Creativity Is For Everyone with Val Andrews

Faster Fiction Podcast

Are you afraid to move forward creatively?

Val Andrews is an artist, an author, and a creativity coach who helps people find new sources of inspiration, navigate their own creative process and see their creative projects through to completion.

She is also intimately aware of the ways that we can get pulled away from our creativity when we feel compelled to live ‘sensible lives’, as she puts it. (I’m sure many of you can relate to this. I know I can!)

Val has a free ebook available about how to enhance your creativity. If you’re feeling stuck or not sure how to move forward in your creative life, you can download Val’s ebook here.

In the introduction I mention the big picture work I’m doing right now – planning for 2017. And the approach I want to try, which involves focusing on each quarter in a year and having specific goals for each quarter, and then (important!) reviewing at the end of the quarter which goals I’ve met and not met.

Creativity Notes for this Episode

• How it is not uncommon for children to lose touch with their creativity

• How Val reawakend her creative life with the help of creative exercises and a creativity coach

• The universal connection Val found between being creative and being happy

• The paradox between the solitude required to create art and the energy needed to talk about and promote it

• Recommended ways to stay connected to our creativity even when we have a day job that takes up a lot of time

You can find out more about today’s guest and all her books on her website ValAndrews9.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Press play (above) to listen to the show, or read the transcript below.

You can also click here to watch the interview on YouTube.

Transcript of Interview with Val Andrews

Alexandra: Hi, everyone, welcome to the Faster Fiction podcast. I’m here today with Val Andrews. Hi, Val.

Val: Hi. How are you doing?

Alexandra: Very well. How are you?

Val: Good, thank you.

Alexandra: Good. So let me give our listeners an introduction to you.

Val Andrews is a visual artist, who writes books about the creative process. So far she has published four books on the subject and is currently writing a fifth. I’m so excited to talk to you today Val because of this whole subject.

Begin by just telling us a little bit about your creative journey and how you lost and found your creativity.

Val: Great question. I mean, I suppose my creative journey started pretty much where everybody’s creative journey starts, which is as a child. I think children have a natural creatives in the world and most of them are geniuses at expressing themselves creatively.

I remember as a child just constantly drawing or playing music on my little mini piano. And I used to compose my own little tunes, and paint, and draw, and express myself, you know, creatively in a number of different ways. And I suppose, like many people, I got to sort of hit a point around the age of 11 or 12, where I kind of thought, “Well, art classes at school, my art isn’t perfect like the teacher’s. When I draw something it doesn’t look absolutely, perfectly, exactly representational of the thing that I’m drawing in the class.”

And like a lot of kids, I lost a bit of confidence then in myself as an artist and as a creative. And I suppose on top of that, there’s a lot of pressure on kids at school to focus on their academic subjects, to do really well so they can go to the next level and do well there and so on and so on.

I had a lot of stress in my home life as well, with my family. I was the oldest child in a very turbulent and chaotic household. So all of those things, I guess, kind of contributed to a situation where I sort of withdrew a bit from my creativity. And then, you know, went out in the world, got degrees, succumbed to the pressure of having a professional life, all that sort of thing.

It wasn’t really until I developed my professional career, you know, quite substantially. I got to a time probably when I’ve been working in my profession for about 15, 16 years, where I sort of started feeling weird, like something was missing but I didn’t know what. Because I had a great life, I had a great house, I had a good career, lots of friends, a lovely husband, all those sorts of things, but something was missing.

It really actually took me quite a while to realize that what was missing was that I wasn’t expressing myself creatively anymore. And it was just by chance that a friend of mine said, “You know, why don’t you just go to the local writers center and just do like a weekend course on creative writing.”

And I thought, “How stupid. What would I write about? I don’t do creative writing. What does that even mean?” Because I’d only ever read nonfiction and, you know, especially having an academic background of, you know, nonfiction books. But anyway, this friend was insistent for some reason. So I went along and the exercises that were given by the creativity coach, who actually ran the class, were genuine sort of creativity unlocking exercises that help people to just become aware of some of the random thoughts that they have from day to day about all kinds of things and the things that they noticed in life.

For me, I was always a very visual person. We did some exercises walking through nature and looking at nature and talking about objects, natural objects and things like that. I just found myself writing and writing and writing.

And then, I was just so impressed by the entire experience of it and how different it made me feel immediately that I signed up to have a number of creativity coaching sessions with this particular person who was in Sydney at the time. And actually, if I can put in a shameless plug for her, her name is Sally Swain and she’s a creativity coach in Sydney. And in fact, I actually recently interviewed her for the book that I’m currently writing, as well. So I keep plugging her.

