Warrior Girl- Rowena Murillo

Almost 9 months after having a baby, and I feel like I am finally starting to get back my brain. Maybe just parts of my brain, but atleast it's the parts that are allowing me to be creative again.

I am writing again. It feels near a miracle. I've got this blog, which I am writing in, if not every day, then every couple of days or so. And I am writing outside of the blog, too. I'm writing a non fiction book-- well, I don't know if it's a book, yet. It's more like a cross between research and auto-biography. Okay, that's not quite right. I've been working on this idea of creativity for a long time. I believe that we can find balance in ourselves through creativity. We can get stronger. We can finally learn to speak. We can discover who we are. We can stand up where we used to fold. All this and even more through exploring our creativity.

I want to continue with this idea, but I've been struggling so hard to regain my creativity, my brain, my very identity (who am I? where am I? why am I?) that it's been a long road. But that is the same road that I think a lot of new mothers go down. So in essence, I've been using my own journey as a subject for my creativity book. I've been using the blog to get down some of my ideas, also.

But it's important to me that I also have something fictive going on. I've been writing in my journal for so long, that non fiction almost feels like a given. And the creativity book is like a cross between my journal and all the curriculum planning I did when I was a teacher. Really, all those how to books and self help books are just classes between two covers.

So, for myself, I've got my novel that I am fleshing out. What feels good about that is that the ideas are flowing and I am, well, excited about them. The ideas connect with ideas that I care about in my life. It's not just about a colony landing on another planet, it's also about history, and love, and individuality, and spirituality, and politics, and revolution. It's about sisters, even, and creativity, and passion. (And no, it's not hokey. Well written Science Fiction is just as good as other types of novels. [that is a note to myself and the literary snob imbedded in my brain])

I think one of the things that allowed me to get to this point in being creative again is that I did not put pressure on myself to be perfect and productive.

If I had gone into this period thinking that I could be on the writing schedule I was on when I was at the height of my writing, then I would have defeated myself way before I got here. No. I am not able to write 3 hours straight through. I'm not able to sit in a cafe and paint and write for an afternoon. I can't even seem to get the time to do all the daydreaming I once did to get the juices flowing.

But I can get myself in the head space of being creative: write every day. take the journal to the bathroom and write in it for a few minutes there. jot down some ideas for a novel without expecting any dialogue or a title or even a character to show up. surf the web looking for others who might be going through the same struggle, even though there's been no actual writing. doodle on a To Do list.

Relax if I'm not on a schedule. It's all part of the process. And this is a new world for me. When the baby cries, the writing stops.

Gotta go, baby crying.