Sharni Normal

Well hello!

I dropped completely off the radar there for a while – okay much longer than a while – but it seems I finally found the urge to blog again. It’s also interesting to realise all my blogging enthusiasm was around this time last year too.

Though I laid the foundations in November 2014 I didn’t start posting regularly until late February 2015.

And though I haven’t been blogging I have been observing my creativity and discovered it has seasons.

For the past few months I have had nothing to do with drawing/painting and completely dropped out of all social media. But for good reason.

I started writing a book.

Six actually.

I read so many Jack Reacher novels last year I was overcome with the urge to write a thriller novel and threw myself into the challenge.

“I’m doing this no matter how long it takes,” I told anyone who would listen.

And I wrote more than 60,000 words.

Trouble is I kept re-starting. So instead of a 60,000 word novel (would only have to do 30,000 more for a decent first draft) I have the first few chapters of six variations of the same thing.

Turns out it’s actually really hard to write a book and I have no idea where to go from here.

But the good news is I’m completely fine with that. It’s everyone else that has the problem.

My husband and my mum both bet their retirement on my phenomenal success as a published author while I was just trying to have some fun.

What is wrong with people?

“I’m allowed to be shit at this!” I want to scream at them. “I’m just being creative, stop putting me under so much pressure.”

But I guess that’s how I got all blocked up in the first place.

So I’m blocking out their words instead of my own creativity and finding that life is quite wonderful just as it is.

Thought I’d finish with something I saw on Pinterest:

The Creative Process

1. This is awesome
2. This is tricky
3. This is crap
4. I am crap
5. This might be OK
6. This is awesome.

 

I have fallen in love with painting again after more than 20 years.

When I was at college studying business I got bored and would skip classes to stay at home and paint. I spent months painting anything that stood still long enough and I didn’t buy a single present for anyone that Christmas – I gave away painted plant pots, watering cans, cookie jars and even made and painted a papier mache jukebox! In our little rented farm house in the south of England I found my creativity and would fantasise about painting for a living.

Unfortunately life got in the way and I was promptly asked to leave my course for serious non-attendance!

Suddenly I had to get a job. I scoured the local paper for a job that looked half interesting and became an editorial assistant for a magazine publisher. My dreams of painting, and even getting past the beginning stages, were forgotten.

Three years later we emigrated to Australia and my publishing career came to an abrupt end too.

Years of administration followed and when I was approaching 40 and feeling dissatisfied I decided to finish what I had started all those years ago. I went back into publishing, becoming a cadet journalist at the age of 39.

What I had completely forgotten was that painting was my first love.

Somehow I had lost the memory of what it felt like to paint. To sit so still and silently and bring a plain something to life with colour and joy.

This little journey of mine to fill a day a week with creativity has cracked me open in a way I had not seen coming.

Sitting in my studio with paint brush in hand feels natural, joyous and even though the lines are wobbly and the paint is too thick (or too thin!) I seem at ease with the act of learning. Yes, I’m frustrated to get better and occasionally wonder how good I would be now if I had spent the past 20 years practising my art.

But I am ready to accept that I cannot get those years back, that I am starting at the very beginning again.

I’m also ready to accept that all the years in between have led me here, that whatever skills I have picked up along the way will serve me now.

I wasn’t ready then.

I still thought other people were responsible for my own happiness.

But I now know differently.

I’ve spent time in the dark place, and I’ve shed many skins.

I’m also a mother and I have little girls watching me.

And if I’ve learnt one thing about parenting it is that telling children to do something isn’t nearly as effective as showing them how.

There is purpose to everything I do now.

So I will follow my heart and if I don’t get it right the first time (or second, or fifth or 20th) it doesn’t matter.

Because as I’m slowly discovering it is never, ever, too late to start again.