How do we find our creative center, and how do we actually stay in it while we’re working?
It’s pretty easy to feel creatively centered when a story is first emerging. There’s usually that phase where stuff seems to be spontaneously welling up from somewhere inside us, somewhere private and inner and… well, centered.
The act of drafting, on the other hand, tends to feel like searching for something that’s missing. And if we’re too caught up in a perfectionist, idealized view of our story, we quickly get mired in the gap between that shining but vague initial imagining and the specific (unideal) words that are coming out on the page.
Having a center can imply staying in the same place, and being in control of that space – but a true creative center is always also fundamentally a threshold. A place where if you know the right tricks, the sacred can be smuggled through the seams.
This month, join me as I explore what the mythological figure of the trickster can teach us about our creative centers (and about the power of the lucky accident in our storytelling).
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This month’s writing praxis is a new format, an Inspirited Word first!
It’s a bonus audio offering to help bring the mythology from this episode into a more personal form. I’ve put together a guided experience based on the Brigid story and on the ritual of Hermes of the Market.
To get the most out of this practice, I’d suggest listening with some good headphones and having something to hand to jot down any insights after you’re finished.
Bonus audio: Hearth and horizon
Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World
Nicholas Cross, "The Hearth as a Place of Refuge in Ancient Greece"
Jean Robert, "Hestia and Hermes: The Greek Imagination of Motion and Space"
Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece (for the ritual referenced in the episode, see Book 7.22)
Bethu Brigte (a medieval hagiography of Saint Brigid)
Cogitosus, Life of Saint Brigid the Virgin
Story Archeology podcast: The Search for Brigid