You're listening to a MoMA mea podcast.
Hello, and welcome to a very special episode.
Of That's Incredible.
It's all about creativity, and you've got some different hosts today. There's me.
I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm Mia Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
And we're usually the hosts of Mom and Mia out Loud, but that's not all we do. We're also authors, novelist, journalists, in the case of my talented friends here, screenwriters and TV producers. So in short, we've all made careers, some of us in some cases quite long careers. Now. Mia out of creativity, and it's also at the core of what we like to do, and we're not working. Mia is a big fan of what she calls creative rest. It might be playing with clothes for me, I might
be growing colorful things. We are definitely creative people, although Jesse is not creative in the kitchen.
That's a conversations another time.
The thing is, apparently girls often think that they don't have to be creative. I remember sensing this a bit in adolescence. I reckon it disappeared for a season, and apparently that's actually proven. That is something that happens is.
That because it's seen as something for childhood that you leave behind.
I think it's also about playing risk, Like I wonder if we become risk averse.
Fear of being judged because Elizabeth Gilbert, I think said, when a man puts a work of creative work into the world, people debate the work.
When a woman puts a work.
Of creativity out into the world, they debate whether she's worthy of putting anything out at all.
Yeah. I remember being in high school and I love public speaking.
It was my favorite thing.
I did a speech in front of the school and I was so proud of myself, and I remember the overwhelming response from other girls was like, who does she think she is? To her, it was very very that And it's this idea that you kind of have to put it away, or that imagination, as you say, mayor it's a little bit for childhood. And that's such a loss because teenage girls are really, really creative.
So we wanted to talk to you and maybe your daughters as well today about why that's just not true and give a bit of insight into our creativity and times in our life when we've been more or less creative. I want to know about you me, who is one of the most creative people that I know in almost all areas of your life. If you have always always been like that.
Yes, So it's taken lots of different forms my creativity. I've always had a big imagination. But my earliest memory of it was my mum got a call when I was at preschool, so I would have been about two or three. She got a call from my.
Preschool saying, we're a bit worried.
We just need to talk to you because it's the middle of winter and Maya keeps coming to school. And then she disappears in the middle of the day and she's just wearing like a little dress and it's freezing outside, and we've realized that she's actually bringing spare changes of clothes to Kindy in her little Kindy bag and getting changed throughout the day, and it's not always seasonally appropriate. So I had to have these Kindi bag inspections before I went to Kindy.
You pull out that we should do them.
We should do them when you walk into the office. You came in today with a suitcase, and we said, tell us what suitcase? What was in the suitcase?
As you know if you've been to them on mere office, You'll know that I've got a rack in my office and I will often get changed during the day. I'm having a really early dinner with girlfriends tonight, but I've got to make sure that I've got enough time to
go home and put on another outfit, just because you know. Anyway, so that I've always used clothes as a form of creative expression, right, and there have been times in my life when I haven't, And there've been times when I've that's reflective of a really bad headspace.
Were you one of those kids, because I know I was, and I don't know if you were, Jesse who I always played imaginary games when I was a kid. I always had like narratives going in my head and play a lot of imaginary games. So I'd be off in the corner playing and it would be my own invented world.
And I think that that.
Was a sign for me when I was young, that like, I loved disappearing into that and I'd just be off in a corner chattering to myself, but I was in my own world.
I'd do it with clothes.
Yeah, that's another point which sometimes that gets knocked out of you because it's a bit of a weird thing to do. Let's be honest, right, And there's a point of which someone in your family or your friends would be like, why is holy talking.
To yourself and pretend.
And then I guess as soon as I was a bit older and I realized I could write those worlds down, I would fill notebooks with stories and stories that included my friends. I used to write these kind of like serialized stories that had me and my friends doing these crazy things. And so I think that it probably was
in me from a young age. But what I'd love to ask you, Jesse, is I wonder if this sometimes when you're a kid, we're kind of told you're either creative or your sort of books smart, a bit scientific, a bit maththy, and you kind of have to pick right, You have to pick a lane. I'm definitely the stereotypical. I was good at English and writing and books, and I wasn't good at science and maths and things. But Jesse is our resonant book smart person. I know me is about to say I was good at maths too.
Just hold it me, act although.
I did you, but I did maths and it was quite well in maths.
I want to go to Jesse and say, did you ever feel that pressure to choose? And were you always like a jewel lame person.
I can remember being in year three and I was really, really, really shy kid, and I barely spoke and I cried whenever I stood it from the class, and I remember the teacher.
I remember her name, and I remember.
Her recognizing creativity in me and fostering it, and that changed everything.
