creativity Archives - Kate Hilton

Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

I’m celebrating a big anniversary this week. Two years ago, I self-published The Hole in the Middle. I didn’t really choose self-publishing. I did it because I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously as a writer in the traditional publishing business.

This week, my publisher is shipping a brand-new edition to bookstores across the country, with a quote on the front from a famous writer who also happens to be a new friend (we met at a literary festival last summer). It’s so amazing and weird that Kobo asked me to write a blog about it.

But honestly, when I look back at everything that’s happened? The self-publishing, and the crazy internet sensation, and the Canadian book deal, and the U.S. book deal, and the marriage breakdown – all of it connected, all of it complicated and bittersweet – do you know what strikes me the most?

I can’t believe how f***ing brave I was. I’m so proud of that. I’m a fairly shy person, all evidence to the contrary. I used to have a phobia about public speaking. I used to have an almost crippling anxiety about what people thought of me. The biggest obstacle to my success with the book, from the beginning, was my own fear.

Courage is a relative quality. It is quite different from fearlessness. To be courageous is to do the things that haunt you. Only you know what they are. To self-publish my book, to put myself out on social media, to tell everyone I knew that I had written something, and ask them to buy it, all the while knowing for an absolute fact that no one in the book industry believed my book deserved publication: that took every bit of courage I had, which was significantly more than I knew I possessed. (I filmed a video about it.)

And now? I feel like the old rules don’t apply to me anymore. It is scary but also truly liberating.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned: Not everyone will like you. Not everyone will value the same things you do. Not every relationship will survive forever. People change. You will too.

These are terrifying realizations, but once you accept them as true, the rules shift. The most important questions change. What do you want to contribute? What are your greatest talents? Who deserves your loyalty and your time? Who doesn’t? What are you doing because you think you should? What are you doing because you genuinely love to do it?

On a micro-level, I’m exploring these questions while choosing furniture for my new house. My designer, who is accustomed to working with couples to identify the appropriate shade of greige, is thrilled. There is no compromise. There is no discussion. What do I like? It turns out that I like … what I like. Which is random and eclectic and colourful and creative. Who knew? Here is my new carpet, for example:

My point here, and I do have one, is that we spend a lot of energy trying to figure out how to fit in with other people – families, friends, and especially spouses. But maybe we ought to practice being ourselves a little now, as Jenny Joseph’s famous poem suggests? We – all of us – deserve that.

Really looking forward to our event on Friday!

Yours,

Kate

Read Reva’s last letter here.

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Turn down the volume!

March 23, 2015
My parents’ kitchen

Dear Reva,

I loved your last letter, which I read at Disney. It provided a few precious moments of serenity (perhaps sanity would be a more accurate word choice there) in a wild week.

You may find this strange, but creativity was on my mind over March Break. Not my own (I’ll get to that), but Big Vision creativity, which is very much on display at Walt Disney World. Love Disney or hate it – I would hold sympathy with either view – but it is impossible to ignore the sheer ambition of the place. I was struck both by the vast scale of the vision, but also the precision of the execution, in what was, not that long ago, a giant swath of Florida swampland. Fascinating, in a once-in-a-lifetime kind of way (hear that, kids?).

How and where do I harness creative ideas? I think this is a wonderful question, and the first answer to it is very much dictated by my life as a mother: however and wherever possible. I won’t say ‘in a perfect world’, because it wouldn’t be a perfect world if I were childless, but in a world where I had fewer domestic responsibilities, I would get my best ideas on long walks, alone, in the morning. I rarely take long walks alone, in the morning or at any other time, so I have to make do.

I was talking to my dad about this question last night. The manuscript for my second book is due in September and I will now become extremely disciplined about my productivity because I never miss deadlines. And so I am trying to figure out how to reduce the noise around me to focus on ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ the story I want to tell. I don’t mean literal noise, although that also needs to be managed. I mean the number of things that clamour for my mental attention, pulling my focus away even during times set aside for writing, and drowning out the sound of the characters’ voices.

Take today for instance. On Monday mornings, I have two hours blocked off in my calendar for writing. My house is being sold this week, so I’m living at my parents’ house. In preparation for today’s return to work, I spent yesterday doing laundry, fetching warm clothes and lunch boxes and school uniforms from my house, making a run to the one store in Toronto that makes the bagels that my son eats for his school lunches, and meeting with my lawyer to sign some documents. Organized! Prepared!

