Why I Foreground a Liberatory View of Creative Practice

And a heads-up about my autumn offerings

Hello!

As you’ve probably noticed, The Creative Goods has been on an extended hiatus. Honestly? I don’t think it’s coming back (sorry!). There’s going to be a new iteration but I’m not sure what it will look like yet (probably because I’ve been so engaged writing my first novel that it’s hard to tear myself away to do other things). I’m wondering about the idea of a “creative care package” and am trying to figure out what that could look like in Substack form.

Any ideas? I’d love to hear ‘em!

In the meantime, I’m here to tell you that the intake for the Autumn Follow-through Sessions (FTS) is happening now. The FTS often fill up with folks who’ve taken them before, but this time I have two spots available. The Seasonal Creator Autumn Workbook is also now available on my website. I’ll let you follow the links if you want to find out more because I’m not here to give you a big sales pitch without your consent. I just wanted to give a heads-up to those of you who have that oh-so-delicious back-to-school feeling and are looking for more accountability and support for your creative practice this fall.

In case you’re wondering if you’d be a good fit, I can tell you that I work with women, non-binary and gender non-conforming creators at all levels who want to be in practice in a way that feels compassionate, generative, sustainable, and liberatory. Compassionate because far too often we beat ourselves up for not doing the work how we think we “should”. Generative because generativity is more expansive than productivity and opens up more possibilities. Sustainable because this world is already exhausting, and we want our creative practice to offer us a steady refuge, not just another to-do list. And liberatory because, well, let me climb onto my soapbox and start a new paragraph for that (clears throat).

I foreground a liberatory view of creative practice because I don’t want to treat creative work like any other form of labour and I don’t want you to either. What I’m saying is that I don’t want us to reproduce the harmful conditions of productivity/hustle culture and late-stage capitalism. Instead of being bad bosses to ourselves and seeing ourselves as doers of tasks, I want us to see ourselves as being in compassionate partnerships with ourselves and the world around us. Instead of basing our value on what we produce, I want our raison d’etre to be the process. I don’t want busy (i.e. over-worked) to be the norm, I want rest and filling our creative wells to be part of our practices. And I don’t want us to think that we’re solely responsible for our success as creators because the truth is that our relative privilege, responsibilities, bodies and health, and how we must work within dominant systems all play their part and mean we’re only partially in control.

Yeah, I know there’s a lot to unpack there, but that gives you a taste of the ethos around here, which comes through with all the tools and frameworks I teach. Like I said, I’ll let you visit my website if you want to know more, but you can also get in touch with me by commenting on Substack or replying to this email. And if you want to chat about whether the Follow-through Sessions are a good fit for you, I’d be happy to hop onto Zoom with you for twenty minutes.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to autumn almost being here. May you happily and non-oppressively experience both creative being and doing.

Good things,

Jill