100 Day Creative Challenge Day 60: Reinvention and Redirection
This week I’ve had two retreat days with my creative ninja friend, Amanda. One day was all about my work and today was about a rather ambitious project my husband is planning for 2017. In the process I’ve been inspired again to write the truth of the story I need to tell.
My work has been submitted to various publishers and agents and critique partners over the years and, while I’ve always had good feedback and encouragement, there’s also been rejection — rejection of my ideas, of my approach, of my writing style and so on. I decided early on that rejection would lead me to Reinvention and Redirection.
Reinvention: to reinvent something is to take what you have and mould it into something new. Every time my work is rejected, I’ve used it as an opportunity to rework or learn something new or take on board advice. In the process something new is created.
Redirection: The other thing I learned from rejection is that I can not only reinvent, but change direction in order to make progress. Even when I’m single-minded about pursuing writing and dogged in my approach to staying the course, I also had to learn to be flexible.
So, this week, as I look at doing the same things as last year—writing and publishing more books—there are also new things to take on board.
I’m beginning to teach again in a more formal way than I have for a long time —not in a classroom as such, but more retreat-style small group writing lessons. I’ve studied the last three years at summer school in Oxford, in Tuscany with Lisa Clifford retreat at the Art of Writing and participated in a master class with Margie Lawson. The process has taught me how to reinvent my writing and teaching.
Reinvention has led to redirecting my energies in a focused and intentional way this year. There’s way more to the story than this short blog. Hopefully, you’ll follow the journey this year as I share here.
The challenge of turning rejection into reinvention and redirection in our creative work is an ongoing process, as it is in our lives. But isn’t that part of the adventure?
The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead. Warren Adler
