Week 8: Recovering Creative Strength with Scrapbooks & Books
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on these links and make a purchase, we may earn a commission. This commission helps us to keep the site running and provides you with more helpful content. However, this does not influence our reviews, which are always honest and unbiased. We only recommend products or services that we believe will be of value to you.
Hello my lovely MsBrowns family,
It’s NotesODawn here, and I am so happy to be back in our little 'AllAboutBooks' corner.
This week has been... a lot. In the best, most challenging, and most profound way. As many of you know, I’ve been on this transformative 12-week journey with Julia Cameron’s The Artist's Way. My recent vlog documented the end of Week 8, a week focused on Recovering a Sense of Strength.
And oh, what a theme to land on. When I read that title, I think my mind automatically went to a place of power, of resilience, of feeling invincible. But what I learned, over a dreamy and deceptively quiet weekend, is that true creative strength isn't about being an unbreakable force.
It’s about having the strength to be soft. It's the strength to face the parts of yourself you’ve hidden away. It's the strength to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, not for a crazy productivity routine, but just to sit in the dark and be willing to meet your own past.
So, grab a cup of tea. This post is about how I found my strength, not in a grand gesture, but in the quiet, healing work of scrapbooks, sunrises, and, of course, some truly magnificent books.
Amazon UK - The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
The 4:30 AM Alarm: Meeting My 8-Year-Old Self
The weekend started with a 4:30 AM alarm [00:20]. I know, I know—it sounds like the opening to one of those intense "that girl" morning routines. But I promise, it wasn't. I had this gentle pull to see the first official sunrise of the summer. It felt important.
So I bundled up, went out into the quiet cold, and watched the sky turn from inky blue to soft pink. It was a lovely morning [02:01]. But the real work began when I sat down with my journal. One of the tasks in The Artist's Way is to do "inner child work," so I decided to write a letter... from my 8-year-old self, to the me I am today [02:14].
I'll be honest with you. I thought it was going to be cute.
I was expecting a sweet, innocent voice, a reminder of simple joys. Instead, what came out onto the page was... difficult. As I wrote, I had this shocking realisation: "I hold a lot of builtup resentment for my younger self." [02:22]
It was a cold, sharp shock. I realised I carry so much "shame and guilt for some of the stuff I did as a kid." [02:33] Things that, when I look at them as an adult, are so clearly just a little girl "reacting and lashing out to my circumstances" [02:39]. At eight years old, my life was uprooted. I had to move "halfway across the world," start a new school, and essentially re-learn my entire world [02:47]. Of course she was acting out. She was scared and she was grieving.
And for all these years, a part of me has been holding her in contempt for it.
What does this have to do with writing? Everything.
How many of us, as writers, are blocked not by a lack of ideas, but by a lack of compassion for ourselves? We sit down to write, and that same inner critic that shames our 8-year-old self for being "too loud" or "too difficult" is the exact same voice that tells us our first draft is "stupid," our dialogue is "cringey," and our ideas are "not good enough."
"Recovering a Sense of Strength" isn't about powering past that critic. It's about having the strength to sit down, look it in the eye, and trace it back to its source. My creative strength is directly tied to my ability to heal that 8-year-old girl, to finally tell her, "You did nothing wrong. You were just being a kid. I'm sorry I've been so hard on you."
That sunrise, in the end, wasn't just the start of a new day. It was the start of a new, kinder relationship with my own past. And for a writer, that is the most fertile ground there is.
Tangible Magic: Scrapbooking the Past, Pottery for the Present
So, how do you take this heavy, emotional work and make it less... well, terrifying?
You make it tangible. You give it a physical form.
Later that weekend, I pulled out my university scrapbook and my mum's incredible stash of supplies [05:06]. My mum was a scrapbooker in the "early 2000s," which means her collection is iconic. We're talking stickers, patterned paper, glue spots—the works [00:05:18 - 00:05:48].
As I sat on the floor, cutting and pasting, I was doing a different kind of inner child work. This was for my "past self"—my uni self. I was looking at these photos, these memories, and not just preserving them [05:55]. I was curating them.
This, too, is a writing exercise.
As writers, we are the curators of our characters' lives. We choose what to show, what to hide, what to emphasise. By scrapbooking, I was taking my own narrative into my hands. I was looking at this younger version of me and building a story, a physical testament to her life. It's a powerful way to reframe your past, to look at it with fondness and creativity rather than just letting it be a jumble of memories in your head. It’s an act of honouring.
If the scrapbooking was about honouring the past, the "Artist Date" I took myself on was about anchoring me in the present.
I had a "lovely lunch out with myself" [04:27] and went to pick up my finished pottery pieces [04:20]. If you've been following my journey, you know pottery has become a huge part of my creative healing.
