creativity – gianna soderstrom

on inspiration – letter no. 4

January 30, 2020Posted in beauty, habits, writingTagged creative, creativity, dedication, Gianna Soderstrom, habits, inspiration, walk, walking, writingLeave a comment

It is popular these days to talk about creativity as if inspiration didn’t matter. I think this is an oversight. It’s simple to say that the important part of making things is to make them; to keep making and creating day after day without waiting for inspiration. There is nothing inherently wrong with this model, except that it’s an oversimplification. Sure, we shouldn’t be waiting for creativity to find us. We won’t write great American novels or paint masterpieces if we’re lying around, waiting for the brilliant idea to come. Creativity does have to be a habit. I’m just convinced there’s more to “inspiration” than that.

I think inspiration is important, even if it’s not as vibrant and sudden as spontaneous combustion, or doesn’t go off like fireworks in our minds. But I think inspiration can also be cultivated. If you stop and explore what you’ve written or painted or composed or designed, I imagine you’ll discover that your best work happens at the intersection of a faithful creative habit and inspiration. And when you stop to explore where your inspiration comes from, I think you’d find a consistent source or sources for it as well.

I used to just think I liked long walks, but now I’m realizing that I have my greatest capacity and inspiration for creativity when I can regularly get out for a walk by myself. Even if it’s not very long, it’s like a reset button. I come home a bit refreshed, a bit energized, and with my writing mind a little bit clearer. Maybe it’s the blank space of being unplugged for a while. Maybe it’s that plus the exercise, or maybe the chance to see beautiful things like light on the willow leaves at the park or a stained glass window in a neighborhood house or even a well-planned garden: something about walking without talking, pushing a stroller or glancing at my phone gives my brain a creative boost.

It’s not as if I come home with new ideas every time I take a good walk. More often than not, it feels like I’m just stretching my legs. But my best ideas and my best writing all come when I regularly clear my mind, and I do that best when I’m walking. I can’t conjure inspiration, but I’ve learned I can make space for it to land. Maybe it’s a ten-minute walk before the sun gets too hot. Maybe it’s a long walk with a flashlight after dark, watching the growing crescent moon and listening to the crickets. Sometimes it’s just sitting outside on the patio without books or phone while my toddler naps – not walking but letting my mind wander all the same. Regardless, it’s clearing this sort of landing space that I know will eventually invite the good ideas.

Maybe your inspiration comes on Pinterest. Maybe it comes when you lie on the floor with your feet on the couch and stare at the ceiling. Maybe it’s a hot cup of coffee or a good playlist or yoga. But it matters that you know, that you find that thing that creates the most space for inspiration and do that thing repeatedly. It should be as much a habit as your actual work. Don’t let that space disappear under the pressure of life. It’s easy to think that time for self-care is selfish or unnecessary or that you’ll get back to your evening sweat session when there’s more time, but more often than we realize, that ongoing time of quiet is one of the most crucial players in our work and creativity. If you have to let it go for a while, don’t stay away too long.

I did a study on rest throughout the Bible last year, because I think I was trying to figure out how I could rest in such a busy season of parenting. I mostly discovered that rest is pretty much a commandment in the Christian faith. It seemed a bit odd to me still, but I knew I was getting burnt out on a daily level trying to squeeze seven productive days into each week, so I began trying to find ways to rest. I’m still not very good at it, but I’ve found it’s not only giving me a better ability to function, it allows me to find greater creativity too.

I’m not trying to make this into a sermon – I’m just becoming aware of a correlation between a tenant of my faith and the way it actually brings my creative goals closer to reality. I’m trying to say Look – down-time is so important it’s even in this major book of faith, the one I believe in. So create some restful space with your hard working habits, and watch inspiration step into that invitation.

Find your rest: I dare you. Don’t wait for inspiration, go out and clear a place for it in your life, like weeding a garden even when you can’t see the seedlings yet. The flowers will grow, they just need time and a little space to breathe.

the silence behind art

April 26, 2019Posted in habitsTagged art, artists, blog, blogging, creative, creativity, quality of life, quietness, silence, stillness, writingLeave a comment

There are weeks sometimes when I get deeply, horribly stuck behind a wall of writer’s block. I think any creative person can relate to this feeling. Perhaps it’s not even just a creative thing; maybe all of us sometimes feel as if we’re on one side of a wide brick wall and our best ideas, wildest thoughts, our ability to dream are all on the other side, within an arm’s length and completely out of reach.

