Questions for Cultivating Confidence

Confidence plays a big part in our happiness. We measure our dreams against our own confidence in achieving them, often stopping before we’ve even begun. Part of having confidence is knowing how you define it. For me, confidence is talked about in too broad a term. Can anyone say they are truly confident in every single aspect of their life? We also need to discern whether we think confidence is positive or negative. Some would say confidence means self-obsessed, others would describe it as simply having inner peace. Once you know what confidence means for you, the more likely your chances of feeling it. So, take a deep breath, clear some time for yourself and answer these questions... 

• What does confidence look like? 

• Who is the most confident person in your life?

• Do you need something in particular to be confident, i.e., a particular body type, profession etc.?

• What tasks give you a sense of mastery? 

• Is there anyone in your life who makes you feel confident? 

• Do you properly acknowledge and celebrate your achievements? 

• What is the difference between cockiness and self-assuredness? 

• What hampers your self-confidence most? 

• Can you be confident and introverted?

• Which aspect of your life do you feel most confident in? 

• How does the word ‘confident’ relate to a famous figure you adore? 

• What situations are the greatest drain on your self-confidence?

• What thoughts are the greatest drain on your self-confidence?  

• What is the link between confidence and luck? 

• What is one thing that your own self confidence made possible?

• What is one thing that lack of confidence has held you back from doing (so far)? 

• What advice would you give someone who feels low in confidence? 

I would love to know your feelings about confidence. Join the conversation and leave a comment below! 

Journal Prompt: Impossible Dreams

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!”

-           Audrey Hepburn

How often do you find yourself thinking of things you want to achieve when a voice in your head shouts, “it’s impossible!” These journal prompts are there to explore and expose the boundaries that we and others have imposed upon our lives. Grab a pen, journal and prepare to decode your impossible dreams.

• What in your life seems impossible? What dreams do you have that feel too pie in the sky?
•  What three impossible powers would you like and why?
•  Ponder what these powers mean to you. How can you incorporate some aspects of this into your life? Time Travel might not be possible but you can soak up the past in other ways, like visiting museums and travelling to heritage sites. If you crave invisibility maybe what you need is regular time to yourself away from an audience.
•  Discuss an occasion when someone crushed your ambition.
•  Discuss an occasion when someone made you feel you were capable of achieving your ambition. 
• What one, miniscule step could you take towards your impossible dream?

Join the discussion! Leave a comment below… 

17 Questions for Creative Growth

Tapping into our creative minds is crucial to our creative journey. Understanding our beliefs, values and aspirations in relation to creativity can help nurture the relationship between you and your creative self. The following questions are best answered with pen on paper in unedited responses. The questions may raise a hidden issue blocking you from your work or simply re-affirm your passion to make things.

1. What does creativity mean to you?

2. Which artists inspire you?

3. How do you create in both big and small ways?

4. What was a creative project you abandoned and why?

5. What topics are too big and important for you to explore?

6. What feels too petty or mediocre to explore?

7. Who would you like to adopt as a creative mentor?

8. What can you create in the next five minutes?

9. How does creativity scare you?

10. How does creativity make you feel expansive?

11. In what ways do you procrastinate?

12. In what ways do you collaborate with others to create?

13. How could you experiment with other mediums?

14. How would you advise someone suffering with self-doubt?

15. When was a time you felt someone put down your creative output?

16. When was a time you felt your creative talents were celebrated?

17. Which part of the creative process do you enjoy most – the initial idea, the planning, the implementation or the finished process?
 

Did you find these questions helpful? Which ones resonated with you? Leave a comment below!

How to Keep a Writing Journal

A while ago I talked about keeping a journal (you can catch up with that post here). Have you ever thought about using a journal specifically for your writing? It’s a great way of bringing together your ideas and helping you move forward in whatever you’re working on.

What can you include in a Writing Journal?

