‘Inner Country’
‘…creativity is a kind of Never-Never. A vast, rich, extreme landscape we each have inside ourselves.’ (24)
As always, I’m here to nurture emerging writers with inspiration and insights. Here are some ideas I connected within in Holly Ringland’s The House That Joy Built…
Fear
‘…unchecked fear…’ ‘…courage to create…’ (36)
Self-doubt is human but can be debilitating. Ringland encourages the power of play as a means of combatting fear.
‘Creating anything despite fear is how we learn to believe in ourselves and our creativity… It’s how we unblock and recover our creative lives.’ (249)
Procrastination
Conflict between our ‘two selves’ — the present and the future — and how each comes with their own set of concerns. Understanding this can be helpful in motivating the ‘present self’.
Joy
Why we create; writing is fear and self-doubt but, ultimately, writing is joy. As Ringland suggests, we cannot ‘fail’ if our creative endeavours are about joy.
Love & Compassion
Choose ‘self-compassion’ over ‘self-doubt’. This is how we must respond to our ‘inner-critic’ and the stories we tell ourselves.
Learning, instead of failure.
‘Little steps revealed a path beneath my feet. Inwards, to my inner country of imagination. Step by step by step.’ (134)
Share…
Have you read The House That Joy Built?
What did you think? Let me know in the comments.
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Reference: Ringland, H. (2023). The House That Joy Built. Fourth Estate, HarperCollinsPublishers.