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Showing posts from November, 2014

The daily rituals of a creative mother

Daily ritual — absolutely crucial if you want to do any kind of creative work. The other ingredient? Self-belief. Here's what I know: 1. There's no such thing as writer's block. 2. Getting up early is the best way to marshal your wakening brain with your deepest energy. 3. Good coffee. 4. No alcohol. 5. No internet (doh). 6. Knowing what task you need to start on. 7. Only attempting one task. 8. Continually feeding your memory of yourself as in love with art. Galleries, books, films. And make notes on what you see. 9. Walk everywhere. 10. Never react to other people's messy excess. 11. Talk about your work with others who actually feed rather than crushing you. But don't talk about how hard it is to write (nothing is more boring either to say or to hear), just about how to solve the technical problem you're grappling with. Writing is both solitary and collaborative — after all, you're doing it to be read, aren't you? 12. List

Batmitzvah

Last Saturday I had the privilege of attending the Batmitzvah ceremony of one of my daughter's schoolfriends. The candidate was only just twelve, and the ceremony was held in an orthodox synagogue, very much by the book. I was expecting an impenetrable event, something completely foreign to my lapsed Protestant understanding. As I entered the Synagogue with my blonde hair and blue eyes, I felt like an intruder. Instead I was invited into and witnessed a true rite of passage. The young girl had prepared over many months for this event. For her Mitzvah, she had decided to paint a series of six canvases to represent the six days of Creation, and she spoke eloquently about how each canvas had come about. She had understood early on that, although she had wanted to create something out of nothing, in fact, as a created being herself, she was only capable of creating something out of something — she was not able to create raw materials for her art ex nihilo . Only an ultimate Creator