CREATIVITY IN NUMBERS

A sprinkling of snow, a chill in the air... it’s time for my writer’s group to head north on our annual weekend retreat. The group started back in the nineties; a bunch of children’s writers in a basement, once a month, sipping tea, munching Maple Cookies, reading out loud stories we’d written, exchanging praise and criticism, trudging off into the night to rework a story, create a proposal, or stuff a scribbled first draft into a bottom drawer.
Our lives have taken different turns since those days. There’s TV script writers, a poet, a cartoonist/copywriter, two young adult novelists, a business training course writer, one who’s writing a grammar book, another - knitting patterns, and then there’s the biographer. I asked this interesting and diverse group as they sat around a roaring fire last week: ‘Why do we do this?’ Here’s what they said:
‘C’ritique – artists can become nearsighted, buried in their craft every day. You need outside eyes to look at your work to tell you what’s right and wrong. You need objective feedback to help you refine your work. This will make you the best you can be.

‘O’pen your eyes – a group of like-minded people can create a magnificent creative cloud which opens your eyes to different perspectives of how your work is perceived.

‘O’ffer advice – The exchange of knowledge, ideas and experience helps you feel part of something much bigger than yourself.

‘K’ick in the pants – Sometimes we need this. It energizes and motivates us. We often can’t wait to get home to work on ideas generated within the group.

‘I’nspire – We create mostly in a vacuum, in isolation, and we long for encouragement and validation to keep us on track.

‘E’xchange ideas – this boils down to networking as we direct each other to resources, contacts and connections in our various fields.

‘S’upport each other – we offer a safe environment for debriefing. Art is generated from the soul, the place where we laugh and cry unashamedly. A group can be very liberating and therapeutic.
Start an artist group today; writers, musicians, visual artists, and so on. Even if it’s just three of you to begin with; just start and see where that takes you. Name it to give it some traction. Name it something unique. Ours is a no-brainer, “The Maple Cookies!”