I love taking photographs and with a digital camera there is the freedom to ‘have a go’ and decide at the end if the photos are worth keeping.  The camera lets me see in a different way.  Through the viewfinder I capture a framed version of what I saw with my eyes but as a segment, one view of the whole, and by moving the camera left or right, or up or down, I can see more views, each time reframing what’s there, taking out and putting in; creating and discovering anew.

In writing (and other creative pursuits) we do that too.  We look and look again, closing in then panning out, depicting and portraying new worlds and characters with colour and dimension.  It’s a freedom we can enjoy in most areas of creativity.  We can have fun trying, experimenting, and seeing what happens.  We are free to discard or keep.   We might reject a piece at first but keep it and coming across it later discover it holds the seed of something new.

Yet I don’t mourn the losses:  pea plants unwatered and withered; swedes I thought were turnips and pulled from the ground too early; close planted carrots, stunted and deformed.  I accept these as a consequence of half-hearted gardening.

I care for, and give time and attention to, a long list of things and people but have realised that I can’t be ‘whole hearted’ with them all.  I am whole hearted with my closest relationships, to my ‘nearest and dearest’ I try to give the commitment, passion, attention and intention they need to thrive.

And I am ‘whole hearted’ with and about writing.  Though I’ve struggled against this in the past, I  now know that ‘dabbling’ isn’t enough if I am to write my best.  I have to recognise the commitment needed to ‘turn up’ to write each time, to use moments of opportunity and to protect planned writing times, so easily swallowed otherwise.  I have to allow myself to stay with it, in the moment, door closed, both feet in and under the table, spurning all else and all others.  Oh, and there’s a small matter of faith – trusting that ‘if I build it ….’  Trusting in myself.

It’s an ongoing challenge, but I know I shall never write to my potential unless I do it with a whole heart.

This week it was Gavin Henson who caught my attention.  In the earlier rounds I’d found him quite difficult to watch – uncomfortable with his discomfort.  I kept wanting him to make more of an effort, to think about the music, the story, anything to shift his attention from himself and his looks to the dancing.  In the previous show he’d said he’d have to do something about it – clearly wanting to compete properly, being used to winning in his familiar arena of rugby, and embarrassed at his ‘public failure’ in this.  He decided something had to change.

And it did. Yesterday when I finally watched the show I smiled throughout his performance, delighting in its improvement and the enjoyment he seemed to get from dancing.  It was better in lots of ways I think, but most of all what had changed was that he’d been able to forget about himself – to ‘lose himself’ in the music and dance.

This for me is the holy grail of creativity – to forget about ‘being a dancer’, ‘being a writer’, ‘being a creative’ and simply to dance, to write, to sing, to enjoy the moments of creating for the experience and the opportunity it gives us to express our self.   When we are no longer ‘self-conscious’ in our dancing, writing, or creating, when we stop worrying about being good, being seen to be good, or validated or acclaimed, then we can unbridle our creativity – we can let it flow.  Then we ‘dance as if no one is watching’ – especially  ourselves.

I’d never had any tennis coaching – unless you count (and I don’t) the few times our long-suffering sports teacher eventually tracked my friends and I to a distant court and tried in the dying minutes of the lesson to instil a sense of the game.  Consequently I’ve always been pretty clueless with a racket in my hand and though I’ve tried the odd game of tennis with my extremely patient partner, ‘a proper tennis player’, these games have often ended in tantrums and tears – mine, mostly.   I knew the answer lay in tennis lessons but the fear of being no good at it, or worse of making a fool of myself alongside people who are good, always put me off joining a club.

Until this summer, when a friend told me about a new tennis club that had opened up in a local park.  She promised it was friendly and informal, encouraging to beginners, and had a great cafe.   That swung it and I booked my first coaching session. It turned out to be true on all counts and I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed it.  I’ve managed to make time to go to a coaching group almost every week since and have loved being outdoors in a beautiful park rather than shut away in a noisy, artificially-lit centre.   But most important of all to the success of the experience for me has been the no-fail approach of the coaching that makes you feel good about the process of learning and your own progress.  ’Getting it wrong’ isn’t an option.  (The cappuccinos are excellent too!)  See www.tennisinthepark.org

Such a positive experience of trying something new makes me want to do more and more – to take on some of those other ‘can’t do’ or ‘no good at’ relics and see what I might indeed be capable of.

In the first workshop we talked about play and the connection with creativity, and how thinking of our creative pursuits as ‘serious play’ can help us nurture the creative process and keep our creative work going.  When we looked back to childhood play in the session we remembered a time of timelessness, ‘lost in the moment’,  of make-believe games that were entirely real, and risks taken out of sight of ‘those in charge’.  Play and adventure were part of the everyday.

In my work generally I like to experiment and play.  When I’m writing fiction I have a licence to make-believe, to try things out and keep or discard, to take risks, and I regularly ‘lose’ hours. But in my coaching work too I invent and explore, creating and making patterns, seeing what fits, trying one way of working and then another.

Creativity isn’t an add-on to life, it’s entirely a part of it.  It can be experienced as playfulness – exploring, inventing, discovering and experimenting.  Living creatively allows life to be the huge adventure it can be.  On Friday we’ll look at how to do that.

