Out of the creative desert

Celebrating a new book + a writing prompt idea if you're feeling blocked

Dear Creative Soul,

Here’s a quick bookish (and well overdue) update - my novel WHEREVER YOU GO (Bloodhound Books) is out now!

WHEREVER YOU GO is actually my debut novel (it was previously published in Australia by Pilyara Press in 2020 before Bloodhound Books acquired it earlier this year). I’m thrilled to see this story of grief, loss, redemption and the healing power of food finding a wider audience.

Two books in one year! Hard to believe that back in January, when I started this Substack, I was considering giving up writing. I felt as though I'd lost my creative spark. Flat. No matter how hard I tried, I could not find the joy. I felt like I’d had my shot at getting published and there was no point marketing them much now. Here’s what I wrote back then:

For the past six to nine months, I’ve been feeling "lost" creatively. I haven’t been able to find a creative flow. To settle into writing my third book - to know what it is I want to say.

Why do I feel lost? Is that even the right word? What is the true nature of this creative malaise and where has it come from? Is it stemming from something within me? The world in its current uncertain state? Both?

I was in a creative desert. Dried up and wrung out. Thirsting for creative nourishment, but almost too weary, too blurry-eyed to believe it was just around the corner. In that mental space, I could not have imagined my two novels being re-released internationally by Bloodhound Books within a two-month period. Loads of new readers in the UK and US. An audiobook out in November.

A lot can happen in a year.

And while I have not celebrated with book launch parties this time around, I’m still celebrating. Last night we sipped an Adelaide Hills chardonnay with subtle oak spices and a lingering finish after enjoying a heavenly porcini ragù (check out Ixta Belfrage’s recipe here). If you like vegetarian food or mushrooms, this is well worth making (and you can substitute ingredients to make it vegan, I’ve tried that and it was just as lip-smackingly good).

But not only am I celebrating the release WHEREVER YOU GO (again), I am celebrating so much more - the return of my creative spark after months of working at healing my creative self, two book launches, a work in process that is at the mid-point.

I am celebrating the triumphant walk out of my creative desert and back into more fertile pastures. Back into a space where I know WHY I create - for me, for my creative self, but also for you, because my hope is that my words offer something to you. Into a space of humility, gratitude and joy.

Celebrate the small things, the small wins. Every milestone, big and small. They all matter, because they are part of your journey. Who knows where they will lead?

Oh, and how apt that daisies (gerberas are a daisy) appear on the covers of both WILDFLOWER and WHEREVER YOU GO. Daisies, the flower of new beginnings, joy and cheerfulness?

Filling my creative well

Every week for the past two months we have visited a local bushland reserve to hunt for orchids and other wildflowers. It’s a way of keeping connected to my WIP when I find it hard to carve out writing time. I’m feeling increasingly drawn to the idea of drawing some of these flowers, perhaps even doing a botanical art course.

In the meantime, flower photography brings me great joy.

Five things

Today I stumbled across The Five Things Essay on Substack.

“A Five Things Essay, or a Five Things draft, is an all-purpose writing prompt to help you find your voice, lose your voice, beat writer's block, or figure out what the hell you want to write about in the first place. Structurally, it is a piece of nonfiction writing, published or unpublished, that either a) includes a numbered list of five sections, or b) was originally written as a numbered list of five sections, before being edited into a more cohesive whole.” - Summer Brennan, A Writer’s Notebook

My writing time will be limited for the rest of the year - I am entering a season of family gatherings and travel. So I thought the Five Things concept might be a way to keep connected to my WIP.

Here are five things for today:

1. Feeling the bushland envelop me, dulling the noise of cars on the freeway, attuning my ears to the sharp snap of a twig, rustling among leaf litter, the hum of a native bee’s wings.

2. The thrill of finding a rebel leopard orchid, taking its sweet time to curl its spotted beauty away while the sun lowers and the other sun orchids have already squeezed tightly shut.

3. At the small grocer near my house, buying blood-red capsicum that is now roasting in my oven ahead of the paella I will soon cook, Leftfield Roasters’ Fat Puppy coffee beans that my husband will grind in the morning, and deciding at the last minute to add some Connoisseur “Golden Blondie” ice-creams for dessert.

4. The apricot tree is bursting with fruit, hundreds of fat green baubles, and I wonder if they ripen before we go away.

5. A dove watches me as I hang clothes on the line and I wonder if there is a nest hidden in the pomegranate tree as there was last year.

That was fun! Let me know in the comments if you give it a try.

But now it’s time to make paella.

Until next time, creative souls.