You are still an artist, even if you can’t art right now

For everyone who needs to hear this right now (I know I certainly did) –  if you are an artist, a writer, a musician, or any kind of creator at all, and you can’t art, write, music or create at the moment, you are still an artist – and you are not alone.

I haven’t written a thing since Christmas. I have my witchy fiction sequel plotted (a first for me, and I suspect a relief to my long-suffering editor), the first few chapters are written, and I know how it ends, but I just can’t pick it up and do anything with it. The Never Trust a Penguin story count has been sitting at three since half way through last year.

I couldn’t even bring myself to put together another newsletter in time to encourage people to nominate Raven’s Haven for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards or announce the winner of the ‘name my villain’ competition. I haven’t written the blog about the ache and joy of handing our beautiful boat Wildflower over to her wonderful new owners. Hell, this is the first blog I’ve written this year.

I want to do all these things, I really do. But I just can’t. And anecdotally I know I’m not the only one.

Who am I?

I was having a wah about this to my amazing therapist (a woman with the patience of a saint) a couple of weeks ago. Since writing is such a huge part of my identity, who even am I if I can’t do it? What if it never comes back? (Yes I know, I have a tendency to melodrama – it was a therapy session okay?) and something she said really stuck.

She categorically told me that I was indeed a writer. I had thoroughly established that by publishing three books. I might not be able to write right now, but that part of my identity was already out there. To excuse the terrible pun (mine, not hers) that ship had sailed.

That was amazingly reassuring, and helped me focus on the things I had already created. When I wrote my first story for a newspaper, and started my first blog, I’d signaled to the world (or at least small town New Zealand) that I was a writer. When Bateman Ltd published Which Way is Starboard Again? I became an author. When Ghost Bus made the short list for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards I became an awards finalist. None of those things have gone away just because my poor witches are languishing in draft form right now.

Where’s the funny gone?

I think part of my block is that so much of my work revolves around humour and at the moment there doesn’t seem to be too much to laugh about. Humour is something that you can’t force and right now it feels like my funny has gone. I hope it will come back, I’m sure it will come back, but right now it seems to have up and abandoned me – and to be honest, I can’t say I blame it.

Social media is about my limit. I can share other people’s jokes and write silly captions and crack a window open into my world with photographs. It’s minimal effort that doesn’t drain me, but the fact that things can still make me smile gives me a bit of hope.

Focusing on my existing spawn

So instead of beating myself up over not being able to create new life at the moment, I’m going to try to focus on the book spawn I’ve already unleashed. I’ve did an interview to promote a story from Ghost Bus, Wellington on a Good Day, which I was privileged to have accepted into Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy: Volume 3 and on the back of that decided to be a big brave lion and approach some of the independent book stores that weren’t stocking it yet. I got a yes from a bunch, which was pretty exciting!

A ghost bus and the role of place – a chat with author Anna Kirtlan (read-nz.org)

I’ve also had a fab review through Read NZ by 14 year old Charlotte Prebble

A captivating collection of spooky stories, Charlotte Prebble(hookedonbooks.org.nz)

and have recently been informed Ghost Bus is going to be the subject of a Year 8 book report (hopefully it wasn’t too scary and sweary!)

So, while I can’t seem to make anything new right now, what I have made is still out there menacing the general public. I might be a frustrated author, but I am still an author.

Secondhand advice

So my recycled therapy advice to other frustrated artists right now is this: If you can’t art right now, that’s okay. If you have created in the past, anything at all, then you are an artist. That part of you has not gone away. Go embrace what you made before the block happened, and love it because you made it. If it’s a painting or a song or a book or a poem, it’s in the world because of you – don’t forget that.

And to all the people who are still creating right now – I know a bunch of you are and I admire the shit out of you – you are frikking amazing, don’t forget that either.

Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.

Feature image by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash