Kim Neville

Yesterday was a sick day for my daughter. THAT sick day. You know, the one where she’s still too sick for preschool but is feeling just well enough to be bored and cranky. I’m sick and grumpy too so together we were pretty much intolerable. By lunchtime I knew we were going to need some kind of intervention or it was going to be a looong afternoon.

I was really tempted to wrap up in blankets, put on a princess movie and zone out. Then I remembered Storyworld. It was a day-saving moment.

Each Storyworld card shows a character, an item or a place. The more you look at the pictures, the more there is to see. They’re all beautiful.

You can play with the cards in infinite ways. Sometimes we pick out cards for each other to tell stories about. Sometimes we search for hidden clues in the cards and try to connect threads between them.

This time, after we’d spread them out on the carpet and examined them all, we collected them in a big pool and fished out three at a time, eyes closed. Three cards became a story.

We spent most of the afternoon storytelling, with a break for toenail painting. Every time I pull out the Storyworld cards I wonder why I don’t do it more often. It’s a great writing exercise for me, making up stories on the spot without worrying about making each one perfect. It’s playful and fun. And for my daughter, it’s magical. I’ve yet to see her grow tired of it. We didn’t stop until it was time to get ready for dinner.

After that, the crankiness returned and didn’t let up until lights out. But those quiet hours in the middle of the day were the reprieve we both needed to make it to bedtime. I hope my daughter dreamt of wishing trees and magic keys.

I’ve spent much of this week in bed fighting the flu. After looking over the post I’d written in a Gravol-induced stupor, I decided it’d be better to let someone else do the talking this week.

My husband likes to send me inspiring links. He has a knack for finding exactly the ones I need at a particular moment. Might be the fourteen years we’ve been together, or might be through his own experience as a creator. Probably both. But he knows I sometimes need encouragement, so he tosses out these little anchors once in a while to help me feel safe and grounded again, to remind me I’m not alone.

These are a few of my favourites. They’ve been kicking around the Internets for a while, but I think about them often enough that it’s about time they ended up in a blog post:

On building a creative life: How To Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon. Read last week’s post and you’ll understand why this resonates with me. I also heartily agree with points 8 through 10.

On closing the creative gap: Ira Glass On Storytelling. There’s no magic in getting from good to great. The only way to improve is to produce a lot of work.

On the benefits of failure: JK Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Speech. A reminder that behind every success story, there is always failure. It’s an inevitable part of the journey.

Right. All this sitting up in bed has made me lightheaded. Back to sleep. Enjoy. If any of the above is garbled nonsense, I blame the Gravol.