That feeling is part of why I’ve been taking a break from this space. I didn’t want a break; I’ve been itching to write, but blanking on anything to say. And a big part of that was because of morning sickness. I’m expecting again – Yay!! But beyond that, I just haven’t taken the time or space to let the ideas I have simmer. That simmer is so important. Vital. The slow process of thinking is where our most curious, creative selves are born. And I think that’s an important thing to talk about.

I read recently that our modern perception of art as solely the artists unique, inner expression taking shape is, well, modern. Art didn’t always exist as a product only of one person’s genius, wasn’t just a window into one soul; it was created in and for community. And I believe that is true, and should maybe be revived, but I still would posit that for any individual to create something artistic, whether or not she creates in community, some part of that expression has to come from the inner world and life of the artist. Perhaps it’s as small as crafting the right shade of blue from a palette, or determining which word to use instead of its imperfect synonym. My theory remains – that all art comes in some way from the inner world.

It’s almost as if the wall of creative block we experience is a wall between us and our own thoughts.

I remember, last spring, feeling as if I had somehow drifted away from being a deep thinker. I felt like I was missing out on some level of thought that other people had access to. Unrelated to this lack I had identified, I was learning to spend more time in quiet and solitude as the warm days passed. I stopped picking up my phone, or bringing it on walks, or keeping it in my back pocket. I stopped being afraid of silence, of the way my thoughts slowly distilled into recognizable shapes.

I have realized, gradually, again and again, that the silence I was learning to practice has infinite value for art. The constant trickle of stimulation we find on our phones, our computers, our messages and playlists and newsfeeds don’t allow us the time we need to process any of the things we’re seeing. We can take things in all day long and if we don’t pause for a while here and there, we’ll never learn and understand it. We won’t have time to slowly morph the beauty on our pinterest boards or the content from Instagram into real inspiration if we don’t slow down and let our creative brains catch up.

I want to remind us to be silent, sometimes. Take walks without your phone, or savor your first morning cup of coffee looking out the window instead of scrolling. Eat a meal on your patio or balcony, in the sun, in the quiet. Replace some scroll time with an interesting podcast. And don’t be too bummed when you don’t feel your creative self coming back right away. It takes time. Give your mind lots of hours to percolate. Practice the simmer. Those deep thoughts will begin to resurface; art just requires a lot of silence.

original

October 16, 2018Posted in courage, habits, writingTagged Anselm Society, art, artists, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, creativity, essays, ideas, insecurity, learning, originality, photography, truth, writingLeave a comment

There is mysterious soulful glory in a community of artists. When you gather with people whose mission it is to manifest the unity between ethereal beauty and true holiness, magic happens. Conversations are spun out of real joy and gentle criticism and intangible dreams that may yet become reality. I’ve joined an Arts Guild. It is the most encouragement my writing has seen in years.

I used to worry that I didn’t think very original thoughts. All my ideas were old; they felt spoon-fed and recycled. I wanted to think fresh things but I didn’t know how. I was envious of the people who seemed to think of new wonderful things without effort; the people who could think a thought and write an essay and paint a picture without stagnating in the same repeated ideas. The ease of their intelligent communities frustrated me. How could I get there? Why was it so hard to think things?

I wanted more of this originality; if not my own, then to sit in on theirs. “They” was non-specific. Podcast hosts who somehow had new ideas every week. Writers whose words were fresh and thoughtful. Friends whose conversations seemed alive and interesting. I remember a conversation I once had about insecurity with a close friend. I don’t usually get intimidated by people who are better than me, she said, I think of them as examples. I can learn a lot from how they work. I have struggled with that idea for years, honestly. Envy is often my default reaction to excellence. I wish I didn’t think that way so often and I’m working hard to change it, but that used to be my default mode of thinking.

So this summer I began trying to change. If I couldn’t bring forth my own original ideas, the next best thing I could do was listen to them, immerse myself in them. So I kept listening to the podcasts. I even found more good speakers to listen to. I read the blog posts and essays that seemed beyond any aspiration of my own skill – perhaps they would rub off on me. I spent time with people who entertained big ideas and philosophies. At least I could learn from them.