Alexandra: Oh that’s great.

Val: Yes. So that’s my little story of lost and found. I think it’s the best way to sum it up.

Alexandra: Can you describe the feeling? When you say you noticed right away that it felt like it was…I’m paraphrasing, but it felt like it was the thing that you were looking for or it felt like the right thing?

Val: Yes, yes.

Alexandra: Do you remember how you knew that or what it felt like?

Val: How I knew that? Because it just felt so different to anything else that I was doing in my life. And it took me out of my sort of normal, rational, logical way of thinking. And it just put me into an experience of being and expressing without all this sort of mental clutter and the mental talk and, you know, the assessment about it. You know, what’s good about it, what’s bad about it?

It took me right out of that mental chatter and just put me right into an experience of being.

And I’d only had an experience like that before when I had been meditating. And I was at that time a regular mediator so I was familiar with the feeling. But I was amazed that I got that same feeling from actually doing some creative writing and then later doing some visual art work. So it was a very deep sense of knowing without actually having to qualify or objectify in any way.

Alexandra: Right. Oh wow, that’s amazing.

I think that’ll be so helpful for our listeners just if they’re searching for something to know that it’s there, you know, and you can find it.

Val: It’s there within them already, that’s the thing. They don’t actually have to go and buy anything or do anything or, you know, perform in any way. It’s already within all of us. I believe there’s a deep well of creativity within all of us and it’s just a matter of taking the lid off and letting it all come out.

Alexandra: Yes, yeah, I absolutely agree. You touched a little bit on some of the exercises that you did in the class. You talked about walking in nature and that kind of thing.

When you hired Sally, the creativity coach, what other sorts of things did she have you doing to get in touch with your creativity?

Val: Oh right. Yeah. Well, I think I signed up for three or five sessions or something like that. And I think on the very first session we just sort of sat down much as you and I are sitting down now and she just said something like, “Tell me about your life and what you do with your life.” So I started talking about my job and she listened to key words that I was saying about my work. And she sort of plucked out a couple of random words from what I was saying, or words that I didn’t necessarily think were linked in any way, and she put them together in this unusual way.

And she sort of said… I can’t remember her exact words, but she sort of invented a sentence made out of random words that I’ve said and then she said, “How would you draw that?” I sort of looked at her a bit vacant for a moment and she said, “Okay, don’t think about it too much. Let’s just go sit down at the table.” And there were paints and all sorts of art-making materials there, and I just started drawing from the concept that she had actually spoken. So it was a good way for me to start because it was conceptual and it was coming from an intellectual construct.

As we kept going, I found that what I was drawing and painting started to come from a much deeper place. And it actually, I think on the second or third session with her, it actually became quite an emotional experience. Because I started creating a body of work that was expressing some very deep grief that I had experienced in my family and I certainly wasn’t expecting that to happen. And I certainly had no plan to talk about it or express it or share it in any way. It was tucked away nice and, you know, out of the way but it all sort of came out.

I guess then it really became a therapeutic experience, and lucky for me, this particular creativity coach was also qualified at that. So I learnt from that that making any form of art, whether it’s writing, or visual art, or music, or dance, or anything, can most certainly be a therapeutic experience without it necessarily being all therapy, if that makes sense.

Alexandra: Oh, it makes total sense.

And when you finished your sessions with her, you carried on making paintings or with art?

Val: Yeah, yeah. I was at the time working in a job that was a very analytical job. So I was doing a lot of data analysis at the time. And so I was sitting at a desk all day and the last thing I wanted to do was come home and sit at a desk and write. So I had to do something that was far more physical.

I set up a big easel in my lounge room by the window and four canvases and started painting standing up because it was physically more comfortable for me. And it was amazing, it didn’t occur to me I could ever do anything like that, but I did and it was very expressive work. And some of that I still have today actually, and some of it miraculously I sold at various exhibitions and what have you. So yes, lots of surprises.

Alexandra: Yes. Yeah. Oh I love hearing that, you know, that it was an unexpected journey in a way.

Val: Yes, pretty much so.

Alexandra: Yeah, exactly. I’m really interested in the link between our creative work or play and happiness and fulfillment. And you, of course, have a book called “Art for Happiness.”

Why do you think these two things are linked? Tell us a bit about that book.

Val: Well, I came up with the title for that book when I was about halfway through writing it. All I knew was that I wanted to write a book about the creative experience and how we come to our own creativity and what happens when we get there. And I wanted to interview other creative’s to see what their journey was all about.