Picking up those finished, glazed, completed pieces... it’s a feeling I can't quite describe. It is tangible proof that I can see an idea through from a formless lump of clay to a finished, beautiful, strong object. For someone who, as you'll see, has been feeling creatively "backlogged," this physical proof is vital. It’s a little, ceramic trophy from me, to me, that says, "See? You can finish things."
The Reality Reset: My Struggle with Week 8
This brings me to the "Sunday reset." [07:15] The cleaning, the organising, the preparing for a fresh start.
For a creative person, this is not procrastination. It is essential. You cannot expect a clear, creative thought to land in a space that is cluttered and chaotic. By cleaning my flat, I am clearing my mind. I am consciously and physically making space for creativity to enter in the week ahead. It’s a ritual. It’s a boundary. It is an act of profound self-respect for my creative self.
And I needed it. Because I have a confession to make.
As I sat down to film my "update on the artist way" [09:20], I had to be honest. This is Week 8, but "I actually didn't film the last four weeks." [09:38]
Life got in the way. My work picked up [09:43], I was busy editing, and I just... fell off the wagon. "I really struggled to do the task each week," [10:11] and everything just got backlogged.
And this, right here, is the real "Recovering a Sense of Strength."
It's not about being perfect for 12 weeks. It’s not about doing every single task. It’s about the recovery. It’s about having the strength to come back after falling off. It’s about sitting down, even when you're behind, and just starting again. Without judgement.
I feel like I've "finally chipped away at the block... of me not knowing why I was blocked." [09:55] I'm starting to understand the "magnitude of reasons why I fall easily into this trap" [10:04] of a creative block. And that awareness, that struggle, and that return... that, it turns out, is what strength looks like.
The AllAboutBooks Corner: My May Book Wrap-Up
Of course, this is MsBrowns, so you know the most important way I refuel my creative well: reading. I've been reading so many good books, and I wanted to share my May wrap-up with you [10:50].
1. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler This was a random, magical Waterstones find [10:37]. I have this funny habit where I seem to be "eco-anxious" browsing. I keep accidentally picking up sci-fi books about "ecophobia," [10:47] or that "feeling of being scared of what the outcomes of global warming could be." [10:52] This one was about the "evolution of the sea" [10:58] and a hyper-intelligent species of octopus. But it's about so much more. It's a book that genuinely grapples with "what it means to be human," [11:29] artificial intelligence, gender, and consciousness. It was "really good" [11:50] and the best kind of sci-fi: the kind that makes you look at your own world differently.
2. The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo This was one of my "highly anticipated reads" [11:55] of the year. I loved the Spanish-Inquisition-era historical setting and the way the magic system was "aligned with religion" [12:04]—that was all "really, really great."
...But. (And this is a big but.)
I have to be honest: I am "annoyed... with this trope again." [12:24] Leigh, my love, "she does have a thing for older men that are slightly like creatures... in comparison to their female protagonist." [12:10] It just pulls me out of the story every time! I also felt, as a writer, that the book "was struggling with the... scope of it." [12:48] It felt like she was clashing a "small scaled story" with this "massive call" [12:41] to action, and the pacing sometimes suffered. It's still "a good four star or round a read" [12:58], but I had some frustrations!
3. Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner Okay, everyone stop what you're doing. This is the sequel to God Killer, which I read a few months ago, and "it was so good." [13:13] So good.
This, for me, is a masterclass in fantasy pacing. I feel like we haven't had this kind of "Lord of the Rings pacing" [13:16] in ages—that feeling where "so much but so little actually happens." I mean that as the highest compliment. The entire book takes place over maybe "four weeks," [13:20] and it is "impeccable." [13:23]
So many fantasy books either rush their plots (like a character developing world-ending powers in a week) [13:56] or drag them out over months with no real sense of urgency. Kaner "just balances really well" [13:58] the character development and the political urgency within a "slight changes" [13:58] timeframe that feels real. The "character developments feel very much in line with the time frame." [13:37] I am utterly obsessed, and "I need the next one now." [14:06]
Conclusion: Finding Strength in the Small Things
So, that was my weekend. It was a weekend of recovering my strength.
Not in a lion's-roar, but in a 4:30 AM sunrise. In the messy, healing tears for my 8-year-old self [02:14]. In the quiet, analogue magic of a scrapbook [05:55]. In the tangible proof of a finished piece of pottery [04:20]. In the honesty of admitting I'm "backlogged" [10:11] and the resilience of starting again. And in the wild, brilliant worlds of other people's books.
Strength, I've learned, isn't about being perfect. It’s about being present, being honest, and being kind to all the versions of yourself—past, present, and future.
Thank you for letting me share my journey with you.
With so much warmth,
NotesOnDawn