• Ideas. Whenever you have a good idea get it written down in your journal. Over time you’ll build up a bank of ideas that you can turn to during creative dry spells.
• Specific notes. If you’re a writer that likes to make a lot of notes, then having key points to help you in your writing is a good use for your journal. This could include an extensive guide to your plot and character profiles.
• Activity Log. I’m a big believer in small, daily acts of progress. If you assign yourself a particular amount of words each day keeping a work log will track if you managed to do that. Use your log to note down problems you encountered, actions you need to take and things you want to work on the next day.
• Quotations. As you’ll see in this post I love a good quote. I like to scatter inspiring quotations across my journal as encouragement.
• Visual Stimuli. Images can be as powerful as words for creative inspiration. Use photos, paintings, magazine cuttings etc. to capture the mood of the thing you’re trying to write. If you need to write a vivid description of a place, object or person having a visual reminder of your subject can be really helpful.
• Research notes. Keep any notes you make from research in your journal, this way you have all the information you need for handy reference. Keeping notes is also a great way of whittling down stacks of research into its most important points.
• Reference. Consider having a reference page of websites, books and blogs that you find helpful. Be sure to include The Literary Lady!

• Schedule. If you’re in the final stages of finishing a big project a schedule can help you to focus on particular chapters or scenes that need your attention. Try assigning yourself a different chapter to work on each week.

 

Do you have any ideas for what to keep in a writing journal? Let me know in the comments below!

March Reflections

Happy last day of March! This month has passed by in a deluge of chocolate eggs and cheery daffodils. Spring is underway at last! Here are a few bits and pieces from March I’d love to share with you…

Quotation

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” - Audrey Hepburn
This is an apt sentiment for these fresh spring days and a reminder to nourish the things we love.

Reading

The literary highlight of my month was She Came to Stay by Simone De Beauvoir. I was intimidated by the idea of De Beauvoir but I found her style very readable and so beautiful. The book tells the story of Francoise and Pierre, an intensely close artistic couple whose lives are disrupted when they invite a young woman into the relationship. It is mainly from Francoise’s perspective we experience the novel and we see her grapple with jealousy and self- hatred, desperation and cold hearted calculation. What De Beauvoir is best at is recounting female experience, and all the complexities than come with it, as well as highlighting the baser passions underlining the intellectual scene of Paris in the thirties.

Writing
One of my favourite things is finding out about other people’s creative process. I came across an essay by the poet Vicki Feaver in The Creative Writing Coursebook about her experience writing ‘Judith’, a poem inspired by the biblical heroine. She charts those moments of sudden, unexplainable inspiration as well as the workman like stages of writing where you have to just find a way of articulating what you want to say and being exact in it. I was delighted to find that she has written this short poetry workshop on capturing animals on the page.

Planning

Tolstoy said that ‘spring is the time of plans and projects’. It’s a good time to do a quarter year review on how you’re doing, how you’re working towards your goals and how you can bring a little more happiness into your life. With summer around the corner get thinking about excursions and activities you have planned for warmer days. Are there any creative projects you could start?

Three things to look forward to in April

1. Light evenings.
2. An Alternative April Fool’s day – doing something lovely for your favourite people to celebrate the start of the month.
3. Walks in the rain singing ‘Little April Shower’ from Bambi. 

What did you get up to in March? What are your plans for April? Let me know in the comments below…

Writing Exercise: Objects of Affection

‘Looked at again and again half consciously by a mind thinking of something else, any object mixes itself so profoundly with the stuff of thought that it loses its actual form and recomposes itself a little differently in an ideal shape which haunts the brain when we least expect it.’

- Virginia Woolf

These writing exercises are designed to get you thinking about the links between characters and the objects they keep. They will help you to use an item to gain access into the world of your story and learn more about the figures that inhabit it. These activities can be used in conjunction with something you are already working on or as the starting point for a new idea.

• Write a scene in which two characters are having a conversation. Introduce an object to this scene and let it play a dynamic part in the action. Is this object proof of one character’s infidelity? Is it an inherited possession of a recently deceased relative? Are the characters arguing or bonding over this object?
• Choose a character you’re struggling with and think of an object that you feel encapsulates their qualities. What kind of character might a yo-yo, oak bureau or vintage dress tell us about?
• Create a still life with words and hone your descriptive skills. Choose an object in your possession and describe it vividly.
• Look at the objects you keep about you. Analyse your relationship with them. Why are you drawn to them? Comfort? Admiration? Superstition? Write down your findings.

I would love to know if these exercises worked for you - let me know in the comments!

