Random words

I've set myself a daily challenge to write something everyday (aside from my moring pages - more on that to come). The best way to fall into the creative flow for me is to begin writing from random words. There are numerous websites which throw out random words for writers. My favourite is; http://www.wordgenerator.net/random-word-generator.php

I propbably won't post one every day, but perhaps one per week (I'll pick my favourite to share).

I'm intregued by the different tools people use to step into their own creative flow. What's yours?

BLOGLOVIN

So if this works *crosses fingers* I should now be on the awesome app 'Bloglovin' 

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/13692685/?claim=z6vwht3gnab">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Hidden histories - Interview with SIT Select

So last week the talented Charlotte Abrahams came to my studio to interview me for the SIT Select online journal. 

It's the first time I've been interviewed for a feature and to say I was a bit nervous is a massive understatement. 

Luckily my nerves didn't render me incoherent and Charlotte's article is just fab. 

Read it here; http://www.sitselect.org/journalfeatures.html

So how do I make this work?

After a year of stumbling about a bit, falling in and out of love with my business and spending rather a lot of my own money, I decided that this Clever Monty malarky needed to start contributing towards the rent. When staring out of the window and sighing a lot didn’t help, I decided to face facts. My blog wasn’t particularly popular, my commissions for furniture weren’t coming in as fast as I wanted and my social media was a little sporadic at best. I read A LOT of other interiors/writing/craft blogs to try to be inspired by their seemingly endless stream of thoughts and posts. But ended up wondering how on earth they did it. I ended up pretty downbeat about the whole thing.

What I realised though, from beneath my duvet (yes I retreated to bed, it got that hopeless), was that all of these people with successful blogs, creative businesses and social media savviness all had to start somewhere. Unless you’re already famous, starting a business is hard (and actually, even if you are famous I bet it’s pretty hard; imagine having all your mistakes on show to the world, eurgh). It seems to me that the ones that make it past the three year anniversary are the ones who are doggedly determined.

So, I rolled up my sleeves. I posted more blogs, I retweeted the things which inspired me and I kept my eyes open for guest blogging opportunities which would (hopefully) encourage more people to look my way. Eyes down. Laptop on. Distractions OFF.

Then one day a dear friend and cheerleader for all things Clever Monty suggested I start a creative writing group. I made a face and told her I couldn’t possibly do that (my learned response to any suggestion which takes me outside my comfort zone), but it sowed the seed.

Before I could over-think and therefore find a million excuses why not to do it, I wrote a six week syllabus of exercises I use for my own creative practice. It ranges from suggestions I found online from other writers, to little games I do by myself to get my pen working a little harder.

I printed some flyers, handed some out to friends and fellow artists, and ran a small social media campaign about #creativewriting (see I’m getting it aren’t I?) And to my utter surprise, people signed up. So many that I had to create more sessions for next year. Who’d’ve thought it huh?

So for a small charge each week my merry band of writers and I spend two hours together, writing, doing little exercises, reading our work out loud and supplying that all important encouragement for each other. It’s given me so much food for stories, and developed my own sense of confidence in what I do. And the small charge pays for the space I rent, as well as some nice chocolate biscuits to nibble on.

I’m not saying that everyone should start their own creative writing group (well I am a bit, it’s a brilliant way to stay focused and develop as a writer), but I am saying that if you want to write and you want to succeed, listen to your cheerleaders! 

Cheerleader Image used from the305.com blog

Creative Writing for You (and me) In Stroud

So here I am. Sat in my cosy studio (it’s October ok? I’m allowed the heating on), and I realise I need to face facts. No, not that I am a ridiculous heat-hound, and fantastic procrastinator, but that I need something. I have five pieces of furniture which cannot be finished until I write them a story. They have been sat on my workbench, eyeing me menacingly for a few weeks. But something is missing as I sit here at my ancient laptop waiting for inspiration and looking out of the window. What’s becoming ragingly obvious is that most of my best work has been written in a group. For some reason, the combined energy of a creative writing group spurs me on to produce very good stories. So I look around my studio again and realise yes, that’s what’s missing. People. 

