We were lucky to catch up with Andrea Lingle recently and have shared our conversation below.
Andrea, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Sitting down to write is an act of trust. Sometimes, when life is gentle and easy, I sit down with confidence, knowing that the words will flow like ink. No effort. No work. Just stepping into a preexisting river of words, scooping the right ones out, and arranging them in a tidy row. When I step back and consider the typeface row, I can see them glisten with the joy of vitality. This is when I know that writing is a conversation with creativity not something that I have to gut out of myself. I am not the source of this river, just a steward of it.
Other times I have to lure myself to my desk full of insecurity and terror that I have lost the way. My mind is brindled with the fear that perhaps this time I won’t have anything to spill onto the page. Surely this time I will come up short, unable to deliver anything other than desiccated drivel. But just a few minutes beside the river of creativity is enough to remind me that I am a wielder of a bucket not the host of a spigot.
The trick is to remember the way back to the river. It is an act of faith to trust that it is there and hasn’t run dry, even in the most arid of times: when doubt, despair, and cynicism post billboards claiming that the river has run underground or dried up completely, I look for the tract leading from the mini-van, schedule-laden life I lead to my bank side writing desk. There are periods of my life when the path is well worn—practically a sidewalk—and other times it is just a memory of a bent blade of grass. Never in my writing life, have I found a cracked, dry riverbed. There have been times when I have wandered a bit to find my way there, and certainly moments when I have stubbornly tried to drill my own well, caught up in the mythic headiness of being an artist, but those efforts produced forced mechanical words that I re-read with sighs. The source of creativity flows from the vitality of the universe and refuses even the most determined effort to channel or bottle the flow. Creativity is a mystery. The role of the artist is to keep the pathway to the river clear.
Natalie Goldberg taught me how to cut my path to the river. She teaches a writing practice that has been my companion for over a decade. Her method is sweet, simple, and gloriously trusting. Reading her books and, for one glorious week attending one of her workshops, is like being hurled into the river and told to find you way home. Consistent practice with her method, free writing, has cleared a path to the river of creativity that is discernible no matter what is happening with me. Sorrow, illness, business, and distraction have failed to be too much for free writing to handle, and over and over, practice after practice, I have learned one ineffable truth: creativity isn’t something you have to manufacture, it is a gift that you can learn to tap into.
Writing practice is simple. Find a prompt, set a timer, and write as fast and as immediately as you can. Don’t think, don’t evaluate, don’t try for brilliance. Snag the words rising to the surface of the river and scribble them down. Five minutes, ten minutes, two and a half hours, the space of the back of an envelope. That’s all. That’s the scythe that has kept the pathway clear to creativity for me. I love it. I teach it. I practice it.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I began writing sixteen years ago when my first child was born. I left the work-force as a nurse to raise our children, but I was struggling with the isolation that comes with parenthood. My husband mentioned that there was a new thing called blogging that moms were doing online. So I picked up my digital pen and started a blog about my attempts to be a suburban nano-farmer/gardener. I called it Thoughts on Dirt, and I loved it. I didn’t really blog about gardening. I wrote about spirituality, theology, and mom-life. Fast forward to 2016, The Missional Wisdom Foundation discovered my ramblings and my penchant for commas, and hired me to write and edit their theological essay the Wisdom for the Way. Through my time with the Missional Wisdom Foundation, I have developed an itch for philosophy of religion and am plagued by the relationship between grace and creativity. In the coming year, I am working on developing my teaching and writing to explore a redefinition of grace and its relationship with creativity, and plan to pursue the question through a PhD in Theology. Much of this work will be processed on my Substack, Spirited Words.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
My greatest skill is also the thing that makes me difficult to live with. I am extremely sensitive. In their book, sensitive, authors Jen Granneman and Andre Sólo define sensitivity “as the ability to perceive, process, and respond deeply to one’s environment.” I am able to notice the shine on a puddle and think of the untamable wildness of beauty, and begin to contemplate the implications of beauty and the concept of the ideal. In the process, however, I forget that I am sweeping the front steps just behind said puddle and wander off leaving the broom leaning against the stoop for three weeks.
Knowing this has forced me to develop my second most important quality: I am a pugnacious scheduler. I rely on schedules and systems to support my sensitivity and free me to live creatively amidst an extremely busy life.
My third quality is that I am trusting. Even through the world does not always deserve my trust, I believe, down to my mitochondria, that if I show up and participate, something mysterious and loving will meet me. My second book is titled Credulous because I believe that we have to adopt a childlike willingness to participate in the face of a culture of incredulity to bring about goodness.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
I have been profoundly shaped by Paul Tillich’s, Courage to Be. Through this work, I began to grasp that to life is not about avoiding anxiety or uncertainty, but to believe that when we push to the precipices of life (doubt, grief, disappointment) and trust that love is there, we begin to thrive.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.andrealingle.com
- Instagram: andrealainelingle
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alingle
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-lingle-ab6589170/
- Youtube: @andrealingle32
- Other: Substack @alingle