How did she do that?
So I would write stories, fictional stories of things for other teachers. I would write the stories, and I was a terrible speller, and they would just circle the bad spelling, and then I would get disheartened. And she didn't care about the spelling. She just thought that it was great that I was writing stories. And then she encouraged me. I remember there was like a plaything and she actually gave me a role or whatever and got me to do. Have this weird memory. I don't know why it's stuck.
You know those things you're like, is this significant? She was reading a story to the class. It was a description in a book and it was saying that there were so many flies that the indigenous person in the book was closing their eyes so that the flies didn't get in.
She was reading.
She looked at me, and I was trying to do it like close my eyes. She could clearly see that I understood imagery, and like there was.
A real wow.
She empathetic with the story told in the character.
I must have been really little when that happened.
I find that my journey since has been about trying to get back to five because the way it was beaten out of me. I feel like with essays and stuff, perfectionism meant I wanted to get really good marks. You felt like you had to write the same way, and you put the creativity to the side, and then the inner critic gets so so loud that the creativity is
totally stifled. I feel like all of it is. I sit down sometimes during writing my fiction book, and I would go, I wish I was five and I could just sit there on my little I had a little desk and a little stool and a pen, well, a pencil, a pen license, and I would write stories.
It's interesting that you guys talk about writing a lot like I. You know, I loved poetry in English and everything, but creativity for me has an been something that has required skill. Like one of my fondest memories and what I used to love doing was cutting things out of magazines to decorate my school diaries and stuff, and decorating my folders and my locker and my bedroom, you know,
putting posters. I still to this day love to blue tach things up and play with my personal space, whether it's my bedroom or my.
Office or my wardrobe.
I like rearranging what I can see. To me, that's a form of motive.
And you're definitely like a sort of three sixty creative in that way, right You're always looking at the way things look and wanting to change them and thinking.
Of new ways to do things.
Because one of the things about creativity is it's not just about obviously creating art. Whether that's oh, you want to be a writer or you want to be a painter or whatever. Creative thinking is probably becoming more and more important all the time because the machines are not yet as good at that as we are. They may become that if we don't foster creativity in kids. I'm not in a prescriptive way, but don't encourage them to
think big picture and live in their imagination. For a while and think, well, what would make this better, How could this be solved? What is a different way of saying this. If we don't do that, then you lose something very important that isn't really about writing stories or painting pictures.
And you know what else we lose is the flow skate. So you might remember being a kid and whole afternoons disappeared and we would play imaginary getting dressed up and Claire and I would play a game.
But I used to make up dances.
Yes, of course you did.
And the way that time because you are so involved in something and you are this incredible focus, it doesn't feel like focus because it's so re energizing, that state of flow when you are playing.
But I was also very lonely because there were no screens. I had my brother were.
Lonely because there were no screens.
Yes, yes I had.
I couldn't text my.
Children listening to this, put your fingers in your ears.
We all know screens.
I was lonely because there were no screens. No, but there was no option. So I think one of the things that Foster's creativity is bored them. Yes, and I'm never bored now rarely, but then I was bored all the time because there's nothing on television, there was no streaming, there was no internet. I had no siblings, I didn't have a lot of friends. So I would make up dancers and I would, you know, I would be forced
to be creative. I was never imaginative in the way that you two were, And to this day, I'm not like I'm in awe of anyone that can write fiction because I don't ever make up stories in my head.
I like the real world, but.
I like physically expressing myself in it, whether it's doing a dance or dressing myself for.
In a minute, we're going to come back, and I want to know from Jesse and Meha, and I'll be taking that so about how they keep themselves creative when there's so much pressure these days to do a million other things. But first, here's a message from Lego. All right, I need to hear about your hacks because I write books. We all do lots of things, and we've all written books. But I am in the middle of writing my fifth novel, and I have to say my creative process has been
heart this time. Right, I've had a bit of writer's block. I found it hard to get him flow. There are a million things distracting me. I've got a million thoughts in my head. I want to know if there have been times in your life when you've had a bit of a block mea and how you've managed to unblock it.
You've talked about anxiety being a block for you.
I've got an image of a toilet plunger. When I had a really bad anxiety attack that went for like almost two weeks and I was diagnosed and everything. I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to write anymore. Ironically, when I was writing, it was the only time I wasn't anxious, because that state of concentration and flow that I will get into if I was writing, and you know, this is writing articles for Mamma Mia, I don't write fiction. It helped my anxiety.
So is that creative rest? You know how you recently brought up that term. I wonder if for you that was almost rest.