There are certain people I can’t write with (sorry). I don’t like horror or gory styles, and I don’t enjoy sob-fiction (think “A Child Called It”, or perhaps don’t). That’s not to say that these genres do not have their place in the world, they just don’t float my creative boat, as it were. 

I have exercises which I do by myself, designed to make me think outside my cosy box and flex my creative muscles, but they tend to fall flat when I’m by myself. Well, it’s high time I pulled my socks up and did something about this. Due to a trillion after school clubs (who’d be a mum eh?), my usual writing group isn’t going to work for me this side of Christmas, so I decided *FANFARE* to make my own.

Yep. I am going to lead a band of pen wielding lovelies through the alphabet and hopefully help them (and me) to create some lovely works of fiction. 

Fancy it? Well I’m going to run these groups out of my studio at Victoria Works in Chalford, just outside Stroud. They will run for six weeks on a Monday and a Thursday and will focus on developing writing practice and character development. Details below. See you there. 

Monday Group

Monday 3rd November - Monday 8th December

12.30pm - 2.30pm

Thursday Group

Thursday 6th November - Thursday 11th December

9.30am - 11.30am

£55 

Booking is essential (mainly so I know how much tea to buy)

All ages and abilities welcome

Clever Monty

Coast Magazine

This month some of our products have been photographed for the lovely ‘Coast Magazine’ in their UK Craft feature. The pieces were styled by the talented Emma Clayton who had seen our work in the SIT Select 2014 brochure. 

We couldn’t be happier with how the pieces look! They work brilliantly with the crafts from the other artisans. It’s so wonderful to see so many British craftspeople and we're especially happy to see four we know from Stroud! What a hive of talent we are.

Thank you Coast Magazine for a lovely feature!

My journey to creativity

As an adult I am lucky to be surrounded by creativity. There is music which whispers to me in the night as I sleep. Art that tugs on my sleeve when I happen to be looking the wrong way. Books which find their way into my bookshelves without me quite knowing how they got there. As a child I remember staring at sculptures in  shopping arcades which pulsed with creative invisibility, which seemed to be hidden from everyone but me.  A small child with dark eyes, a wonky fringe and a predisposition for finding the hidden things no one else saw. 

I would point and ask questions no one knew the answers to; ‘Why is that man’s hair blue?’ pointing to a scary-looking punk on the bus. I soon learnt not to ask. But it didn’t stop the questions from forming in my mind. ‘Why did they choose that? What moved them? What told them to?’ At the park I would look under swings and slides at scrawled graffiti, marvelling at initials carved into walls. 

And then one day I picked up a pen and began to write. The muse smiled in her silent room. My poems began as descriptions, lists of colours and textures.  A leaf in the wind. A tree on the way to school. Words inside arguments which cut like knives. 

My mother would stare at me when I shyly showed her the words which tumbled from me, ‘Did you write this? You didn’t copy it?’ Ours wasn’t a overly creative household. I wasn’t submersed in poetry or art. It was a normal house in the normal suburbs.

I stumbled around in my normality, pen in hand, until one day I heard the opening lines of the film ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’. I was moved to tears by the poetry which I hadn’t heard before and rewound the tape again and again, listening with an open mouth. I found myself in the library, looking up ‘Funeral Blues’ by WH Auden and found his moodier counterparts. I found what is now one of my favourite poems by Louis Macneice ‘Prayer Before Birth’ which rang in my adolescent ears in its beauty and hope and desperation. 

It turns out that the world is full of beauty and hope and desperation. I happened to open my eyes and see it. My favourite poems now span generations and range in depth and genre. Some of my most treasured poems are unpublished, written by people I’ve met through writing groups, or at spoken word events. All of them move me. All of them show me another way to think, to feel, to be. All of them add to my experience as a creative person in the world.

What marked your journey to creativity? Was there a pivotal moment of YES! Or was it a more gradual immersion in the things which speak to your soul? I’d love to hear your stories. 

Clever Monty