Hello friends.
I’ve had this blog post sat on my desktop for a fair while now, it’s not that i’m too busy….I am pretty busy, but I’ve been very resistant to share it for one reason or another. I really wanted to make it all singing and all dancing with beautiful illustrations to distract the audience from my tentative words. However, a wise person once told me that failure is only guaranteed if you do nothing… which my goodness, really rings true with me.. particularly after the summer/year I’ve had.
I’m afraid this one is not all singing, all dancing. But it is written …and so it shall be shared.
This month I have found myself gradually emerging out of my post burn-out creative hibernation. What is this creative hibernation I hear you say…Well, just like bears, creative people need time to conserve energy, refill their pot of energy, find inspiration and survive adverse conditions, such as burn-out.
Burn-out, in case you have never experienced it, feels a bit like driving a car that has run out of fuel, you’ve been driving around for hours searching for a petrol station to find they’re all empty. Fully expecting the car to give up in the middle of the road, you pull over, get out and abandon it in a safe, yet less than ideal place. When you return to the car, it still has no fuel and now has a flat battery because you left the lights on.
You now need fuel AND some jump leads to get going again…. or in the case of burn-out, you need to hibernate.
…And hibernate I did….I had a really lovely break, I swam in the turquoise (extremely chilly) seas off the Cornish coast, wondered around the Rainforest Biome at The Eden Project (highly recommend it btw), ate plentiful amounts of salted caramel ice cream and drew rolling hills in my sketchbook. Now Talitha is back at school, my regular routine has resumed and I am now ready to sink my teeth into actual work.
But first, before I get too busy I feel the need to reflect on the catalyst for the burn… The BIG amazing Project. If you follow me on instagram you will know that I was very lucky to be offered the opportunity to work on a very exciting project at the start of the summer. The kind of project that left me dizzy with glee! It was totally unexpected and came at a time when I had just about given up hope.
In the moments before this opportunity landed in my inbox, a good friend and I had been discussing our disappointments with life and all the challenges that keep stopping us in our tracks. The night before, I had been depressingly scrolling the internet for jobs that I felt I could just about bear. I was giving up hope on ever making a living from my work and I was looking for a plan B, which is something I do periodically, usually when my funds are running low. I’m sure this is a place where every creative has been. Even the greatest artists had to deviate from their paths to satisfy some financial need at some point and I was preparing myself for this to be that time for me.
But it wasn’t…. HOORAY
Thank you Universe, you beautiful crazy thing… your timing is brilliant yet extremely unnerving.
I was extremely flattered to discover that the client and the publisher had chosen me from a selection of portfolios. They liked my work so much they genuinely wanted ME to do the project. I felt like I was floating on a huge, life affirming, fluffy cloud. Although the job was a dream come true, it also came with a less than dreamy catch. The publishers wanted to get the book done ASAP, I had just around 7 weeks to do the whole picture book! 7 weeks! In my mind, a project like this needed a whole period of time for research and some time to digest the research and then some time to do experiments based on the research.…but in 7 weeks, there really wasn’t any time.
The day I received the schedule was the day the self-doubt demons moved in! Panic ensued and so did all the negative paralyzing thoughts. I felt like there was so much pressure on me to get this right, (mainly from myself) but the client was relying on me, the publisher was relying on me and I was relying on me. I simply cannot fail.
I fully expected that at this point, when squashed by all the pressure and plagued by the doubt demons that I would crumble into a heap on the floor and freeze into solid utterly useless block of nothingness. But I really didn’t have time to crumble, I didn’t have time to freeze, I certainly didn’t have time for failure….and I knew that failure was guaranteed if I did nothing.
I was very lucky that the people around me were aware of how much this meant to me, my family and friends leaped into action. They helped with childcare, they were on the end of the phone for all the pep talks I needed, one friend in particular even cleaned my house for me (thank you Emily!!)
There were still some tears of course, the doubt demons did creep in from time to time but with all the help from the ‘Hug’ team at Penguin and support from my lovely agent at Bright, I wasn’t on my own. I persevered and bit by bit…… I DID IT!!!!!!!!! I totally did it. I met the deadline, I didn’t crumble in to a heap on the floor…I illustrated my first published picture book.
Now, bring it on universe….I can do anything!!
I learnt so much about myself during those 7 weeks and I learnt a lot about my creative practice.
But the biggest lesson of all, was of course….