But it was just a distraction really, and so now my creative rest. I wear two hats at mum and may up. Half of me is the co founder of the business, and then half of me is making content like podcasts, with you guys, and writing and social and stuff. The making of the stuff is the stuff I love. And that's probably I don't know, thirty percent of my job, maybe forty percent, and I'm always trying to get it
to be more. And the other part of my job really drains me because it is the opposite of being creative. I mean, sometimes you can have creative solutions to problems, and it's creative for me having ideas that I don't necessarily have to execute. But for me, creativity doesn't also
have to be creative. Rest can come from doing a puzzle while I'm listening to an audiobook, or going for a walk while I'm listening to a podcast, or rearranging my wardrobe, or walking around a shopping center and looking at clothes. Someone else has said it's also about regulating emotionally, regulating. For me, creativity regulates me emotionally and I need it to sort of function it And even Keel, have.
You ever struggled with your creativity, Jesse, because you certainly from the outside seem like an incredibly prolific producer of things, of creative projects.
I think you can produce a project without having any creativity and that's the saddest thing you can create, because it's really it costs you a lot. And the thing that gets in the way of creativity more than anything else, it is your worst nightmare that you have to let go of, is perfectionism.
And may you taught me that.
And girls do suffer from that more than boys statistically, right. So it's another reason why maybe little girls stop playing and building and inventing things is they're like, but it's not good. It's not good perfect, it's not as good as the one that I've seen on social or the one that that influence is making, or the one my brother's making, or so I'm just going to not do it. So how do you overcome that?
And I remember it kicking in in adolescence.
It was like I would handwrite these stories or I I loved drawing, I loved painting, and then I remember something happened one day where I would like start writing on a page and then I'd be like, my handwriting isn't neat enough. I need to redo that, like and it would and it was awful. It's like you can't get into that state of like REEDA, yeah, exactly. So I have found a few things help. I think handwriting is really good. And I'm not just talking about writing,
I'm talking about anything. If you feel like you creatively need to get something out a pencil and paper, a pen and paper, it's right like that. Oh, so it's so freeing. I think going for a walk or being in a certain space with absolutely no input, and by that I mean spend time in your head. I think we're talking about this when we're away, we're snorkeling, and I love snorkeling, and I love swimming because there's nothing else.
And it's like my brain.
When my mind wanders, it goes to such interesting places, and I miss that from childhood. You don't let your brain do that if it's just input, input, input.
So can I ask you just a little bit back on the critic, because if we think that maybe some little girls and girls are stopping being creative because they're worried about what people are going to say to them, ye as you've said, Jesse, when you were at school, or like who do you think you are?
Or whatever?
Have you learned anything that's useful about how to not care quite so much about that and still be true to what you want to do?
A few things. I think done is better than perfect. You can't edit or rearrange something that you haven't started. You've got to just put something down. Sometimes creativity can be just for you. It's not a performance. It's not for other people to judge. And you can draw something, or you can make something and go the best feeling. And I, as we say we've all written books. I can tell you can write a book and you can
get a great review or sell x many copies. There is nothing like the feeling of feeling proud of something you have created. There's nothing else that's going to make you the teacher giving your opinion that matters. Yeah, And in fact it's in the doing. It's like in the
doing of something. So the thing that's helped me the most has been playing with my now nine month old so watching her and it's at the moment the developmental stage is putting ball in roundhole, right, So I just show her how to do it, and then she doesn't do it, and I'm like no, the ball goes in there.
But then I'm like no, no, no. The thing is the playing.
The thing is that she picks the ball up, tries to eat it, and then she throws it at the dog, and I'm like, it's the journey, not the destination. I love sitting on the floor with her and playing with toys.
I love it watching her exploring.
Yes, Mia, what's the best advice you've ever been given about not caring about what other people think?
It's that thing of dance, like no one's watching, right. I had a lovely time going to a like an all female disco club recently, which that felt really creative, like everyone's got a disco for ground ups, yeah, and everyone was just dancing and it was just fun because no one felt, oh my being judged. Like, as women and as girls, we learn very quickly when we're girls to be watching ourselves from the outside and judging ourselves before someone else judges us.
And I'm watching at the moment.
My daughter, who is very creative, and she'll go from thing to things. So she was like SeaGlass, hunting for ages and collecting sea glass. Now she's just started painting, and I'm so envious because she's just having a go. She's just like got these canvases and she's just doing all these kinds of things, and I'm just like, wow, I would feel too vulnerable to put something on canvas.
I'm very into low stakes creativity, like baking something, making a cake, rearranging some pillows on my couch, moving some furniture around, like I really like those little light touch bits of creativity.