And then, at the end of the day, my younger son spiked a high fever which had him up twice in the night and sleeping with me. He slept, I should say. And then he vomited. So this morning, I slept (because I can’t write a coherent word on no sleep) and did more laundry. And now I am racing with the clock to get this letter done before I head out to pick up my older son from school, while my younger son swoons on a nearby sofa and threatens, at twenty-minute intervals, to vomit again. You see? LOUD.

I have a wonderful writing mentor who says that he prefers his life to be extremely boring when he is writing a book. I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, my life is far from boring right now. But the book is still due in September, and I know I’ll get it done somehow. Working mothers are good at finding a way.

Yes, I know there are some men who are excellent at multi-tasking and who contribute equally to childrearing and domestic labour. I know about these men because people hold them up as examples of the future of marriage, and I hear a lot about them every time a woman complains about gendered inequality within marriage.

I think men are encouraged to focus on work, and women are expected to focus on work and absolutely every other aspect of family life as well, and it is probably to everyone’s detriment, but certainly to women’s.

I suspect that this expectation of women, that we perform flawlessly on all fronts at all times, without any real acknowledgement of the value of our unpaid work, is one of the reasons why we compete so relentlessly with each other. Comparing ourselves with other women is the only way we can evaluate ourselves on the overall picture of our lives – our paid jobs, our volunteer jobs, our parenting, our homes, our bodies, our sex lives, our spouses – and determine our level of success or failure.

And since I don’t think the future of marriage is arriving any time soon, maybe we should try to lighten up on ourselves and each other. THAT would be revolutionary.

Yours,

Kate

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Faith and the Polar Vortex

william blake, ancient of days, inspiration, creativity, God — William Blake, The Ancient of Days

February 24, 2015

Toronto, depths of winter

Dear Reva,

The deep freeze persists. Just leaving the house to get the groceries or do the after-school pick-up feels like a polar expedition. We are living in the Canada of Canadian Tire commercials, and of the American imagination. I have a friend who has built an igloo in her backyard.

February does, of course, offer the pleasure of huddling in your soon-to-be former home, organizing your taxes, working out the details of your separation agreement, and contemplating the remnants of your shattered domesticity, for those who enjoy such activities.

Perhaps I should mention, since we’re tackling some socially awkward topics this week, that February blues come in a rather dark shade for me. Depression and anxiety simply adore February. It is their favorite time of the year.

So. You want to talk about God.

As Marilla Cuthbert famously said (in the film version of Anne of Green Gables, though not the book): “To despair is to turn your back on God.” It is a bad idea to turn your back on someone before giving Him a good long look; I suppose that is why every person I’ve met (or read) who has struggled with depression has also struggled with the big existential questions.

For the record, I did grow up going to church, in a low-key Protestant congregation, but I’ve never been a believer. I’m not a great joiner, either, and I tend to get prickly when people tell me what to think. I’ve always preferred the crisp certainty of the visible, ‘rational’ world to the messy excesses of spirituality in all its forms.

Consequently, religion has played no role in my parenting. I have occasionally felt that this is a gap in my children’s education. So much of human history is about the clash of religious traditions that I sometimes wonder how my children will make sense of it all without any personal experience of religious life (other than holiday celebrations, carefully stripped of any sacred overtones).

In the past few years, I’ve become much more open to conversations about spirituality. Part of this shift is a function of life stage, I’m sure; we focus more intensely on these questions as we age. But I recognize, too, that the search for more meaningful and creative work has changed my approach to, and probably my expectations of, other aspects of my life.

Have you read Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning? I read it for the first time recently, and it is extraordinary. Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist from Vienna, was sent to Auschwitz as a slave laborer, and survived. From that experience, Frankl developed a theory about how people can find meaning in life, even in the most desperate circumstances: through work, through love or through courage and dignity in the face of adversity. Frankl believed, based on his observations in the concentration camp, that this sense of meaning, of belief in something larger and more important than the present moment, was more essential to survival than food or medicine.

That’s a pretty strong vote for faith. And while I wouldn’t put myself in the mystical camp just yet, I’ve traveled a long way from where I started. Engaging your creativity will do that, as anyone who makes art will tell you. Art is hard work – I would never want to suggest otherwise – but creativity itself is mysterious and inexplicable, even to the artist. It is both within and yet somehow beyond our physical selves. In this sense it is a lot like love. Or even, dare I say it, like faith.

Yours,

Kate

Link to Reva’s last letter: http://www.revaseth.com/penpalproject/february-blues/

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Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Pen Pal Project

Courage, my love

Pen Pal Project

Turn down the volume!

Pen Pal Project

Faith and the Polar Vortex