I began to lean into knowledge instead of begrudging those who had it. And slowly, I learned: we become like those we surround ourselves with. The more I listened to these original conversations, the more original thoughts and ideas I began to have. I realized that my own mind could generate ideas, craft thoughts and story lines, put together questions and answers in new ways. I was learning how “to be governed by [my] admirations rather than [my] disgusts…” (Henry Van Dyke). It is a beautiful place to be.

I might not ever be able to shake my old habit envying everyone who is better than me. It’s a horrible vice that brings a twinge of shame every time I think of it. But I am learning more and more how to think differently. When envy creeps in, I try to pick out a few things I can learn from somebody else’s success. I look for all the ways that artists and writers and thinkers I admire are reaching back, holding out their hands and ideas to bring the rest of us forward. They share selflessly and I want to learn selflessly.

I am finally seeing that originality does not cohabitate with isolation. Just as giving gifts and having less brings spontaneous joy, so sharing ideas and relying on others for thoughtful community cultivates our own original thoughts and ideas. May we live into this paradox of artistic friendship with joy and generosity.

cliff jumping

August 3, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, courage, writingTagged blogging, cliff jumpers, cliff jumping, close friends, Colorado, courage, courageous, creativity, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, faith, family, friends, Lake Superior, Minnesota, north shore, truthLeave a comment

There is a cliche I’m tempted to use when I try to describe the passing summer: harder than I thought but better than I expected. I think cliches are better expressed in stories. After all, aren’t cliches just familiar sentiments that we’ve chosen the same, typical ways of expressing? But our stories are all different.

I was the girl who camped with her friends instead of going to parties with them. Once we all slept on the lakeshore after gazing in awe at a meteor shower. It rained on us around midnight but we just ducked under our covers and laughed it off the next day when we shook the sand out of our blankets. One July we packed up and drove to the north shore of Lake Superior. We left at 3 am because we didn’t have reservations and we were banking on being there in time to get two non-reservable campsites. It was a gamble, but we were all together in a too-loud pickup truck eating fresh donuts and trying to keep each other awake and we were willing to take the risk.

The nights were cold and the days were foggy and even so the next morning we girls walked up to the boys campsite to see Caleb striding confidently out of the tent in a swimsuit. The rest of the boys trickled out after him, swaggering a bit with their damp towels over their shoulders. The river we camped on was horribly cold for July and even so there was a definite wall of colder water where the river met Lake Superior and somehow all the same, Caleb planned to go cliff jumping.

Sheri calmly declined. There may be a moment when peer pressure has caused Sheri to cave but I have not seen it. Anni and I looked at each other with wide eager eyes. We had no resistance. It was cliff jumping or a slow death of shameful cowardice. We got our swimsuits and followed the boys. We could hear our hearts pounding over the crunch of our flip-flops on gravel so we sang Dive by Steven Curtis Chapman to pump ourselves up and drown our fear.

We hovered on the edge of the gravely ledge while the boys jumped in line. Once, twice each. I looked down; I shook; I wavered. I thought of how cold the water would be. Worth it? And I imagined the adrenaline-filled glory of coming up the steps to my friends cheers. Worth it?

And then I jumped.

The water was harder than I pictured. It stabbed the soles of my feet and stung the undersides of my outflung arms. I fell farther than I imagined: There were deep heavy layers of water above me when I tried to swim back up. The breath I couldn’t breathe in caught in my throat as I tried to push the waves aside, to resurface. But the glory overwhelmed me. When my feet left the rocky soil I felt the wind in my hair. I felt myself falling with helpless joy. I scrambled onto the rough shore visibly trembling; there was an overwhelm of laughing courage inside so strong I barely heard the offered cheers.

Our feet squeaked against our wet flip-flops as we walked back to our tents. We were cliff jumpers.

That is how I would describe this summer. The long, arduous hours I expected were longer, more painful than I thought. They built resentment and frustration. I’m exhausted when I wake up every morning at 6. The weeks of E teething have been impossible. The times I spend with Grant have been rare, interrupted, disconnected, frustrating.

