How can we live a creative life?

Some thoughts

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

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I am currently a body in transition. I am moving through the maelstrom of middle age and, quite frankly, looking forward to making it to the other side.

Something that has continued to come up again and again lately for me has been the idea of creative freedom: how to find it; how to have a more enriching, creative practice; and more urgently: how to do so without blowing up the rest of your life.

I read and admire many books and newsletters and essays by brilliant female creatives who have given up everything in order to pursue their dream of living a creative life. Becoming a full time writer or artist, this appears to imply, requires that you unshackle yourself from the burdens of family life (and a steady income) to run off towards the long grass of freedom.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

The trouble is: I love my ‘shackles’. I don’t want to run away into the sunset, I just want…something.

“I am content. I sit down at my desk, a bare kitchen table with a blotter, a bottle of ink, a sand dollar to weigh down one corner…” A Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A yearning for the chance to live creatively is something I think we are born with. As children, most things we do are creative. Just watch a young child make a crayon drawing or write their first story. They don’t struggle with any of the impostor syndrome we do. Their work is fluid and passionate and expressive. It’s only when we begin to care about what other people think of us that this kind of passion dwindles, and eventually, if we’re not careful, (or a sensitive soul, which is unfortunately the default for a lot of writers), we give up.

So, how can we navigate the life transitions we go through as humans, and find more fulfilling, creative freedom, without blowing up our whole lives?

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I recently attended a talk with Dr Pragya Agarwal, author of the book (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman. Agarwal was asked a question that stuck with me around her choice to write when she was in the middle of the most intense period of mothering, and how she managed to protect her creativity amongst so many other vying demands. To work against the accepted ‘mother as martyr’ myth that perpetuates.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Agarwal pointed out that, in her experience, there is always that ‘mother guilt’, and that when she had felt the pull of it during the weeks and months following her daughter’s birth, she had initially felt that she had to make a decision: choose either her child or herself. She feels that societal messages lead us to this myth, as well as our own mothers (hers did).

There were also the cultural implications, she pointed out, particularly growing up in a patriarchal system as she did. Agarwal says we can start believing in this binary choice, but it doesn’t have to be either/or; we don’t want to let go of ourselves in order to prove our love for our children.

“When you become interested in things, more things become interesting to you. You look around, and what you see seems to multiply.” I Didn’t Do The Thing Today by

Madeleine Dore

She also stated her belief that our children need to see that our work is important to us and of value to us. We have to let go of these societal norms and these myths around what perfect motherhood means - guilt and pressure we carry around about whether or not we are being ‘A good enough mother’.

Ultimately, she says: “that space is so important because if we’re not complete ourselves, how can we be a good mother?”

I loved this sentiment; in fact the whole of Agarwal’s talk (and book) are generous offerings of her experience, passed along to other women who may need to hear it.

Of course, that early phase of my mothering life is over; my children are now grown and going out into the world to find their own passions. But Agarwal’s talk reminded me of the ways in which women (particularly of the past) have often shrunk their lives in order to meet the needs of others.

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I have waxed lyrical (many times) on the subject of Grace Paley, the late American short story writer who influenced me so much when I was a young mother and writer.

Paley wrote stories about the people who populated her New York neighbourhood—the young mothers in the playground, the aunts and older relatives, the errant husbands—and her ear for dialogue and the nuance of characterisation brought them to life.

What always interested me even more, however, was the way that Paley took large breaks between her short story collections, doing, as she phrased it: “the important business of raising kids.”

She also attempted to write a novel for around two years, before deciding that she was a short story writer, and that her children and her activism—which was also hugely important in her life—came first.

Returning to Paley’s stories as I began moving through middle age, I found solace in her portrait of Faith Darwin, her (assumed) alter ego. In her story ‘The Long Distance Runner’, in particular, she focuses on a middle aged Faith attempting to outrun the reality of her midlife anxieties, effectively running away from her home in search of her earlier life. Finding a single mother living in her old apartment, she tries to assimilate herself into the younger woman’s life, before being asked to return to the reality of her own.

Photo by Zac Ong on Unsplash

Whilst Paley’s earlier stories gave me female counterparts who spent their days hanging out with other mothers in the playground, Faith very much represents the place I am in now, facing a fast approaching “empty nest” and wondering where I go from here, at least in terms of personal fulfilment and my creative ambitions.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to live a “successful” writing life over the past few weeks, and I don’t think there is a solid answer. I’m sure that success means a host of different things to different people. In fact, I had this conversation with a friend lately, who asked me when I would consider myself to be successful here on Substack: To be able to write full-time? A book deal? 10,000 subscribers??

I have to admit, her question stopped me in my tracks: what would creative success look like for me?

The thing is, once we get to whatever milestone we set for ourselves, it is highly likely that something else big and shiny would appear for us to aim for, and we would realise that somebody else has an even bigger success than us.

Because really, the truth is that there will always be people who are doing “better” than we are. Just as there will always be women (and men) who choose to run away and live the “dream” creative life.

So perhaps I am discovering, the more I lean into these questions around success and the creative practice and middle age, that the joy is in holding the dream close, whilst also allowing it to infuse everything that we do.

That to live “a creative life” can (and must) include the life that I have already created, whilst also allowing myself to dip my toes into the new freedoms this transition will bring.

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