The Green Force of Creativity
Inspiration, Action, and Manifestation
In this issue :
A Letter from Shelley
February Art: Valentine’s Day Dress
February Pappus: The Green Force of Creativity
Writing Prompt
Writing News
Guam News
Note From Shelley
Dear Loyal Reader:
We’ve made it through mid-February, my friend! I hope you enjoyed some Valentine’s Day fun and romance and/or a Galentine’s Day that refreshed and revived.
This month I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity, manifesting our dreams, wondering if creative energy is physical or spiritual or a bit of both, and quietly coming to realize I’m in kind of a muddle when looking ahead in my career.
Perhaps you can relate.
If you are in a similar phase, please know you are not alone in the struggle. Maybe you are reacting, as many creative people do, to the chaos going on in the world right now. If so, remember that creativity can also be an antidote to anxiety, depression, anger, and fear. When you feel powerless, working on a creative project can give you a sense of control at least over your own output.
Creativity for peace of mind and creativity’s sake is valid, but I’m concerned this month with creativity for a purpose. Knowing our purpose. Envisioning our goals. Planning steps.
At the end of the pappus essay, I share some basic steps we can take in order to move out of the muddle and into the flow again.
I hope you find this month’s Pink Dandelions inspiring and useful.
Cheers!
Shelley
February Art
This woman represents a Pink Dandelions reader. She’s caring and stylish, looking forward to the challenges ahead. She may be worried about things going on in the world, but she’s determined to keep her corner of it calm and creative and compassionate. Her red dress symbolizes love in honor of Valentine’s Day and acknowledgement that love is the antidote to bigotry, fear, misogyny, and bullying. I used pen and markers on watercolor paper in my art journal to create this hopeful image.
February Pappus
A pappus is the seed fluff drifting on the current soft air, carrying the seed to fertile soil in which it can germinate.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
—Dylan Thomas
Lately I’ve been thinking about what I call the creative energy of the universe: what it is, how it operates without and within us, whether it’s simply a phrase to explain the inexplicable–OUR inexplicable–drive to create, thrive, succeed, manifest, or if it is actually somewhere, substantive, other, extra, above. Can we find ways to connect with it or tap into it or use the force, I wonder? Or is it simply a concept? A wordy way to explain an ephemeral feeling that there must be something out there besides ourselves, or something within ourselves beyond flesh? Or both?
I’ve recently discovered that Julia Cameron, the author of the famous book on creativity, The Artist’s Way, conceptualizes “god” as a creative force and writes in the later book Life Lessons: 125 Prayers and Meditations, “I was told to try and work with a creative force of the universe.” (See note 1)
In a speech she made at the Santa Fe Center for Spiritual Living, Cameron quoted the Dylan Thomas poem above and his “force.” (See note 2) I love that image of energy driving a flower through a green stem because it seems nearly brutal, unstoppable, yet beautifully productive.
Some call this energy God.
God, as a character, features large in Evangelical Christianity, the religion of my upbringing, the religion I rejected, firmly, once I left home and began exploring different ideas, meeting new people, encountering a much wider, more complicated world. I’m what’s known now as an exvangelical, but I always felt and still feel there’s an energy out there. Something started this whole universe expanding, exploding the stars, swirling stuff together to make planets and suns and asteroid belts, fashioning elephants and bees and the too-clever-for-our-own-good apes we humans try to forget we are.
The Creative Force
This creative force is not totally comprehensible, whether it’s something physical just prior to the Big Bang or some kind of celestial spaghetti monster. We can only comprehend it a little bit. We call the comprehensible part science. The incomprehensible part is often called God.
I feel the word and the concept of God has been claimed and chained by religion and humanized in weird and terrible ways by power-hungry people seeking to control others and enrich themselves. That’s been both my reading of history and my lived experience. So, I don’t want to use the term “god” when talking about the incomprehensible forces at work in the universe. I prefer “creative energy.”
I believe in manifestation, i.e. tapping into the creative energy to make things happen as you envision them. Manifestation is inspiration (one kind of energy) plus action (a different kind of energy). If you set your sights on an accomplishment and take actions to help yourself as best you can, you end up accomplishing your goal, often through circumstances you couldn’t predict.
That doesn’t mean something magical happened in the sense that saying a prayer or casting a spell made it happen, POOF! Prayers (and spells and mantras) are ways we focus our intentions. If we focus our intentions, we are more likely to make positive, forward-moving choices in our actions. These actions cause reactions, often leading to what we envisioned.
It’s kind of simple, really.
Supernatural?
I do leave room here for the possibility of some kind of undefined and not-measurable energy nudging things along behind the scenes. I’m agnostic on the supernatural, I guess. I can’t say for sure it isn’t just scientific cause and effect, the butterfly phenomenon where even small actions in a complex world can have large ramifications down the timeline.
In this era of ultra-connectivity via technologies of all kinds, causes and effects can be a Category 5 in scope and strength. This is energy. Because of networking, because so much is connected, one action has all kinds of unintended as well as intended consequences.
Nothing woo-woo about it.
We say that nature abhors a vacuum. Because we are moving, and the universe is moving, energy flows around. Physical energy. Light energy. Wave energy. Perhaps there are other types of energy we haven’t yet been able to measure but we can experience. For me, the specifics don’t really matter. The outcomes matter.
