Throughout today’s writing retreat, I’ve been considering how to honor creative energy and engage in creative play.

Inspired by the CHANI app (and surely by this week’s new moon), I’ve been feeling such a pull toward creative play (crocheting, drawing, baking, gardening, and even listening to and writing poetry). And I’m realizing that creative play (with color, texture, shape, craft, and purpose) might be just what’s needed to fuel, inspire, and sustain more serious writing, serious work.

So, I’m writing to share some creative play questions—questions I’m asking myself—with the hope that these might provide fuel, inspiration, or sustenance for you, too.

Questions for Honoring Creative Energy and Play:

• What are you currently creating? Or being called to create? Or longing to create?
• What’s currently inspiring you, lifting you up, and bringing you joy?
• How does creation fit into daily life right now?
• If you could sketch or paint your creative energy, what form would it take? What color? What size? What texture? What tone?
• How could you indulge your creative energy?
• How could you give it structure?
• What is your creative energy asking of you?
• What’s the relationship for you among creative energy, pleasure, and play?
• What’s the relationship for you between creative energy and commitments, particularly commitments to justice?
• What are you hoping to speak aloud, to reckon with, to repair, to block, or to build through your creations?
• How could you affirm your creative energy now, in this moment?
• And how might your creative energy affirm you?

I hope that this weekend and the weeks ahead involve creative play, as the pandemic stretches on and there’s just so much to rage and grieve and continually reckon with.

I want to affirm again both/and, which includes complex emotional terrain.

I want to do the radical act of claiming pleasure within pain (not in a toxic positivity way, but as an affirmation of human complexity … and I’m really appreciating adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism!).

I want to prioritize creative potential, as it’s surely part of envisioning liberatory futures.

And I want to create and honor each of us as creative beings, as holding creative energy, as shaping the world through our creative acts.

With these wishes and in the midst of creative play ~ playful energy to fuel continued commitments,

Beth

The photos above show some of my current creative play: (1) seven balls of vegan yarn (in shades of yellow, orange, cream, green, and teal) for my current crochet project; (2) colorful origami paper and folded stars; (3) handmade card of cut-out flowers and the saying “Bloom where you are planted” (a summer camp mantra that got me through high school).

—
This post is written by Beth Godbee, Ph.D. for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For posts like this, you might be interested in “Answering the Call for Artistic Activism: Yes, I’m an Artist!,” “On Choosing a Writer’s Life,” and “Crocheting Granny Squares, Connecting to Grandmothers, and Crafting a More Just Future.”

Check out future writing retreat days, and consider subscribing to the newsletter for additional resources and announcements. Thanks!