Moonpause Update 4

Using moon cycles to create gentle rhythms for creativity in midlife

Dear all

It is Lunar New Year tomorrow (10 February) and fittingly, I have submitted my final activity report for Moonpause to the Arts Council this week. I am busy doing a more detailed personal review of the project for which I was very fortunate to receive DYCP (Developing Your Creative Practice) funding. I will then plan Phase 2, which includes sharing my moon-phase related creative tools and methods with you here.

I shared more about my creative methods in Moonpause Update 3, but because it’s February, I want to share a little bit about the 30-day challenge I took this time last year. I wrote out each day of the lunar month (from new moon through full moon then back to new moon) on cards, then wrote all the creative moon-related activities I could think of on post-its. I then stuck them to each day depending on whether it was a quiet, inward activity (new moon or waning moon) or a more outward activity (full moon or waxing/waning gibbous moons).

I did not stick to this plan rigidly. It was more of a suggestion to myself. The Post-Its made it feel less permanent! In fact, I found doing daily activities a bit much, so if I do this again, I would give myself a choice of activities for the week, and maybe plan one or two things in properly, otherwise I might be tempted to do none of them!

I enjoyed my moon collage:

For this, on top of my moon collage, I wrote all the moon-related words I found in the dictionary and thesaurus together with definitions. I wrote around the collage in a spiral, then I looked for juxtapositions of interesting words to use in my writing.

And here’s a moon mandala I made when I was getting to know the moon phases. I really couldn’t even put them in the right order when I began this time last year, let alone name them.

I have so much more to learn about the moon and so much more writing to do. It’s definitely not over!

As well as developing methods and processes for my creativity, I am also pleased that I developed a narrative style for my lyric essays. I finished three, totalling 9k words, which I have submitted to a competition and to literary magazines and I now have notes and research to write more. I’d like to develop an overall arc for them, but that will come in the next phase.

It’s been so good to have funding to give myself the time to do this work and to value the creative process as well as the output, but in an organised, planned way. I want to continue to give myself a day a week (or equivalent) on my creative work and am exploring other flexible avenues for generating an income to be able to do that. Oh the tensions between creativity and earning money. They keep coming round!!

I will be back next week with my usual Awen newsletter.

Until then

Mel

This newsletter is number three of four updates on my Arts Council funded project, Moonpause. Number 1 is here, Number 2 is here and Number 3 is here.

This newsletter was created by Mel Parks, a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator based in Sussex, UK. Mel runs writing workshops locally and on Zoom and researches creativity in midlife as well as her personal connection to nature. She has been widely published and is currently working on a series of moon and plant-inspired essays.

Photos are all my own except the top one, which is by Herb (my 16yo).