Today I've handed the house keys to T. Anderson, the author of Monad. You can find my blog on her website, here.
I am a Creator.
It’s in my DNA. The way my mind is always three steps ahead, how my eyes focus on the smallest of details, the deftness that resides in my sensitive fingertips. It’s been passed on through my gene pool and governs every cell of my body. There is no way to escape it, and even if there were, I would never consider doing so.
Creating, for me, is an intoxicating drug. It soothes me and brings me back from the chaos in other parts of my life to a place where I always remember who I am. Creation is my home and I am the master of my domain. And I know this for certain: when I begin to lose my wits, if I become blind or my hands are suddenly useless, destroyed in some freak accident, my soul will still find a way to satisfy this need to ‘make’. Like a mouse dropped into a maze or a wild beast on the hunt, the primitive artist in me would take over and (ironically) create a new means to survive.
As an artist, I have experimented with and enjoy every medium I literally lay my hands upon—paint, photography, fabric… But, I must confess, for the last ten years I’ve been possessed by a particular love affair with dirt. The very idea of feeling something as deconstructed and basic as clay—squeezing it between my fingers, sensing the raw earth and its hidden potential—and knowing I have the ability to shape it into any form my heart desires, is an inexplicably magical sensation. I feel like a sorceress wielding an ancient secret. Sometimes I hear the clay speaking to me, whispering what it wants to become. Other times the clay is shy and submissive as I take all control.
As an author, I see letters of the alphabet as I do grains of sand. The letters form words, and the words become my medium of expression. Just as I can imagine a beautiful finished bowl before I even spin my wheel, I can also see the story I want my words to tell. And just as my clay might guide my hands, at times my characters decide their own fate. Although so very different, pottery and writing, to me, are one in the same. Making something from nothing. The end product, an extension of myself. My creative offspring.
Self-satisfaction is not my only motivation to create. Like any parent, there is no better feeling an artist can have than sharing their work with others, to send their offspring out into the world—to know my bowl has graced another family’s table, that it serves a purpose, that its beauty might give pleasure; or that a reader has become a prisoner, gripped by my tale, flipping pages long into the night—is the greatest reward.
This is how Creation represents the human connection. During these brief moments, we share a unique bond, become part of each other’s lives, the loops of a knot reaching further and growing stronger. We share the human experience. It has always been that way, from the beginning of time and will be ‘til the end. Without this symbiotic relationship, we would simply become…inhuman.
And so, because it is in my blood, because it is my calling, I follow in the footsteps of those before me, leaving behind pieces of myself to be studied, admired, cherished, critiqued, dismissed and even destroyed long after I have left this earth. I do this because I am a Creator.
T. is the author of MONAD 12.21.12 The Awakening of Stella Steinar, Book 1 in the Stella Steinar series, a paranormal/metaphysical mystery/thriller for YA+. She is also madly in love with her husband, her dog, her writing and her pottery. T. can be found:
