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This is my blog archive. My new writing lives on Substack.
Making Winter A Season To Reflect On Your Creative Journey
When I think of winter, I think of the hush that happens when new snow has fallen and wrapped itself over the world. It’s a magical moment, a space of wonder and stillness.
In this quiet season, we can find space to go a little gentler. When I surveyed creatives on how the seasons affected them, winter didn’t surface as a productive season, but one that was strong on something else: reflection.
So let’s take a look at how winter affects us and how we can embrace that in our creative work.
What It’s Been Like To Plan And Create In Tune With The Seasons This Year
Two years ago, I had an idea.
I have always loved the turn of the seasons. While people close to me have their clear favourites, I’ve always struggled to choose mine because I love them all. I love the anticipation, the gentle and familiar cycle of change, the constant movement in nature from bloom to hibernation. The seasons deeply affect my mood, energy levels, inspiration and lifestyle.
So why not my creativity?
Using The Experimentation-Introspection Cycle To Find Direction In The Beginning Of A Project
When you’re in the beginning of any creative project, a big part of the process is to figure out what you want that project to be. It might sound simple, but it’s a journey in itself, one where you might find yourself struggling to move forward at times.
Perhaps you’re thinking about what you want to create in this project, but you never reach any good conclusions and don’t get to the creating. Or you’re creating a lot, but you feel like you’re not really finding “your thing”.
If you’re in that space, I’d like to introduce you to the simple magic of the Experimentation-Introspection Cycle.
Three Areas To Dig Deeper In If You’re Aching To Move Forward In Your Creative Work
At many points in my creative journey, I’ve felt a little lost or stuck. You know the feeling, I’m sure. You want something in your creative life, to create something, to make something happen, to reach a certain point. Yet it may feel hard, confusing and, well, kinda scary.
I’ve gone in circles. I’ve wavered back and forth between different options. I’ve walked in one direction, then got self-conscious and gone back again. I’ve thought I was creating one thing, when in reality I was creating something different.
To some degree, this is simply part of the creative process. But over the years, I’ve learned that there are certain things that help us get through these challenging parts of our creative journeys and move forward again. In this blog post, I share what I believe to be the three key areas we may need to dig deeper into when we’re struggling to move forward.
How I'm Discovering What My Creative Work Is Truly About
Everyone who has worked on a creative project knows that there isn’t one way to describe it. You can look at it from many perspectives, describe it long or short, detailed or in broad terms. You may have one way you describe it to creative friends, another to potential customers, and a third to your family.
Yet so often, we search for that description that feels just right. That makes things flow and connect and that blows your mind a little. Recently, I found a description like that for what I do in my coaching and in my creative work. Today I want to share that story and give you a tip if you’re searching for that right description too.
Making Autumn A Season To Go Deeper In Your Creative Work
If I were a season, I would be autumn. It’s a season of earthy, brilliant colours, of knits and socks, cosy nights at home with a cup tea and a book, listening to the rain beating at the windows.
As the days get shorter and nature starts its last, beautiful transition before hibernation, we go deeper into our creative work. When I surveyed creatives in 2019 about how they experience their creative work throughout the different seasons, autumn surfaced as a season less about new ideas and more about things coming together.
Let’s look at what tends to happen in our creative lives in autumn and what we can learn from it.
Creating A Content Plan That Is Rooted In What You Want To Contribute To The World
If you regularly share your creativity with the world in a blog, podcast, newsletter, Youtube channel or another medium, I bet you’ve sometimes felt at a loss for ideas of what to create next. Perhaps you’ve also struggled to define exactly where to draw the line between the topics you touch upon, and those you don’t.
I’ve encountered these struggles many times myself, and over the years I’ve developed a method for filling my content plan with ideas I’m excited about and that feels true to what I want to share with the world. It’s also a way to regularly check in with the focus of my content, to see that I’m on the right track.
In this blog post, I’m sharing that method.
Designing A Creative Workspace At Home That You’ll Love
In a room in our house is my creative workspace. The whole room is dedicated to my creative work, and I have a desk, a bookshelf, an armchair and a shelf filled with plants and notebooks. In there I write my blog posts, I edit my videos and photos, I talk to my coaching clients and think up new ideas.
Since we moved in a little over a year ago, I’ve slowly been shaping this room into a space that I love be in and create. I’ve been thinking about how I want to feel in there and how my workspace can best support me in my creative life. If you’re shaping a creative workspace of your own, these are my tips for making it a place that you’ll love.
What To Do When Your Creative Goal Feels Impossible
Recently I had that feeling again. Impossible. My summer vacation was nearing an end much too soon. (How is it that vacations always feel so long when they begin and before you know it they’re over?) I hadn’t made all the progress in my creative work that I had hoped to make. I saw autumn creeping closer. I looked at where I was and where I want to get to, and the road between felt so very long. It was like time was running but I was standing still. How would I ever get there? Impossible.
I think this is a feeling that most creatives deal with now and then, especially if you’re trying to do something for the first time. We can see clearly where we are now, we can dream up a destination but the road in between is fuzzy, perhaps a bit scary and so terribly long. We might as well be trying to fly, that’s how likely a successful outcome feels.
