How can a Creativity Coach help you?
And how can artists practice self-care?
Cartoon by Grant Snider
Thank you!
I want to start this week with a huge thank you to everyone who reached out to me after my last newsletter. I received so many encouraging and helpful emails, as well as tangible support in the form of subscriptions. It really meant a lot to me to feel so supported by my readers and fellow writers.
An Interview with Creativity Coach Clare Travis
Five years ago, after my marriage ended, everything felt difficult and strange; I felt lost in my own life. Unfortunately, I am not one of those writers who can transcend those times and keep writing anyway, or even somehow transform all that dark material into something brilliant (Sylvia Plath comes to mind). I am one of those other writers, the ones who stop writing when the rest of my life gets too difficult, thereby adding fear of never writing again to my teetering stack of worries.
Around this time, I stumbled across coach Clare Travis of Create Clarity. In the course of one session, she helped me regain my focus and work out my next steps. I couldn’t believe it! One session! Since then, I have continued to work with Clare whenever my creative life has felt unfulfilling/overwhelming/disappointing/confusing or [insert other adjective]. I’ve also attended a couple of her workshops which were a great re-set. How does she do her magic? It’s quite hard to explain actually, as it feels like a mysterious process in which nothing seems to happen and yet suddenly, boom! As I am very bad at explaining it, I invited Clare to explain it herself.
What exactly does a creativity coach do?
I like to call myself a career and mindset coach for creative practitioners. As we both know, having a fulfilling and sustainable career as a creative professional often isn't an easy thing to achieve! So what I do as a creativity coach is help people who may be at a crossroads in their career or experiencing some kind of crisis.
Creative coaching is mostly about deep listening, and helping the client to access their own best thinking.
More than anything, I'm there to hold a safe space where a creative client can start to explore and articulate what they want next in their career, anything that might be holding them back and what actions will be most impactful to help bring about change. And while it doesn't shy away from the hard stuff, there is often a lightness about the process, a kind of freeing that gives creatives permission to get out of a ruminative space and start genuinely thinking about what they want for themselves and their career. And I've seen that that can be a really powerful thing.
What drew you to working with creatives?
It happened a bit organically, to be honest! A few of my first clients were creatives and I noticed that the work we were doing together was often very fruitful. And then I realised that it made perfect sense, because as a child and teenager, I was very invested in creative work, especially writing fiction and poetry. And several of my family members are also very creative. So the language of creativity was familiar to me and working with creatives resonated with me, because I do believe deeply in the importance of artistic expression and story telling to our shared human existence.
What sort of outcomes do creatives get from working with you?
I'm happy to say that most creatives I've worked with have had a really positive experience. Whether it's been finding a publisher for a manuscript, or finding retail outlets to sell their work, or moving into a new role, or receiving funding to work on new work, there have been some pretty substantial outcomes. And in some cases, it's been more about a client rediscovering their passion for creating art, which I think is just as important as the external signs that things are changing.
What is your favourite part about being a creativity coach?
It's hard to choose just one thing. But I'm going to say it's the privilege of working with super talented people and seeing the difference that having someone in their corner makes to them. Gets me right in the feels!
Tell me about the self-care workshops you run for creatives.
So I've run several of these workshops now, in different iterations, and they always seem to have an impact. The reason I run them is because there is such a need in the arts right now for some more self-compassion and self-care. Times have been tough for a lot of people and although Covid made it impossible to ignore that some things needed to change in the arts, I don't think we've successfully come up with sustainable solutions just yet.
So with the workshops I give people some practical tools they can start using straight away to bring a little more kindness into their lives. And I include a self-coaching framework so people can start incorporating some coaching concepts into any challenges they might be experiencing to find ways to move forward.
I've had participants describe my workshops as nourishing and inspiring, and that's certainly the kind of environment I aim to create.”
Upcoming Workshop: Self-Care for Writers
Clare’s next workshop is at KSP Writers Centre on Saturday July 27th. You may also like to sign up for her newsletter.
Jeremy Allen White as Carmy, The Bear
Love is a Verb: The Bear, Season 3
(Very minor spoilers ahead). Those who have watched the first two seasons of this show in which haute cuisine meets dysfunctional family dynamics will know it is not always an easy watch—that Christmas episode, phew!—and Season 3 starts out with the same stressful intensity as Season 2 ended. Watching these characters struggle with themselves and each other brought to mind a quote I first heard from self-help guru Steven Covey: love is a verb. The characters in The Bear can often be heard telling each other, I love you, and yet continuing to act in the most unloving ways. Most interactions are a masterclass in what not to do if you want to communicate successfully: screaming, swearing, making unilateral decisions, and re-opening old wounds are all in a day’s work for Carmy and the gang. Carmy’s list of non-negotiables really had me shaking my head. Non-negotiables have to be negotiated, Carmy! However, there are also some glimmers of progress, including some touching moments between Richie and his ex-wife Tiff, and a particularly moving scene between Sugar and her mum, (who is, let’s face it, a nightmare).
It’s an introspective season for Carmy, and there is more of his back-story as an apprentice chef, both his wonderful experiences and his truly awful ones. There is a gorgeous scene from his very first day in a kitchen, where a wise and kindly chef shares his philosophy that cooking for others is a form of nurture. Nawww. These contrast sharply with other scenes in which Carmy is insidiously bullied by a high-profile chef. I found it quite heartbreaking when Carmy articulates that working under that particular chef made him mentally ill; he does not quite seem to have realised that his family are undoubtedly a massive contributing factor to his mental health. However, it does seems to be dawning on him—albeit very slowly—that the culture he is creating in his own kitchen may unfortunately not be nailing the cooking is nurture vibe; it may, in fact, be the kind of culture that is going to give his team PTSD.
My biggest criticism of this season is that there was perhaps too much introspection and tangential storytelling, and not very much actually happens, especially in the conflicts in some of the central relationships, namely Carmy and Claire-Bear, and Carmy and Richie. Please let Season 4 be the season in which the Berzattos and friends seek therapy!
Writing Prompt
She hates words like modern and creative and sexuality and she hates acronyms.
Miriam Toews, Fight Night
PROMPT: S/he hates words like… and… and … and s/he hates…
Other things that have intrigued or entertained me lately
MOVIE The Fall Guy
A rom-com that was both very very funny and romantic, five stars!
NOVEL The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley.
I liked it, especially it’s ideas on colonialism and time-travel, but I can’t quite understand what all the fuss was about. I’ll probably honestly never think about it again.
ESSAY Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Luisella
Luisella is a Mexican-born writer who worked as a translator for children seeking asylum in the US after fleeing gang violence in Central America. A sobering, thoughtful read, beautifully written.
What have you been reading, watching and listening to?