Welcome to our November guest author, Marty Ambrose!
Marty Ambrose lives on an island in SW Florida with her ex-news anchor husband, Jim, and their pandemic rescue pup, Luna. Marty teaches creative writing at Florida SouthWestern State College and loves ushering her own students along the road to writing success. Her next book, Forever Past, will be published by Severn House at the end of June, 2022 and Thomas Schluck in Germany during late fall.
I was delighted when Raquel asked me to pen a November guest posting for the Cozy Florida Blog because right now, after a long, long frustrating spell of writing during the pandemic, I’m in a happy place: my publisher just picked up the option on the final book in my historical trilogy (Forever Past—a Claire Clairmont Historical Mystery), and the second book, which came out last year (A Shadowed Past), recently won the gold medal in FWA’s Royal Palm Literary Award for historical fiction. I’m riding high.
But it certainly wasn’t always like that.
Not so long ago, I was slogging my way through the third book, barely able to write two pages a day; the pandemic had dried up my creative flow. I was teaching online and would dutifully sit at the computer, check in with my online classes, then stare at the screen, trying to summon my fiction-writing muse. But it was painfully slow. In desperation, I dipped into my author’s toolbox for a variety of techniques—stop writing in the middle of the page to jumpstart my creativity the next day (didn’t work), journal at night (yawn!), and freewrite (enough said). No matter what I did, none of my usual tricks worked.
My creative flow had lessened to a trickle, and I almost gave up trying to finish the book.
Then one day, after another starefest at the computer screen, I realized that all of my creative tools involved writing, and words were the problem right now; they were being stubbornly elusive. As I struggled to try something different, I remembered a snippet of advice which I had read in, of all places, Tony Bennett’s autobiography, Life is a Gift: always do two things, have dual artistic outlets because, when one is down, the other is up—and they can feed each other during the lean times.
The light bulb went off. I needed to move away from words to bring them back.
I’d been dabbling with textile pieces since I started teaching online and decided to spend the mornings piecing together fabrics that would inspire me. I loved it. And my creativity exploded. As I worked on each chapter in my novel, I made a related textile piece, connecting words, colors, and textures to explore my characters’ narratives story inner landscape. I bought antique fabrics from nineteenth-century Italy (the setting of my novels) and began to add elaborate decorations from the period. It became my own version of something I learned about Victorian authors’ “word-painting” where their descriptions would emulate pictorial methods; my textile art actually triggered descriptive language and narrative flow. The words would start to form in my mind as I worked with each new creation. By summer, I was writing at peak intensity—actually beyond what I normally do, and I finished the book with a flourish of excitement that I had not felt in years. Thank you, Tony Bennett!
And the side-benefits of my new art have created an unexpected richness in my life. New friends in the textile arts. New creations. New directions in my writing. Loving it all. I even applied for a writer residency in Italy to share my new techniques with student writers, while I research the next book.
So, to my fellow writers, I have two bits of advice: 1) If you’re stuck or in a rut, take up a second art; it will charge your creativity in surprisingly electric ways; and, 2) The low times in your writing will pass, and you will find such joy in the creative renewal.
But don’t stop writing—ever.
Connect with Marty Ambrose via her social media: Facebook and Instagram.
Do you have a hobby that inspires your creativity? Tell us about it in the comment section.
