guest post by Anne bingham
Rather than my WIP, I let the notion of creative inspiration guide my altar and what I gathered reminded me of the playfulness I'd like to approach my creative work with.
Don’t tell Claire I said this but most of my life I haven’t really been into magic/tarot/spells. My inner narrative goes something like I need community to write, and I like tarot for how it guides my writing, and sometimes I burn notes to myself but other than that I’m really rooted in (terrible) reality.
Ahead of the first day, Claire invited the creators in the Winter Creative Commitment (WCC) to make an altar for our winter creative season. It was a profoundly meditative and joyful experience on a heavy winter evening. Mine evoked play, and as someone who doesn’t often feel playful (see: first sentence), it reminded me that play is something we’re born with that sometimes just gets squeezed out. My altar exists now as a portal to something essential about me as a creator, a light in the darkness, a bit of sanguinity in a harsh world.
Equally delightful was hearing about my fellow writers’ altars. They, too, found inspiration in altar creation. One winter creature brought her family heritage to the ritual with an incredible Mantanilla, another called on her WIP with 19th Century pottery found on the coast near her home in Maine. Whimsical folk art, childhood photographs, and travel trinkets were the fabric of these very personal portals.
Claire pointed out that altars could include dynamic changeable elements—herbs, flowers, freshly found stones. Some items would remain, others could be cycled out and released.
Our time together brought in the natural world as we wrote about creatures that have followed us from Fall to Winter and honed our interior worlds via Susan Griffin’s work, to which one writer noted an allusion to a Greek chorus. I’ll come back to this.
Discussing the end of Capricorn season and the Devil, or the card of potential liberation, Claire asked us to consider self-limiting narratives that we’re ready to let go.
I related to all the replies to some degree but one stood out. A fellow creator said she felt silly about her excitement for her WIP. My mouth may have been agape with surprise, because I’m always (ALWAYS) chasing her level of excitement. Excitement goes hand-in-hand with inspiration, my favorite state/s of being.
Claire’s revelatory response? “It is a form of female rebellion to be okay with the vulnerability of feeling childlike wonder.”
The narrative I thought I was letting go was fear of failure but the narrative I’m releasing, instead, comes from the Greek chorus that’s been singing to me even as I write this. Play is available to me, and it is fundamental to my well-being and my creativity. This could also read excitement or inspiration or magic, speaking of narratives I’m ready to let go.
About our guest writer Anne Bingham
For much of her career, Anne has written professionally for hotels & resorts, tourism organizations, and travel technology companies. Over the last decade, she has committed more of her time to creative non-fiction and is currently at work on a novel. When she’s not writing, Anne mentors writers and artists using her twenty-plus years of marketing experience and makes pottery at Birdie Ceramics. She earned an M.A. in English from the University of New Mexico.
Interested in the Creative Commitment? The magic continues in Spring Creative Commitment, starting April 11.