Recently I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in ages. It was back when the hozzband and I were living in our flat, the guts of twenty years ago (eek!) – in that implausible dream-time before we bought this house and had children.

I’d just discovered the online craft world in all its rampant, burgeoning glory, and I was feeling … actually very mixed emotions.

I’d grown up making things on my own, you see, in splendid isolation, teaching myself techniques from decades-old books and pamphlets, knowing nobody else who did anything like what I did apart from my great-aunts (and the antique nun who taught me to make Irish crochet lace).

I was very much immersed in my private world as a teenager – making things, writing, reading, singing. And though I’d never have articulated it at the time, I was totally in tune with my creative impulses. Without ever thinking about it, I had a solid, steadfast creative practice.

When I moved out of my parents’ house into the flat, I didn’t take any of my stash with me. I did a bit of knitting in the couple of years that followed, but nothing like the kind of dedicated making I’d done while I was a student. I didn’t even move my sewing machine to the flat.

There was, sadly, no room for such things in my brave new life.

But now suddenly, here were all these people on the internet! And they were knitting, crocheting, quilting, dressmaking, and everything!

And tossing off their jargon, showing off their WIPs and FOs, acting for all the world as though it were normal and appropriate to spend time and energy on this stuff.

Oh, god, it was exhilarating.

And terrifying.

And painful.

Wait … painful?

Yes. Painful.

A sort of dank, sucking ache, as I recall.

One evening, I was looking at watercolour quilts (if you aren’t familiar with the style, bung the phrase into your search engine of choice to see what I mean). All those little squares of fabric, meticulously selected for colour and value, carefully stitched together to create something entirely new.

I found myself sobbing. Actually sobbing.

(I know.)

It was simply unbearable that other people could blithely do all these delicious things while I felt so stuck, barely even able to own my desire. My body felt pinched, cramped, thirsty for the sheer joy of it – the bite of blade on cloth, the purr of the sewing machine, the magical accretion of stitch on stitch, seam on seam, shape on shape.

Without intending to, without even noticing, I had arranged my life in a way that excluded this joy.

It was wretched.

There wasn’t much I could immediately do about it – not that evening, anyway – but this was the dawn of my understanding that I had a problem that needed to be fixed.

Fast forward two decades, and I am so far from that state of aching dissatisfaction that it’s an effort to remember how it felt. Although it certainly wasn’t an overnight transformation, my creative work is now firmly at the centre of my life. Jostling for position with other elements, yes, but there.

What it’s like to have a daily creative practice

It’s simple. Every day, even if only for a few moments, I visit some of my projects and add to them. They are high on my list of priorities for the day, every single day.

Slowly but surely, and in a way that seems like magic although it is about as unmagical as it gets, the work gets done.

Word by word. Stitch by stitch.

Which is in fact the only way it can ever happen. The only way out of the creative tunnel is through.

Your turn

Do you know what I’m talking about, with this dank, sucking ache dealio?

If you’re there now, in the painful place, maybe I can help. I’ve created a free e-course called Reboot Your Creative Drive, which contains seven straightforward techniques for moving from that excruciating state of not doing your work to the sunlit uplands of creative satisfaction.

(Wouldn’t it be great if it didn’t take you twenty more years?)

Click here for instant access to Reboot Your Creative Drive (and to join my mailing list).

What – I mean what, precisely – are you waiting for?