I Want To Be A Genius Visionary Changemaker

            It’s half eight in the evening. I’ve had a three-course dinner, a negroni and a coffee. I’m in the National Theatre foyer bar with my best friend and we’re setting the world to rights. We live in different cities now and I’ve missed doing this daily. As you would expect of two creative writing graduates, once we’ve finished discussing Sabrina Carpenter, the play we’ve just seen and our respective love lives, conversation quickly turns to one thing: why are neither of us writing? It is one of the things in life we both love most and yet we never have, or make, the time. We reject our own ideas before they ever reach a keyboard, let alone a page or the stage. If we’ve ‘failed’ to write in 2024 (and I will always put air quotes around failure because I believe there is no such thing, unless in a driving test) how can we better enjoy our creativity in 2025? Maybe you’re in the same boat. Unfortunately, I have no answers for you, but boy do I have a lot of caffeine and alcohol fuelled thoughts!

            Just like every other unoriginal aspiring artist ever, in 2024 I tried to do The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. If you’re unfamiliar, The Artist’s Way is a twelve week programme, guided by the book of the same name, aiming to reunite you with your creativity through exercises, artist dates, and ‘morning pages’ – daily free-writing first thing in the morning. The idea is that through this process you can build creativity into your every day life, and inspire yourself to make new work. I lasted six weeks. I enjoyed it a lot and it felt like I was building up courage, but I got busy and it slipped, like it always does. I found myself a journal of morning rambles richer, but with no visionary creative work.

            The title of this natter is a direct quote from my best friend about their goals for this year, and it made us both realise the problem. As creatives we want to make art as original as Picasso, write prose as changemaking as James Joyce and always be as funny as James Acaster. By building up the ideal artist, the ‘genius visionary changemaker’, we’re building a pedestal we can only constantly fall off, and eventually get crushed under. Building an ideal only builds fear of failure to meet that ideal, a fear that makes it incredibly easy to give up. The second there is any other pressure – lack of time (as with me and The Artist’s Way), lack of energy, lack of money – or any rejection – which is what making art really is – we give up, because we’ve failed to be ‘genius visionaries’.

            By contrast, a New Year’s resolution I actually managed to stick to this year was taking care of my face. I have dry, sensitive, eczema prone skin that I have historically been known to neglect. This year, I wrote a list of goals in my diary, the top item being ‘make a concession towards skin care every day’. I think I found the magic formula: make a concession towards. Some days I am tired, it’s a splash of water and I crawl into bed. Other days it’s a full routine. But I always make the concession. I didn’t tell myself I needed to be a skincare god, and here I am consistently showing up for my face, which is brighter and less angry because of it.

            So where is my creativity without the pressure? Looking around I think it might already be here. I’ve just knitted myself a bonnet. I adapted a key lime pie recipe to make baby pies (pielets?) for my New Year’s Party. During a crawlingly-paced family Christmas board game I drew a whole cast of cartoon characters on the back of a napkin. For heaven’s sake, my best friend has in fact just pointed out to me that I write an article here every week (stay tuned for more natterings and read previous natterings here). Maybe before I attack myself with what I am not yet doing, being the next Donna Tartt or inventing a cure for brainrot, I should show myself some gratitude for what I do every day. I hope this is the energy we can all carry with ourselves into the new year!

Niamh Duncan is an author, theatre maker and knitter living in Norwich, England. Having graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first-class degree in creative writing, she is now engaged in answering life’s big questions, namely how do you pay your rent with a degree in creative writing. In her spare time Niamh loves drinking tea and cocktails (usually not simultaneously) and going for long rambling walks.