One thing I’m pretty sure of: You can’t manifest what you want if you don’t know what you want.
Not that long ago my writing goal was clear. I wanted to be a published author.
I set that intention. I took action toward it–practicing, reading craft books, going to classes and presentations, following other authors whose books I liked, submitting short stories, joining a cohort of people writing a book in a year through a publisher’s online program, serializing a novel on Wattpad, making connections with other writers in various places.
After all that, a traditional small press published two of my novels, and I became the published author I wanted to be. Did I manifest this? Yes. You could also make an argument that it was simply cause and effect. Potato, potahto. Take the steps, stuff happens.
Now that I’ve accomplished this goal, however, I’m not sure what I want. I am muddled. Yes, I have a dollar amount in mind for earnings. It’s modest. No, I don’t want to be famous, but I do want a loyal readership for whom I can create beautiful, entertaining, and uplifting stories. Also a modest number.
What I don’t know is how I want to move toward these goals.
Traditional publishing? Indie publishing? Selling on Amazon? Selling from my own online shop? Creating a Patreon? Getting an agent?
It’s hard to envision the path forward. I’m in a holding pattern. I’m confused. I’m uncertain. I’m a pool a stagnant water. The force isn’t blasting against my roots or driving the flower of creativity through the green stem. The force is more like a trickle, and things seem to be breaking down.
Here’s an example: This week, an update to Wordpress temporarily created some breaking points on my six-year-old website, and a web host help technician couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After three hours, I was told I’d need to pay extra for a premium level Wordpress expert, no guarantees.
What? I already felt I paid too much for a basic site. I figured this might be the end of my website, so I disabled the few plug-ins I had left and went to bed despondent. I’d just figured out my newsletter (yay Substack!) and now my website was going to crash?
Fearful, I opened the site this morning and . . . it was working just fine.
I made a few tweaks to the home page, and they worked. I approved some comments and replied to comments, and they worked. There are no longer any links to my socials because I deactivated the plug-in but fine. I’m weaning off socials anyway.
I was relieved, of course, but in the back of my mind I know I need to take action. Failing to take action might have caused this break. Perhaps I didn’t adequately address updates. I didn’t learn how to code or hire someone with those skills to do the work for me. I shoe-stringed and held my breath. I didn’t move to a less intricate web builder and hosting platform.
In other words, I created a vacuum. It nearly cost me. Now I realize this was a wake-up call to take action, and I have to believe focusing on a clear vision will lead me to make smart choices.
Steps for Moving Forward
Maybe you’re experiencing similar confusion or have in the past. It’s pretty much guaranteed we’ll all have doubts and missteps and lack of directions from time to time.
Here are some steps I’m going to use to move forward.
First, I’m going to get into a regular exercise and healthy eating routine. Eating fewer carbs–especially sugar and pasta–usually helps with any brain fog I’m experiencing. Movement also helps.
Second, using meditation, journaling, visualization, and a Pinterest vision board and/or a physical collage, I will figure out what I want my personal life and career to look like five years from now. This step is crucial. If you don’t know where you want to go, you will end up somewhere you probably don’t want to be.
Third, with these outcomes in mind, I will brainstorm definite steps to take in the coming months and will work toward them every day. Calendar journals work well for this step.
Fourth, I will celebrate milestones and actions taken and achieved.
With some concrete inspiration and goals plus action steps to take, I believe I can manifest a more meaningful and deliberate career and personal life. Oh, and this includes making my condo into a comfortable, chic, welcoming space.
Remember, your life itself can be a creative art. Every day is a brushstroke in that masterpiece. I truly believe this. Revel in your life. Journal and photograph and sketch your days. Take time to look back at what you’ve created and then look to what you want to create in the future.
Life is art. Life is creativity in action. Life is delicious.
Notes
from the article Julia Cameron: How Creativity Enhances Your Spiritual Life by Brooke Obie. https://guideposts.org/inspiring-stories/stories-of-faith-and-hope/julia-cameron-how-creativity-enhances-your
Writing Prompt
What do you think about the creative energy of the universe? Is it a supernatural being or physics or some kind of energy we haven’t been able to test? How do you relate to this energy? Have you ever experienced a cause and effect or a manifestation that you couldn’t easily explain? Or one you can explain because of deliberate steps you took? What is one goal or vision you are holding now?
Writing News
I am keeping up with writing journal entries on ShelleyBurbank.com as long as the website holds. People have been reading and commenting that they are enjoying the photos and notes on Guam.
I’ve finished one chapter of The Peony Hotel and have started chapter two.
A recent podcast made the case against publishing series at the beginning of a career, so now I’m considering nixing the novella series idea and just making this a stand-alone women’s fiction. What do you think? Would you rather read a series of short 100-page novellas or a stand-alone novel? Send me an email!
If you are interested in this topic as a writer or reader, check out the Feb 12 episode of The Novel Marketing Podcast which can be found on your favorite podcast app.
Guam News
We have found a condo but our household goods haven’t arrived yet. We’ve explored the southern end of the island, and a blue starfish washed up in the surf while we were hanging out at the beach. The food here is delish with unusual (for me) flavors, and I’ve joined a Guam Foodies online group to learn more about the local cuisine. I’m hoping to share a recipe or two in the newsletter, but as I still don’t have my cookware I can’t experiment yet.
Follow my blog writing journal on my website for details.
Thanks for sharing, Emma!