Ridding ourselves of these feelings completely isn’t very likely - it’s human to doubt. What we can do is to learn how to deal with them, when they invariably turn up.
Why I'm Starting A Youtube Channel
If you’d told to me a year or two ago to start a Youtube channel, I would have laughed at you. Me, the awkward, introverted Swede with an accent I felt self-conscious about? On Youtube, where I never really felt at home? No no, I would have waved you away and went on with my life.
But things change, and here we are. My first video is up and I’m excited to say hello, hi, I’m Elin and I’m on Youtube. And today I want to share why I’ve decided to start the channel, because it’s not as simple as “it felt fun”, though there’s that too. I hope it can spark some thoughts about your own creative life, if you share your work online.
A Self-portrait Challenge To Show My Face More In My Photography
It was earlier this year, and I was scrolling through my pictures for one where I showed my face. I wanted to update the one I had on the start page here on my website, because I had a snowy one and it was already spring.
I scrolled and looked in folders. Eventually I had to conclude that no, I had barely taken any the past months, and the ones I had I was already using in some other part of the website.
It gave me pause. When had I stopped taking photos where I showed my face? I had used to do it without any hesitation. What had happened?
The Story Of How I’m Redefining My Creative Identity
Ever since I started blogging in 2016, I’ve shared my creative journey through writing. It’s what I fell in love with, and it’s what I’ve built my online presence around. I’ve shared my struggles and what I’ve learned along the way in hope of helping and inspiring other creatives in their journeys.
I’ve always identified myself primarily as a writer in my creative life. That is, until I started coaching and things shifted in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated.
Creating A Map To Guide You In Your Creative Project
I’ve worked on widely different creative projects. From the big work of writing a novel, to honing my photography and growing my Instagram account, to building a creative business. Yet there’s one thing I do in every project, that helps me regardless of the specifics of it. It’s something I see helps my coaching clients so much as well.
It’s to create a map for myself. Of course, it’s not an actual map, but I call it that because it helps us navigate and find direction in our creative work. It’s something - a document, a notebook, a vision board - to develop and reference as you go.
In this blog post, I want to share why I think creating a map is so helpful, and how you can get started with one too.
Making Summer A Season For A Different Kind Of Creative Life
Summers have a special place in my creative life. For me, it’s a time with more freedom and space for creating. I use them to focus on work I struggle to make room for during the rest of the year.
But not all have summers like mine. When I surveyed creatives about how they find creating throughout the different seasons, summer was the season with the biggest variations. It was clear that it’s the season that is most affected by our differing lifestyles - whether we have kids or not, if we live further north or south, how much we travel.
Let’s look at how summer tends to affect us in our creative lives, and what we can learn from it to make the best of this season ahead.
How I’m Building A Creative Business In My Own Slow Living Way
My creative work is a source of joy, calm and fulfillment in my life. As I build a creative business, I don’t ever want to lose that. I don’t want to fall trap to the idea that business has to be fast and hustly, or that a job needs to be hard and stressful.
Instead, I’m choosing a different way, one I call my own slow living way. I’m still in the beginning of my journey, just a little over three months in, but these first few months have really forced me to get clear on my values and define how I want to move forward in building my business. And that’s what I’m going to share today.
Finding The Deeper Message Within Your Creative Work
Every creative idea has at its core a message. Something that makes it bigger than just the individual creation, a contribution to a conversation going on in the world.
Your message is what you want to say with your work, it’s your view of the world and what you want to inspire in others. Finding your message is part of what I call doing the groundwork of making an idea happen, and it’s closely related to many other concepts. Theme. Brand story. Your why, purpose, intention or north star.
Doing Creative Work During The Corona Crisis
I want to start off by saying that you don’t have to do creative work during the corona crisis if you don’t want to. There’ll never be any judgement from me if you decide that this is a time to just care for yourself and let your creative ideas wait.
That being said, if you do want to do creative work, I have written this blog post with the hope that it gives you some help along the way.
Making Spring A Happy, Balanced Season For Creative Work
Spring is when the world wakes up after the hibernation of winter. Our creativity can feel like it’s awakening with the rest of the world, propelling us into a season of new ideas and fresh energy.
This is how creatives described spring in one of four surveys I did in 2019, about doing creative work throughout the seasons. Our energy levels, inspiration and habits are all influenced by the seasons, and they in turn affect us as creatives too.
Understanding these tendencies can help us move forward in our creative lives in a way that is in tune with the seasons. So let’s have a look at what tend to happen in our creative work in spring, and what we can learn from it.
Embracing Slow And Creative Days At Home
We probably all had plans for this spring that were thrown to the side by the coronavirus. All over the world, people are staying home, some voluntarily to help slow down the spread of the virus, others because they’re not allowed to go outside.
In the midst of all the anxiety of our societies struggling to cope, there’s an invitation here to make the best of this short period in history.
To slow down, settle in and embrace slow and creative days at home.
Dealing With Fear Of Failure In My First Month Of Business
I want to tell you a story from my first month of running my creative coaching business. I want to tell it because I know that the fear of failure holds many of us back in our creative lives. It held me back when I started writing my first novel, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t dealt with that fear.
In my first month of business, I had another round with that fear, in its new shiny shape: the fear of failing as a creative business owner.