It became very clear to me about half way through writing the book that it really was that that was the right title for this particular book. Because what I was finding was that I was speaking with people who are expressing themselves creatively. And they were saying things like, “If I don’t do this, if I don’t do my creative work every day, I’m a grumpy bastard, or I get depressed, or I just feel wrong. I feel out of sorts or my day doesn’t work.”

Everyone that I spoke to was saying something like that, “I have to produce creative work or I just don’t feel good.”

So I explored that quite a bit in my interviews. I think I interviewed about 10 professional artists in that book. And I compared what they were saying with what all the published and scientific literature on the psychology of creativity was also saying. And also all the work around of the sort of unpublished literature around the sort of general health and well-being sort of benefits from being creative. So just a case of stitching all that together, really. It was the great journey writing that little book.

Alexandra: Yes, I bet it was.

And so who would you say the target audience is for that book? Is it for people who are searching for their own creativity?

Val: I wrote it specifically for that particular target group and I’ve had very good feedback from people in that group. So people that I’ve met along the way at various sort of art events and art fairs and what have you, people who’ve said, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to do art and I didn’t really know where to start. And your book was really helpful.” So that was good to get that feedback because that’s exactly who I wrote the book for, having been down that road myself.

But what I was also very surprised about was that I also received very similar feedback from well-established artists, who actually said, “The exercises in your book were really helpful for helping me get unblocked.”

And it never occurred to me that I’d get that sort of feedback because, like most of us, I sort of think of, you know, successful professional creatives as being people that have got it all sorted out. You know, they just keep producing gold and they don’t need any help from anyone. But it’s not really true.

Even if you listen to interviews with some of the most famous creatives in the world, they’ll all say, “I get blocked from time to time or I feel really lacking in confidence sometimes.” It happens to absolutely everyone at some point in their creative journey. So I think it’s worthwhile acknowledging that and knowing that there is a lot of mythology around the idea of the creative genius.

I’m not sure it really exists. I think there are people who perhaps are a bit more gifted than others but I think most of it is about…most creative success is attributed to constant commitment, unwavering commitment to the craft, and showing up every day, and doing the work, and being prepared to do shit work and say, “That was shit work. It’s okay. That happens, tomorrow will be better.” And just keep going. So, you know, it was really, really quite a good learning point for me to get that feedback from those established artists.

Alexandra: Oh that’s fantastic.

And so the book is not only that but you mentioned it has exercises as well, they can help people?

Val: Yes. The exercises that I’ve created were initially for some creativity unlocking workshops that I was delivering at the time that I wrote it. I think for about a two or three year period, I was actually running creativity workshops on a regular basis, you know, weekend workshops. So I created a number of exercises for those. And so over time, you know, as I saw how people responded to them, I tweaked the exercises and put the best ones in the book.

Alexandra: Oh, lovely. That’s fantastic.

And what would you say are some of the common approaches that the artists that you’ve interviewed take to living a creative life? You’ve already touched on essentially the consistent work, the hard work that comes with living a creative life. Do you notice any other commonalities?

Val: Yeah, it’s funny. I was thinking about that the other day actually, and I was thinking if I asked one of my professional creative friends or colleagues what it’s all about to live a creative life, it might stun them because it might be a little bit like asking a fish to talk about water. So for professional creatives, it just is. They would never describe their life as a creative life. It’s just the life that they live. Do you what I mean?

But certainly, I think if they’re pushed on the point they’d say things like…they’d acknowledge that they sacrifice a lot for their art. They sometimes sacrifice money for long periods of time until they really make a break in their market.

They might say that they sacrifice what they would consider a normal life. A lot of professional creatives see themselves as being a bit different. Sometimes they experience feelings of alienation, or loneliness, or social isolation because often the creative process does require a person to be very introspective and to actually have time alone. Because there’s something about solitude that seems to provoke or evoke something within the psyche that comes forth in the creative process.

And so living life as a professional creative then can…I think a lot of them would say it then becomes…it’s a bit of a split existence in that. In order to create the work, you have to be in solitude and be very focused and methodical and dedicated, but to then share the work with the world, you have to be then almost become a gregarious extrovert and be able to talk about the work really fully. So I think certainly most artists and writers that I know would say that they struggle with having the…with reconciling those two poles of their life and their lifestyle.

I think probably they’d also say that one of the keys to having a creative life is to be prepared to see things differently and to have an open mind and to ask questions of themselves and of the world around them. That questions that might seem a bit odd at first but when explored more fully, can bring them to a point of actually seeing something in such a unique way that they’re able to express it very uniquely. And I think it’s that sense of uniqueness that is often considered creative.