Polly, how have you with a daughter who is going into adolescence? How do you make sure that she doesn't let that critic steal creativity from her?
One of the things I talked to her about a lot, because I think it's a there's a point that girls go through, as you just said me, a where suddenly they feel very visible and everybody's looking and judging, and sometimes it can be a bit sad for moms and dads, I guess, to see their little creative swirling around girls.
You know, a lot of girls will be literally dancing like nobody's watching, playing with their friends, scrapping, not caring about stuff, dancing around, creating plays, doing all those things, and then suddenly it's like closed down. No oh no, it's not cool. It's not and it can be a bit heartbreaking even to watch it. We make sure that in our house it's very clearly explicitly a silly space.
Right in ouse, it's a great word. In our house.
You can be as silly and goofy and uncool as you want. You can try out ideas that you might not want to say out loud anywhere else. Nobody's judging you for whatever. Of course that isn't truth. The siblings judge each other all the time. But in theory, you can try out anything you want. What's hard. I think it's really interesting what you say, Jesse, because what I see about my daughter, who I don't think she thinks is herself as very creative anymore, but I know it's
in there, and she's been writing stories for school. She's at high school now, and she is a bit paralyzed by that. Like it's not perfect. Be embarrassed if I
had to read this out in front of people. So I think all of that stuff about reinforcing this is just for you, and as you said me, I just have a go Like that is just so important because once you lose touch with that part of yourself and you lose confidence in it, it's hard to reconnect to it sometimes and if an adults find that too, so it's really important to almost create a safe space for yourself to be.
This is where I get to be keep the stakes low, you know, and silencing that in a critic takes work.
I think has I from Michelle Obama once. I think it was her who said, like, the rest of the world, for the rest of your life is going to tell you you're an idiot. In your home is where there's just unconditional love and unconditional support for everything that you do. And I really liked that idea. And I also wish that at that adolescent stage someone had told me that creativity is messiness.
That's actually what it is.
You might not see someone else's creativity and go, wow, that's amazing.
I could never do that.
No creativity is mess working through stages, and it is always imperfect, and the spelling error is a part of it, and the color that turned wrong on the canvass part of it.
And I think for parents listening to this, it's very hard. I find it very hard, and probably because a large part of my professional life has been correcting other people's mistakes as an editor. You know, when my daughter does get me to read her school story, I find it very hard to resist the red penurge, right, which is what you're talking about, And you have to walk a line between obviously we want them to do well, but
also just addressing the content in its purest form. Like if the first thing my daughter hears when I pick up a piece of paper something she's written, is like you've spelled that wrong. Immediately her shoulders go down.
Like you said with the teacher, that circled the spelling.
So it came about the spelling and not the idea we need.
To be And it's very hard because you know, parenting is competitive now. Schools are very demanding now. But you've also got a police you're in a policeman a bit.
I think I have.
A Lego question for you both. When you were kids, I still like to build things with Lego. Now we buy those kids and do it as a family project. But did you like using the bricks to just build your own creations or did you like following the instructions to build a specific thing? Jesse, Yes, you like to build your own theme.
No, because I needed to do it perfectly, and I wish that I hadn't Like, I wish that I had let myself do more play with it.
But instead I'd like to build my own things. Of course, my son loves to build a model like, exactly how it is.
I like to follow instructions, and I always.
Say take it apart and try I make something else from it, And he's like, no, it's perfect.
Right, Well, yeah, but you could make it better.
I only ever want to follow directions. I find it really intimidating that idea. I wonder if I'm scared of being judged.
I don't know.
You say you love being on the floor playing. I found that one of the hardest parts of parenting.
I hated it.
You also had three kids, and I'm in the early stage.
No, no, only one at a time. But I never liked it, even from the beginning.
I just didn't like And when it's like tell me a story, I'm like, no, can I read you a story? I don't know if I just don't trust my imagination. But there's so many different ways of being creative. Yes, like my son's super creative. He makes creative breakfasts.
Yeah.
I like that, Yeah, which is very handy.
Thank you.
I think we've all learned a lot about creativity and I've got some hacks. Thank you for listening to this special episode of That's Incredible about our own creative lives. We hope it's been helpful and helping you and maybe your daughter harness their creativity. If you love this conversation, please come over to Mama and me are Out Loud, where we talk every day, three of us about all kinds of things. But in the meantime, thank you for joining us, and thank you to let us.
Bye bye bye.
Mamma.
Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land.
We have recorded this podcast on the Gattigul people of the Eora Nation.
We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and torres Rate islander cultures.