What is Creative Confidence? And why do I want you to have it?

It's time for our mission statement!

Hello! I’m Daisy, and I’m so happy to see YOU in the Creative Confidence Clinic

Welcome, everyone!

There’s a reason why I’ve invited you here, and it’s a selfish one. Your creativity is going to make my human experience more interesting. Your work has the power to move me, fill me with wonder, enhance my ability to empathise, and - my favourite – make me laugh. I want to live in a world that’s filled with art. It makes my life worth living. Art is something you might find at the Guggenheim, or in the BFI, or in a book shop. Equally, you might find it in a blog, on an advert, on an Instagram post. As far as I’m concerned, Georgia O’Keefe’s Red Canna is art. Ted Lasso is art. Substackers are artists. If you’re making something that requires the use of your imagination, with the intention of sharing it, you are an artist.

I’m an artist. And typing those three words has provoked a visceral response within me. My eyes are watering, my hands have gone taut, and my knuckles are rigid (which is making the writing quite challenging) and my jaw is sticking out like Desperate Dan’s. OH MY GOODNESS, who am I to call myself an artist? I’m a jumped up, grandiose fraud and I’m sure that everyone – everyone – is shaking their heads and tutting, maybe having a wry chuckle to themselves at me and my notions. And this is why I have set up the Creative Confidence Clinic. This is a space for those of us who love to dream, make and imagine – but who also find that when we start engaging with that part of ourselves, we sometimes become insecure, self-conscious and scared.

I can’t cure us of those feelings. What I hope to do is to is to normalise them and explore ways for us to open ourselves up to joy, rawness and vulnerability at the same time. I want us all to feel more confident, creatively. Confidence isn’t an unassailable conviction in our own brilliance. It’s a quiet, steady sense that making the work will always be worth it. That it’s better to keep filling the world with our imperfect art, than it is to stay quiet.

So, why should you take advice from me? Why should you trust me, and what’s in it for you?

My name is Daisy, and I’m a novelist and non fiction author. I’m also a journalist, broadcaster, tutor and podcaster. I host You’re Booked – for the past five years, I’ve been interviewing iconic authors about what they read, and how their life as readers shapes their work as writers.

‘It’s better to keep filling the work with our imperfect art than it is to stay quiet.’

Writing fiction has forced me to take some of the greatest leaps of creative confidence that I have ever made in my life. And I’m going to be leaping and learning forever. The CCC seed was planted about halfway through 2022, when I was struggling to write my third novel, Limelight. I thought the self-doubt might kill me. It even came with physical symptoms. UTIs, weird rashes, the sort of full body anxiety that woke me up and kept me up. (It felt as though the year was 1989, my chest was a field and every cell in my body was jumping up and down to Frankie Knuckles, screaming ‘SORTED’. The irony being that I had never felt more out of sorts.)

I was so frightened, and so angry with myself. Angry because writing a novel ‘should’ be easier, third time around! I ‘should’ have been better at it! I ‘should’ have been enjoying it more. Nothing felt the way I wanted or expected it to feel. I was frustrated, furious and guilty. I felt as though I’d badly let down my past self. The little girl who loved writing stories, the one who would have been so happy and excited if she’d known that writing stories was going to be her grown up job one day.

But underneath the rage, and the rashes, I was curious. I wanted to know what was going on with me, why I kept getting in my own way, and why so many creative people struggle with the ‘sophomore slump’. ‘Second album syndrome’ is a well-documented phenomenon. Writing my first novel [Insatiable] had been hard, but in a strange way, the newness and strangeness of the experience had been a great advantage. I was expecting the experience to be hard because I was doing something I’d always wanted to do but had never done before. Other than that, I didn’t really have any expectations.

I love finding out about how other people make their work. And I’m fascinated and comforted to learn that I’m not the only one to struggle to make something that is intended as a source of comfort, joy, pleasure and/or fun.

The Creative Confidence Clinic cannot cure rashes. (Yes, I know the ‘clinic’ bit is misleading.) But I want to promote comfort, joy, pleasure and fun for all of us. Making our work is always going to be challenging. It’s always going to require effort, stamina, and resilience. I hope and pray that we all feel those magical moments of flow, and I do believe that if we keep turning up and trying, there will be points of transcendence. If we show willing, occasionally we’ll have those dazzling days when it feels as though some great voice beyond us is generously telling us exactly what to do, and it’s a thrill to listen to. But the job of the CCC is to make you excited to get to your desk (studio/workshop/kitchen table). Then, I’ll be reassuring you and reminding you that it isn’t always an easy space to sit at. But it’s normal for the work to take time. It’s hard to bring forth what is within you, and that we’re all allowed to pause, exhale, shake it off and promise ourselves that we’ll come back the next day.

The Creative Confidence Clinic cannot make you rich and famous. My plan is to make us all feel rich. By sharing ideas, tips, personal essays and workshops, I want to persuade you to tap into your own abundance. There is no wealth like creative wealth. There’s a natural spring of ideas within all of us, and it won’t run dry. I will be sharing everything I know about maintaining healthy water levels – which means developing and nurturing our curiosity, connectedness, and compassion. Again, this is a selfish act on my part. I struggle with ‘success’ – it makes me feel a crushing sense of scarcity. I’d love to achieve certain milestones, and they quickly become millstones. My ultimate goal is to make the making itself feel as exhilarating, joyful and proud as, say, making one of my books into a movie, and having that movie win all the Oscars.

So - I want to provide practical and emotional support for you! I would love for you to get this letter regularly and feel good, and excited, and inspired, and ever so slightly tipsy on your own potential. I want to share, with honesty and empathy, all the highs and lows that I experience when I make things. And I want to share the things that other people have made which have inspired me, delighted me, and reminded me why we should all make things.

If you’re able to become a paid subscriber, you’ll be giving me a huge practical and emotional boost, and you’re allowing me to bring this work to as many people as possible. Thanks to paying subscribers, I’ve been able to become an Arts Emergency bursar, and to share the full newsletter with their wonderful network of mentors and mentees. But – I really want to give you as much bang for your buck as I can! So if you pay for the CCC, you get a monthly Sunday Session – a Zoom masterclass with a creative expert I really rate (and if you can’t make the live session, these will always be available on catch up). You get an extra letter on a Friday, filled with creativity enhancing, happy-making recommendations. You get access to everything in the archives, including Sunday session playback. And you’ll always get a substantial discount on my courses.

Most of all, I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what boosts your creative confidence, and where you would like support with your creative confidence. Listen to You’re Booked, and tell me about the authors whose experiences resonate with yours.

And do get in touch if you’d like to work with me, one to one. I offer manuscript feedback and mentoring sessions. I also teach a course called Write Like A Reader, over Zoom – it’s a creative fiction course for anyone and everyone. You might be interested in writing a novel, you might be stuck on a novel, you might have written a novel and be looking for some guidance for future novels. It’s designed to show you just how much you already know about storytelling, and to make you feel confident and excited about getting started! If you’d like to join the waiting list, or work with me in any other capacity, email creativeconfidenceclinic@gmail.com

Sending lots of love – here’s to a happy, creative, curious week!
Love

Daisy X