Alexandra: Yeah. I love what you say about those two poles of the creative life. I notice writers struggle with that so much and it’s… Yeah, I mean that would be a whole conversation for another day.

We could talk about that for ages, about that need for quiet and solitary time. And then the business hat, essentially, that we have to put on to take our work out into the world. I’m pleased to hear I’m not the only one who struggles with that.

Val: No. And being able to answer questions about your work. Like, I mean, I’ve been in shared exhibitions with other visual artists and we’ve had the joy of actually having our work in lovely galleries together. And it can be quite disarming when a visitor to a gallery or possibly potential buyer says to you, “I love this piece. Can you tell me what it’s about or can you tell me what inspired you? Can you tell me what your price was? Can you tell me why you chose this pallet or why…” You know, whatever.

Sometimes it can be disarming because the creative process can be so tangled up. You know, have so many different parts of it tangled up that you then have to kind of untangle it all and then articulate it to another person. It’s quite hard.

Alexandra: Yes. I can imagine. It’s hard enough for me sometimes even with books. I can’t even imagine what it would be like with paintings.

You’ve done quite a few interviews and for more than one book that you have about art and creativity, is there anything that artists have said that has surprised you?

Val: Gosh. I don’t think so because I think the reason for it is that before I started interviewing people for my book, I had already experienced so much of my own journey, and read so much research on why the creative process is the way it is, and ways in which it can be different for different people.

I had come to the point when nothing was really going to surprise me and creativity by nature is actually all about surprises. So I don’t think anything particularly surprised me. Maybe something that I learned recently that was a little bit new was an artist that I spoke to, who had incredibly vivid dreams, which I also do. And we got talking about lucid dreaming which, again, I also do as well.

But this person is like out there, they lucid dream every night, which did surprise me. And then they’d wake up in the morning and just draw all these images from their dreams. I mean, they obviously had a whole Omnimax Theater inside their head. And they just did the most remarkable drawings and, you know, fantasy-type landscapes and images and bizarre characters. I mean, this person’s obviously like really, really tapped into the creative fields, if there’s any such thing. So I mean, I found that quite surprising and amazing.

Alexandra: That is really interesting, very cool. Before we started recording the call, we talked about how you have what I call a DDJ, a dreaded day job.

What do you do to remain connected to your creativity while you’re also working full-time?

Val: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I have gone through stages where I’ve deeply resented having to do a day job and I’ve been really stroppy about it, you know, couldn’t wait to get home on the weekends. And I also went through a long period of time, probably a 10-year stand, where I deliberately did short contracts so that I could then have a month and then maybe 2 months to myself, to then throw myself into a book or series of paintings. And so I used to feel an enormous amount of desperation to try and get past the dreaded day job.

But I’m pleased to say that I’ve sort of resolved that for myself now. I do only take contracts that I’m genuinely interested in. And that involves working with people who are fairly broad-minded, open-minded people themselves, and work that allows me to be flexible with my time so that I can accommodate it.

Having said that, that still doesn’t totally get you around the problem of actually not being available to be a full-time creative. So there are things that I still need to do to make sure that I retain my connection, to meet my own creative projects every single day.

I do think that the key is to do it every single day. So if there are some days when you’re incredibly busy at work and you’re doing really long hours and you’ve got back-to-back meetings. And then you’ve got to go off and do something after work or whatever, I sometimes can feel a bit of anxiety around that because I feel like I’m losing connection with my creative work.

The way that I deal with that is to make sure I’ve got a notebook with me all the time. So if I get a quick break in a bathroom or something, I can sit there and quickly write it because at some point I had an idea come to me during the day and have been unable to act on it. So all I can do is capture it.

And then when I get home at night, I do it no matter how late it is. I’ll do a reflective journal writing for probably about 20 minutes before I go to sleep. Which isn’t really a great way of kind of releasing all the pent-up creative energy, and thoughts, and ideas, and plans and get them all out into the journal.

And then the next morning, I’ll wake up and then I’ll assemble it into some sort of cohesive structure, either a mini plan or, you know, a paragraph, you know, to describe a book idea that I’m working on or a paragraph describing a particular series of paintings that I want to do.

So it’s about capturing it all and then making absolute sure that you then put aside time to yourself to actually then do the work. And if that means sacrificing an entire Sunday to stay at home in your little creative cave, then, you know, that’s what I’ll do because my creative work is the top priority in my life now and I’m not willing to let it go for anything. It’s who I am. So, yes. So that’s how I get around the problem of not actually having every moment of every day completely available to me.

Alexandra: Yeah. I love hearing that because I have many other similar practices. Journaling every day is really important to me and if it happens that I can’t do it for a couple of days, I actually feel kind of blocked up. And, yeah. I don’t know how else to describe it. Yes, so I love hearing you say that.