An important element of my own process is walking.  I love walking because it allows me to exercise and think at the same time.  When I’m in the middle of an intensive period of writing, and sometimes when my head is so full of things I can’t think clearly, I head out the front door for a walk – it’s something I’ve always done without really thinking about it.  Now I realise that it’s one of those activities that occupies enough of my mind to function (and not fall over) but not so much that there’s no thinking room.  Gardening can be the same, although without the repetitive thud thud of my feet striking the pavement it’s not quite so good.  The walking rhythm is important and provides a kind of backdrop to the mental activity of making connections and new discoveries, seeing things anew, constructing novel images.  It puts me in another place in my head, another part and a different use – set apart almost from normal conscious thought.  In that place – the same place incidentally I access when I’m fully in the flow of writing – I can think creatively.

Sometimes we can make changes in our life to bring it closer to how we’d like it to be.  Or we can change our perspective, shifting our focus to the aspects we are happy with and away from the ones we are not –   making a situation we don’t like easier to live with.  But there are times we may find ourselves fighting against a situation we can’t change, for the time being at least, and living with the stress and exhaustion from wishing and willing it to be different.

Some of the people I’ve coached have wanted to make career changes and my role has been to help them work out their new direction and a possible route for making the change.  In one or two instances they can’t make an immediate switch to their new career – often because their commitments are dependent on their current salary.  Rather than feel miserable and trapped they have to learn  to live more comfortably with their present situation while they take the necessary steps for the longer-term change. They have to accept things as they are – for now.

A friend of mine has a simple phrase for situations she doesn’t like but is learning to accept – she says “when it just is”.  When I repeated her phrase to myself later, while locked in the middle of a ‘worry circle’ of my own making, I found myself sighing and letting go of tension as I did.  It’s a short phrase packed with meaning.  So now when I come across a situation I’m struggling to accept I call it a ‘just is’ moment.  It doesn’t mean that I resign myself to something realistically I could change, nor does it deny the strength of feeling I might  have have about it, but it does put me in a place where I can accept it as it is and for what it is, with the peace of mind that comes with it.

The twenty three hours of the outward journey had been relatively easy and with an empty seat next to me I was able to sleep for about three hours.  When it came to returning I didn’t fare as well and after a long time away from home and family I found myself willing the journey to be at an end.  But then I reminded myself that this time of waiting was as much a part of the adventure as the experiences I’d had in Australia, and that without one I couldn’t have had the other.  This switched me into a zone of acceptance that saw me through to landing.

Not only did this acceptance make the trip more tolerable but it also made it possible to see the hours as a luxury of ‘empty time’ to spend looking back at the weeks away and forward to the homecoming.   I recognised that as on all recent trips I was lucky to be returning home to the life I have; to people I love and to the writing and coaching work I enjoy so much.   Lucky too that I can look forward to other adventures to come.

Waiting to catch the train home after a meeting today I popped into the Runaway cafe at Lewes station.   I used to commute regularly to London and would often choose to break my journey at Lewes so that I could pop into the cafe. It was partly for the coffee – the train trolley provided (and still provides) muddy water – but much more than that it was because the Runaway is a unique and special place.

Today I was shocked to hear from Vic, who has run the cafe with his wife Jackie for the past 22 years, that Southern Railway has failed to renew their lease.  Vic and Jackie have been given only 25 days to come up with proposals to modernise the Runaway and the railway company has made it clear that they have a national coffee chain waiting to take on the lease.   The railway it seems is looking for a ‘contemporary unit’ that will fit in with the surroundings and have advised Vic and Jackie to visit high street coffee chains to see what is required.   If you have visited Lewes station you’ll know that ‘elegant and heritage’ are words you might associate with it, ‘contemporary’ you wouldn’t.

When I finally boarded the train, having said to Vic and Jackie “try not to worry” while knowing they had good reason to, I sat and wondered why I had been horrified at the prospect of it closing in favour of a Costas or Cafe Nero or similar.   Certainly the food and drink in the Runaway are way above average, even though the prices are not.  And yes, it’s always spotlessly clean and warm – particularly welcome on a cold morning.  But by far it’s greatest appeal is the warmth and kindness shown to customers.  Vic will sing opera to you,  read you a poem, quote philosophy, or tell you a joke – some of which are actually pretty funny.  He makes you smile but also he asks how you are, with genuine interest and concern and always remembers a face.   There is a generosity of spirit and human compassion about the place that is invaluable.

The coffee at the Runaway is good, but even if it weren’t this particular station buffet has something special that no amount of frothy coffee could possibly equal.

Driving to meet my friend Karen I stopped at a set of traffic lights.  With the window wound down I could hear the unmistakeable Whitney Houston from a nearby car.  She was blasting out ‘Greatest love of all’ – one of many schmaltzy songs I love.   Along with Whitney, and from the same car,  was a man’s voice singing with great gusto and joy.  I smiled, then laughed, then looked around to see him, but at that point the lights changed and another car blocked my view.

Seconds later I continued the journey, full of energy and delight at the unexpected.  Spring sunshine and singing – ‘the greatest gift of all’.