February Reflections

February went by so quickly, it seems only yesterday we were scoffing pancakes and gorging on chocolate hearts. I’m quite excited to be well into 2016 now. Here are a few things I’d like to share with you from February:

Quotation

With spring just about emerging we’re involved in a moment of transition. I love how Julia Cameron draws comparisons between creativity and seasonal change:

‘When we are incubating something creatively, we follow a cycle of seasons. We begin locked in winter, when we look and feel devoid of ideas, although the ideas are there for us, simply dormant. Our wintry hearts lurch toward spring and suddenly an idea puts out a hopeful bud. The idea may be as festive as the buoyant cherry blossoms. Our idea is bright and indisputable. We blossom as the landscape does.  And then what happens? As surely as the seasons turn, our brightly budded ideas must now ripen and mature. Spring turns the corner into summer. Showy pink gives way to industrious green. Now come the long days of labour. We must work to bring forth the fruit of what we have envisioned.’ Julia Cameron

Reading

The highlight of my reading this month has been The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter. I’m hoping to write a review of this soon. It’s a beautifully written story in which the past and the present, in this case the modern day and the Victorian era, interlink to create a compelling study of memory and environment. The book’s focus is on the idea of the things we surround ourselves with and what this reveals about who we are. It’s always exciting when you find a new author and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.

Writing

Talking of Hunter she wrote a brilliant blog about writing spaces. I think this line is so interesting: ‘The strange thing about the act of writing and the writer’s environment is the way in which the writer is both present and absent in that space – how writing imaginatively necessitates a kind of leave-taking, an untethering.’ Read the full article here.

Celebration

This month lots of lovely things have been happening to some of my favourite people and I’m very excited for them. I think it’s really important to celebrate all the good things that happen for you and other people as well as the smaller, everyday things that could easily be taken for granted. Make a list today of ten great things in your life that are worth celebrating.

Three things to look forward to in March:

Easter

Pastel Colours

Spring walks

 

What have been some of the highlights of your February? What are you looking forward to in March?

To Keep or Not to Keep a Journal

At this time of year, we are tantalised by the variety of journals to take into our lives. For some, this is an intimidating commitment – having to write a daily entry seems an annoying burden, another ritual we won’t stick to. Journals also have the cringe worthy connotations of adolescent angst – mementoes from times in our lives we’d rather forget. I encourage you to put these fears behind you and be open to the wonderful benefits of journaling.  Here are some of the ways you can use a journal to have a positive impact in your life:

Journals enhance creativity

Journals are ideas factories, private little worlds where we can ferment our thoughts, plans and dreams. Great writers like W. Somerset Maugham and Virginia Woolf kept diaries throughout their lives. Whilst these provide fascinating insights into them biographically, what’s most striking is the sense of them needing to digest their day to day life. Maugham is impelled to write quick character portraits of people he comes across, and Woolf ends up charting Bloomsbury group gossip and housework frustrations. You might use your journal as a space to jot creative ideas down. There’s something less scary about writing in a journal than a blank page in Word. A journal is a place to be playful, cross things out and warm up before hitting the keys.

Journals cultivate a sense of gratitude

Read any wellbeing book and the concept of gratitude is bound to occur. I saw a quote the other day – on a pyjama top in fact-  that said ‘when its dark, look for the stars’. A journal is a convenient place to count your blessings. Set yourself the challenge of making lists of people, things, qualities you have, places and events you are grateful for.

Journals allow us to think through problems

When an issue is bothering you a journal is a great way to relieve yourself of the burden. By writing your problem down you can attempt to minimise its impact. A great technique is to write constantly for a set amount of time or for a specified length. This can help breakdown a problem and shine a light upon possible solutions for your conundrums.

Journals are places to be inspired

Journals don’t have to be filled with reams of writing. They can also be a record of things that pique your interest. A journal is a private scrapbook to keep track of things that interest and inspire you. My journal is full of quotations, postcards, pictures, doodles and quick notes.

Journals are tools for recording our lives

Diaries are insights into our memories and our passions. They remind us of who we were and who we wanted to become. They conjure up images of days gone by, obstacles overcome and provide us with an insight into ourselves. A quick and easy way of processing your day is to make a list of five things that have been significant for you each day. You might include something you did that day, a new idea that occurred to you…anything that is noteworthy for you. After all, unless you end up being the next Samuel Pepys, your diary is for you alone.

Do you keep a journal? Has it been helpful for you?