Input is output: creativity is contagious

the art we absorb <<<>>> the art we make

Hello readers of The Joy Rise!

I’m happy you’re here - this is only my third post on Substack since we launched my monthly newsletter in July, and yet I’ve been surprised by the force of the excitement that I’ve felt whenever I’ve thought to myself, it’s time to start prepping your next issue. Which is all because of this fledgling, big-hearted community! Your engagement, your responses. Thank you for subscribing and supporting my writing here, whatever your subscription level.

This mid-month post is for all subscribers to read. The next issue of The Joy Rise will be delivered as usual in two weeks time (beginning of the month) to paid subscribers. It’s a very special one, which includes my reunion with the Brontë sisters, walking the moors in their footsteps, and my response to a reader’s question about creativity vanishing from her that really hit home.

Hiking part of The Brontë Way, near Haworth, West Yorkshire, August 2024

For now, I was reminded this morning of a simple, wondrous, and generous fact: when we allow ourselves to create for the joy of it and find the grit to share what we make - what’s brought us joy - we can inadvertently stoke creative fires and joys in other people. Just like courage and fear, creativity is contagious. It is individual and communal. It’s how we can nourish our own minds and lives (input) and offer nourishment to others (output).

Experiencing how creativity catches between our souls - across time, space, geography, age, culture, experience - is something I find deeply humbling. For most of my writing life this experience has felt largely one-sided: I’ve absorbed another person’s creativity / art and often, later, have noticed how it’s ignited my own. For instance, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights lived in my mind from when I first read them at 16 and 29 respectively, until they alchemised in my soul when I was 34: both Brontë novels encouraged me through the sometimes-joyful / oftentimes-harrowing experience of writing my first novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, and featured in multiple ways throughout Alice’s story (more about that in September’s paid newsletter).

It is a recent and very moving experience as an author to know both sides now (cue Joni Mitchell). To experience my creativity being absorbed by someone else, which then alchemises in their mind and soul and becomes their own art feels… well… the irony is that this writer has no words for the feeling. Which I experienced this morning in Manchester as I sipped my first, relished cup of coffee for the day.

While the rain lashed down (insert all jokes about northern English summers here), I opened Instagram. As I read my notifications, my heart began to pound.

Artist Alison Swanston, who goes by Ali, tagged me in her post sharing the finished painting she’s been working on after reading my second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding. Reading her words and recognising the details in her painting from my own art made my breath catch in my chest. Ali’s painting is named Eala, which is the childhood nickname my main character Esther Wilding shared with her big sister Aura, who went by Séala. Sisters of seal and swan skins. The Hilma af Klint reference is a nod to Esther’s journey to Copenhagen, where Group IX/SUW, The swan, no 1 hangs in the decorated home of Abelone, the stern but loving relative Esther stays with. And there’s more - the stars, the midnight blue, the flowers…

But, what maybe moved me the most is part of what Ali wrote in her caption about the after-effect of reading my novel: it’s brought my artistic heart back to life.

Ali wrote:

Eala is finished.

Inspired by the incredible Holly Ringland’s book, ‘The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding’.

This breathtaking book has moved me beyond words, with threads of folklore, love, grief, courage and transformation - it’s brought my artistic heart back to life.

As I put the finishing touches on this piece, I was filled with deep gratitude.

Thank you, Holly, for guiding me back to my creative self. This piece is just the beginning…

Ali’s photo and video of Eala:

On the precipice of starting to write my third novel, I’m grateful to Ali for this honour, and for reminding me of the untold possibilities that only exist when we find the courage to create and share our art. Of the alchemy that can happen when we absorb other people’s creativity and how it can encourage and enliven our own.

Creativity is contagious. It is individual and community. It is how we can nourish our own minds and lives and offer nourishment to others. Input is output.

May we have the courage to show up for ourselves and our creativity and make what we love today, tomorrow, and any day after. And share it.

With a light left on,