London Calling - Filling the Well at their Wedding

In the month of May, we've had so many public holidays here in London that the whole month seemed to run into one. For me it they were like a Godsend because the well of my creativity had grown desperately dry. I really welcomed the chance to see our great city full of visitors.

When visitors come here on holiday they bring mess, noise and inconvenience but they also bring fresh perspectives, laughter, excitement and weird questions like 'Can you tell me where Sherlock Holmes lived,' even though Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character invented by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The wedding of Prince William to Katherine Middleton was a thrilling occasion - but for me, the important thing was that I got out there. If I had stood in the pouring rain to watch the bride go by in her gold and glass coach, it would have been just as good for my writing as if the weather were glorious.

I love the way that creativity has a voice in good times and in bad, whether we are busy empathising with other poor souls, perhaps homeless after a cyclone or a flood, or whether today, our own worries and troubles threaten to overwhelm us. It makes no odds - craft a word, redraft a line, snip a sentence here and there. Suddenly nothing else matters.

Jennifer Pittam is a winner of Coast to Coast writing competition and is working on her second novel.

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London Calling

'I'd like you to write a 2,500 word autobiography,' says Eric Maisel in 'The Creativity Book'. The wind howls outside and the rain lashes down. 'I can't,' I think. 'I won't,' my mind shouts. I can't penetrate that whirling bundle of protective noise - the one that every artist uses to hide the creative centre of the soul. Tentatively, I put down a note about my first creative experiences, with my wax crayons in the back garden at Woodford Green. I remember a picture on the wall of our little Victorian School, and my astonishment when I noticed it was mine. I remember a week in the Scottish Highlands, painting for dear life. I remember sadness, the years when my art seemed like a love lost forever. I remember when I caught a glimpse of it again, a brief flash in the graveyard. I stand in the graveyard. It's not so scary. People picnic here in the summer. They bring their babies, their weddings and their loved ones at the last.The rain has stopped, the wind pauses. I beckon to Lost Art. I have plenty of time.

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London Calling

Today I took class with Anne Aylor www.anneaylor.co.uk in the Lucas Arms, an old pub not far from Kings Cross Station. The class was a precious 'time in' with the artist soul. We worked upstairs, lulled by the creaking pub sign and the smell of burning sage. Anne, a gifted novelist, has a talent for nurturing the embryo writer in others. For a precious day I found myself once more with Thomas Tarling, his charming and courageous woman Mary and the enigmatic leader of the fair, Zackariah Scarrott. 'One's religion,' said J.M. Barrie, is 'whatever one is most interested in'. Today, the religion of the practising writer was extended by a few more hours, in a London pub with the rain beating down on the streets outside.

Jennifer Pittam is a winner of 'Coast to Coast' Writing Competition and is working on her first novel.

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