But the beauty has been overwhelming. Our marriage is stronger. We learned that “being in love” can’t carry us; we learned how to fight for each other in cups of coffee and spontaneous sushi dates and saying I’m sorry. I learned to play with Erik more; we read books and play chase and sometimes seek out the other littles to give me a break. The woods that looked like nothing but a dead burn scar this spring have been washed with the magic of wildflower meadows and red raspberries and baby Aspens like a thick green blanket. The close community has shocked and warmed me like the adrenaline and applause when I climbed out of Lake Superior four years ago.

This summer has stung me like hard cold water on my skin and emboldened me like laughing courage shared with old friends. Here’s to the life we create at camp. Here’s to the hard things we couldn’t imagine and the glory we feel and cannot fathom. Here’s to being cliff jumpers.

^ Anni and I, at Lake Superior. 2014.

beauty from ashes

May 26, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, habits, writingTagged beauty, beauty from ashes, Colorado, creativity, earth, Ephesians, Ephesians 3:20, exploring, God, learning, more than we ask or think, nature, parents, photography, stillness, truth, walking, writingLeave a comment

“The Waldo Canyon fire burned all the way around camp,” Grant tells me. I’m impressed, and I see the hand of God in the story as clearly as if he were opening the camp gate to let us in. But to me it is just a story still. In the year of the fires I was in Minnesota, celebrating my graduation, finding a new job, planning travels for the next year. I didn’t understand just how close the fires had come until I began to explore.

I walked back to the horsebarn one evening. There are trails and work roads that split off into the hollow woods as I walk, and I notice that the forest is scarred and sooty. Black and gray trees point up like crooked bony fingers. They stretch down to the very edges of this tiny green valley, closer than I imagined. With practice you could stand at the edge of the barn and spit into the burn area. It is the same when I walk around the rest of the camp, stretching my legs on a cool afternoon and looking for the places I will walk with Erik in the lazy days ahead.

“This is Excursions Valley,” Grant explains as we crest a hill and walk down towards the cabins dotted along its side. There are more wildfire scars here. We walk in the spring-green valley and when we look up at the next hills their rounded tops are clearly arched against the blue sky. There are no evergreens filled with the low rush of breeze to obscure the edges of rising mountains here. No, there are only the skeletons. Here the green pines are gone and only seasonal grasses and the young whip-like Aspens bring color to the hillsides.

But there is color. The grasses have come back; their green ranks have pushed through the dry growth from last year and are springing up, brighter with every sunny day. Where mature Aspens grow in the mountains they form delightful streaks of bright green amongst the evergreens, and here instead of veins and pools of lighter green amid dark, they form a haze of bright growth around the bases of old burnt stems.

There is an unused wood stove in the Dining Hall that people have set wood paintings of encouraging sayings on. A small one near the front says Beauty From Ashes. I remember it day after day when I sit at our kitchen table, looking out at the burned slope reaching down almost to the camp; the soft green haze of fresh leaves reaches a little higher and shimmers a little brighter every time I look. Glory and growth are springing up from the graves of old trees. Beauty from ashes.

I have given up on writing many times. There was a year when I scarcely wrote at all, even to journal. There were a few months when I pushed through a large project only to set it aside, unfinished, for over a year. I eventually began to consider it pointless to pick up again. The last season has seen me working and spousing and parenting all together and addicted to my phone in between. There wasn’t time or energy to write. There wasn’t quiet space to find creativity.

I’ve discovered the vitality that walking and silence bring to my creative side this season, and writing has been possible again. Fear has been sliding away. I’ve been pushing fear away; fighting for my words, my inspiration, my quietness. Some beauty is returning to this old love of mine.

I keep praying over my writing. I’d love to be famous you know, and perhaps I have it in me, but I don’t think that’s what my writing is for. If my goal is to be a well-known and well-loved author, it will get in the way of having a unified, sound marriage, of parenting with connectedness and wisdom and presence. Those goals are more important.

But God is the God who “can do far more than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…” (Ephesians 3:20) I keep asking for beauty to come from the ashes of my writing habits, my creative desolation. I keep asking that God would do far more than all I could ask or think – that he would use this creativity and desire for His purposes, that he would help me to focus on what is most important, and bring the writing to fruition in its own time.