Do you get time every weekend to do a bit of creative work?

Val: Yeah, yeah. And it’s amazing actually, how once you throw yourself into the flow, I find it amazing to notice how quickly I feel the benefit from it. Because I used to sort of say to myself, “I can’t possibly do any creative work until I’ve got a whole weekend all to myself,” but that’s rubbish.

You can actually just throw yourself in for a really intense 20-minute session and be absolutely amazed by what you’ve written or what you’ve painted in a short session. And you may end that session thinking, “Darn it, I wanna do more but I have to go out.” So be it. Then you come back to it again the next day, if possible.

Alexandra: Yeah, that’s such an important point, so well said. I think that’s something that new creative people, new writers, new artists throw up as a bit of a block to themselves and I know I did for sure, “Oh well, I don’t have all day to work on this.”

What I’ve learned is that, as you say, even if we can snatch 20 minutes, that’s good enough if that’s all you’ve got. And those little 20 minutes do add up eventually to something greater.

Val: Yeah, absolutely. I remember about 10 years ago seeing an interview with J. K. Rowling and she actually said that very thing. And she said that she wrote the first 2 Harry Potter books literally 10 minutes every day. And I remember when I heard that, I thought, “That’s all right for her because she’s really clever, she can get away with it.” But actually, it’s… And she is incredibly clever. But actually, it’s true, you can actually do it.

Alexandra: You can. And I can’t remember where I heard this story, but a woman talked about how she was raising small children at the time and hardly had any time to write. And so she had a laptop in her kitchen and it would be there on the counter and every once in a while she’d just have 30 seconds to write a sentence. And she got her books written that way.

Val: That’s brilliant.

Alexandra: Yeah. I thought that was really great.

Val: I think that is genius, actually. That’s creative genius. That’s making stuff happen against all the odds.

Alexandra: Exactly. There was nothing obviously that was going to stop her from writing her books. And so just a final question then, for you. Since you’ve really devoted yourself to understanding creativity and to learning about creativity and how people bring that into their lives.

If someone wants to be more creative, and most of my listeners are writers, how would you suggest they begin?

Val: I think just make a start. Make a decision to put aside any negative self-talk like, “I’m not smart enough. I’m not talented enough. I don’t have time. Who am I to do this? What will my friends, family think?” All of that. All of those excuses.

Make a decision to put them aside even if you are only going to give yourself a month to actually give it a go. Make a commitment to yourself to put aside all those negative messages and then just commit to a daily practice.

I think the advice in Julia Cameron’s book, “The Artist Way,” is really, really good where she talks about making that commitment to just a full stream of consciousness writing every single morning as you’re waking up. In fact, before you’ve properly woken up, sit up in bed with a pen in hand and just write.

And it doesn’t have to be good. You don’t even ever have to read it again. Just do it because it’s stimulating a process within you and it’s helping you form a very, very productive habit. I think that’s a really great way for anyone to actually get started on any sort of creative endeavor. Is to just make a commitment, to just give it a go and start.

And then, perhaps a little bit further down the line, to start doing really structured exercises like focusing on the sense, the five senses. So perhaps, you know, looking out a window for a moment and then describing what you see. And then you, you know, discover that that daily active, actually describing it. Then actually ignites in you an idea, or a story, or a memory, or completely created fictional idea. And, you know, you’re unstoppable after that.

Alexandra: Yes. Yeah, so well said. And it’s so important that we just begin somewhere, isn’t it?

Val: Yes.

Alexandra: It’s never going to be perfect at the beginning and I think that is another hurdle that writers and creative people often have to get over is to realize that just begin anywhere.

Val: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s never too late to start no matter what age you are in life. It is never too late. Just do it.

Alexandra: Yes, exactly. Oh that’s great. Thanks, Val. Well, thank you so much for being with me here today, I really appreciate it. So why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit more about where they can find your books.

Val: Okay. They are listed on my website, which is valandrews9.com. So it’s one word valandrews9.com. So they’re all listed there and there’s a number of links that will take the reader either to Amazon, where they can get the books there, or Apple, iTunes, or Kobo, or whatever their preferred reading platform is. So, yeah. I always recommend that my website it’s pretty much the best place to start because I talk about why I write the books as well.

Interviewer: Yes. Oh great. Okay. Well, thank you so much again. I really appreciate it.

Val: Pleasure.

Interviewer: Take care.

Val: Pleasure. Thank you. It’s great talking to you. Bye.

Interviewer: You too. Bye, bye.