and the wedding-dress counterpanes, bolsters, screens etc, and seeing the smaller items I do as a result of clearing out scraps and stash as almost throwaway items. In the lulls between the commissions, I’ve made them as and when I’ve got time in between personal projects and experimental pieces and haven’t viewed them as important to the overall business.

That needs to change.

I need to be more coherent about what I’m doing, and I need to focus more on the gallery businesses: to that end, I’m going to put a stop to the Etsy experiment. As things stand, I don’t have the time to promote it to get the best results from that marketplace, so it’s pointless working to supply the shop with enough stock to keep it turning over in the way the successful Etsy sellers do. Added to that, I don’t think my photography skills are sufficient to show my creations to their best effect. Maybe, when Bellaboo starts school and I have more time on my hands (I hope!)  then I’ll come back to it, but for now, I’ll let it run its course and that will be that.

Focus will shift onto the marketing model and the product offerings in the various bands of my ‘funnel’ in the two galleries … and also in working through what me ‘free/complimentary’ offering will be. I’m not sure about a newsletter, though that is an option, possibly on a quarterly basis, but what I do know for sure is that I need to revamp the website and attach a blog to it … content-wise, I think the blog will be mostly ‘new collection’ announcements, gallery events, and perhaps some tutorials, so it’ll not be the most frequently updated of creatures – perhaps linked to newsletter it could work? Needs some more thought, but the clarity is there that it is needed, and must be separate from *this* more widely ranging multi-stranded affair.

I also need to be a bit more structured in my approach to the smaller items, and making sure that I’m keeping a steady supply going for these, making sure the funnel remains ’stocked’ at the galleries AND that these are more closely linked in terms of styles and colours to the broad fashion themes and colours of the moment in both home decor and clothing. It means less time for my personal projects, or rather a re-prioritisation so that these creations are seen as a central and necessary part of the business rather than optional extras – because they may well lay the ground for more people coming in and commissioning the bigger, custom pieces from me.

I’ve had an initial discussion with one of the gallery owners in the last week, and she seems enthused and supportive of the idea (after all, more business for me helps her out too ) and suggested that I could offer hand-embroidery on these smaller items as an optional extra – great idea, I have *no idea* why I didn’t think of that myself ….

Another idea she suggested was workshops – the gallery runs sessions for clients with artists, as an opportunity to share skills and spread reputations – which I could do, probably quite easily for some of the smaller items – such as those I’d consider writing up blog tutorials for, but that’s a big step for me because of the social element, so I’ll think on that one for a while. It could be a future option, as is expanding on my projected (unpaid) session at Honey’s school with the after-school art group. Though I’m not sure whether I actually *want* to teach anyone of any age, it’s an idea that’s kicking around inside my head to the extent I’ve got an outline progressive 6-week course for 3 different levels of age/experience which I’ve committed to paper. Location is a big issue, though, because I really don’t think I want my house invading on a regular basis (that would mean I need to TIDY UP ). Still, it’s an idea, and one that I might find a way to work in one form or another ….

All in all, a fair amount to think about. It’s been a big seismic shift in thinking about the business, and about how seriously I take it – in the grand scheme of “things I want to do with my life”, it’s high up on the list and pretty much as non-negotiable as my writing. In that context, I need to make it a coherent and long-term viable business, and that means making sure I’m doing as much as I can to nurture and maintain it at all levels as I possibly can. If I don’t make it the best I can, no-one else is going to do the hard work for me.

And it looks like a little burst of hard work ahead for me. However, I believe it will be worth it. Wish me luck?

Robert Olmstead – Far Bright Star

(Algonquin Books, Paperback (First Edition), May 2009, ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-592-6)

 

Set in 1916, ‘Far Bright Star’ follows Napoleon Childs, an aging cavalryman, as he leads an expedition of inexperienced soldiers into the mountains of Mexico to hunt down Pancho Villa and bring him to justice. Though he is seasoned at such missions, things go terribly wrong and the patrol is brutally attacked. After witnessing the demise of his troops, Napoleon is left by his captors to die in the desert.

Through him we enter the conflicted mind of a warrior as he tries to survive against all odds, as he seeks to make sense of a lifetime of senseless wars and to reckon with the reasons a man would choose a life on the battlefield.

This is neither a comfortable nor an easy novel to read, but the lyrical, compelling voice pulled me in from the first sentence. That voice grew stronger until, within a couple of pages, even my unfamiliar ears were attuned to the narrator’s drawl and I could hear him as though he were stood next to me.  His story is not told in a conventional manner: the narrative is linear up to the defining, terrifying moment of capture, torture and abandonment, but then it twists and turns alongside the narrator as his experiences traverse the increasingly blurred boundaries between life and death, dream and reality, until past, present and future become inextricably tangled.

This complex unravelling of a consciousness could be interpreted as the representation of a man suffering from post-traumatic disorder (at a time when such a thing was not known to exist), a respected, hardened soldier experiencing one atrocity too many, the axes of physical recovery and mental collapse intersecting and then mirroring one another. Such an analysis offers an oblique look forward at the experiences of soldiers serving both in the First World War (the start of which ends this novel), and, moving forward still further, and in Afghanistan in the present day. Replace Pancho Villa with the Taliban, and you get the same sense of dread-laden and heat-drowned shadow-chasing in a hostile land.

However, the dense, vivid language, the rich, complex imagery hold echoes of magical realism, a sense of the fantastical that is reminiscent of a stripped-down Gabriel Garcia Marquez in its impossibilities, though without his more impenetrable excesses. Perhaps one should simply suspend one’s disbelief and accept the mystical, or perhaps mythological, qualities of the improbable rescue and recovery, and see this as a deeply personal telling of an experience from a man who does things his own way and sees things in a different light to the rest of us. His perception is his reality, and we should accept his translation of it for us.

But the reality he shows us is a bleak and stark analysis of war, in all its brutal, wasteful futility. The language may be evocative, luxurious and poetic, but such language forges a stark, telling contrast between its melodic beauty and the precise, horrific scenes Olmstead lays before us. You will not find here the glamorous, romantic stuff of Hollywood-slick spaghetti westerns, nor the idealised cameraderie and nobility of Zane Grey and Fennimore Cooper. This novel is unflinching in its exposure of the base ugliness, boredom and terror of a war of attrition in a hostile land, of the resigned disgust of soldiers who must carry out the flawed plans of distant political masters whose strategy takes no account of the human cost of their miscalculations. The heat and dust and stench of it seep into you, and, trapped in a web of sensory lyricism, it is impossible to look away and ignore the grisly outrage that concludes the betrayal and destruction of Napoleon’s small troop.

This is not a comfortable novel to read. It is a haunting, disturbing unfolding of a man disintegrating under unbearable pressure, but in a story of contrasts, of language and image, of illusion and reality, of myth and truth, he makes a sort of peace within himself. By submitting himself to war, he allows himself to accept that war has both destroyed and forged his identity and that war gives him life just as much as it threatens that same life. 

It is not an understanding easily grasped, a single reading will not suffice. Detail will catch and nag and draw you back until you move through stunned, mesmerised revulsion to uncomprehending grief to silent acceptance. It is worth the journey to get there. Read it.