Monthly Archives: January 2013

The Muse has Returned—More with Jill Badonsky

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Our last post featured part one of a two-part Q&A session with JIll Badonsky, whose most recent book, The Muse Is In: An Owner’s Manual to Your Creativity, has just been released. Following is the second part of the interview in which we get into some of the nuts and bolts of Jill’s book and her views on creativity and having fun. Hope you have fun reading it.

1cover real cover with museI love the Creativity Quiz in your book. You ask: “Are you breathing?” I don’t have a question here, I just wanted to say how much I like this question because the answer for all of us is so obvious. You’re saying if we’re alive and breathing, we’re creative.

Thanks for acknowledging the quiz. I truly believe people are less alive both when they are not breathing and when they don’t allow themselves to engage in a creativity because they have a preconceived notion of what it’s supposed to be, how good it is supposed to be, how they are supposed to do it, and what they are supposed to do with. Creative is so much more. It’s a way of living and seeing.  It just isn’t always easy so we have to be willing to get past the difficulties to its sublimity.

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The Muse is In: An Interview with Jill Badonsky

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Jill Badonsky is one of the most creative people I know. Her imagination apparently has no bounds. She writes, she draws and paints and creates delightful and whimsical illustrations. She leads workshops, teaches, and trains creativity coaches. She’s a poet, a speaker, and a sister provocateur. Her newest book, The Muse is In: An Owner’s Manual to Your Creativity, has just been released by Running Press. It’s truly a work of art: every page is alive with Jill’s colorful illustrations. I think you’ll like what she has to say about creativity, too.

1cover real cover with muse

I had so many questions for Jill and her responses are so great, I don’t want you to miss one good thing Jill has to tell us, so the interview will be presented in two parts. Here’s the first part:

For a time, when we’re little kids, we just are creative, but we aren’t self-conscious of it. When did that light bulb or realization go on in your head that you were “creative”?

In high school I noticed that I valued creativity more than most people. I was drawn to the offbeat, the quirky, and the original; I was compelled to do the unexpected. I’m not sure I identified this as me actually BEING creative. I still don’t. I just think creativity is the fabric of my happiness so I HAVE to do it for my peace of mind. However being called creative is one of my very favorite compliments.

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It’s Never Too Late

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It is never to late to be what you might have been.

This quote by George Eliot that appeared in an ad for the University of Alaska Anchorage low-residence MFA program has been tattooing in my head every since I came across it in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of Poets & Writers magazine. In fact, I tore it out of the magazine with the idea of gluing it on my 2013 Vision Board.

Nicole and Michele at our Vision-boarding workshop

Nicole and Michele vision-boarding at the “Create Your New Year” workshop

Then the latest blog from Jonathan Fields arrived in my inbox with the subject line: “Go public with your bad self?” The message started like this:

“You know that thing you’ve been saying you want to do but haven’t been doing because you’re not good enough to do it in public and you’re terrified of being judged?” The message went on to ask what would happen if you announced to the world that you were going to learn something new and do it publicly. Publicly!

To illustrate his point, Fields related the story of artist, illustrator and author Lisa Congdon who, in 2010 told the world she was going to create, photograph and one collection a day. (She curates collections of “stuff.”), which she did and posted daily on her blog. You can see Fields’ interview with Lisa on Good Life Project.

For many years, I’ve had a mad yearning to create book art, to work in art journals and I’ve taken tiny steps toward this, but very tiny and very, very  quietly. So, with the steady beat of “It’s never too late…” and Jonathan Fields’ invitation (challenge?) to Go public… I wondered if I might be ready to …

journal cover

Cover of my current daily journal

Throughout the year, I’ll continue to occasionally post images of my messy, unprofessional and just plain bad attempts to learn book art and art journaling. Maybe by going public, the work will become less precious and more fun. Like writing practice.

What about you? Are you ready to learn something new with the world watching? Writing a quick free-write every day and publishing it on your blog? Creating some messy art and posting it weekly on your Facebook page? Jotting down your best sentence of the day and sending it out as a tweet?

The new year is a clean slate and each day is a new beginning.