Zoom, 18th October, 7 to 8.30 pm.
Most writers experience a creative pinch point at some point in their life. A time when writing is much harder than usual. When confidence is dented, or creativity has just dried up. At these times the risk is that writers give up writing forever. It can happen to anyone, whether published or not, and talking to Megaphone Community members it has been clear that many are experiencing it.
Talking about it to others can help us realise we’re not alone, and we can support each other.
The term ‘pinch point’ comes from health and safety around machines. “A pinch point is any point in which it’s possible for a person or part of a person’s body to be caught between two objects, and pinched, broken or crushed.” In this metaphor, it is your creativity that is caught and crushed, when life snags or narrows.It’s a kind of creative bottleneck. Emotions associated with it can be frustration, self-blame, guilt, anxiety, shame, as well as worry about practical issues like income. As writers of colour, we have additional layers of cultural pressure as well.
Questions we’ll be discussing: When have we experienced creative pinch points? What triggered them? How have we got past them, or have we? What unhelpful pressures do we put on ourselves, or have we learned from others? How can we get past negative emotions like self-blame?
Open Conversations are facilitated group discussions, suggested by Megaphone community members, which any children’s writer of colour is welcome to join in. In this meeting everyone will have the opportunity to speak, though there is no compulsion to do so. There will be breakout rooms. You can also send in topics/ questions in advance if you want them asked anonymously, to: hello@megaphonewrite.com To protect privacy, we won’t record this, but we will take notes which will be fully anonymised.