▶️ Press Play: An Interview with Michelle Béland
"You can be an artist and not make a single thing for years."
Welcome to The Long Pause, a newsletter about being creative, being stuck, and what to do about it. I’m Erinn. I’m a writer and an artist in a long, long Pause.
Today’s post is part of the Press Play interview series, which asks creative folks to share the story of their Long Pause so we can all learn from each other. Today, Michelle Béland shares how self expression—and a writing practice grounded in community— helped re-build her sense of self after a Long Pause. Also, procrastination collages! 💖
Explain yourself. Who are you, how do you identify as an artist / creative?
I’m a writer and stay-at-home parent living in Montreal, Canada. I have multiple creative passions. My first love is essay writing, specifically humor. I love finding humor in everyday situations and I love making people laugh. I love poetry and screenwriting too. My creative practice has evolved over the past few years, and I’ve allowed myself to explore new means of self-expression, like collage art.
I used to think I had to stick to one passion so I could “specialize,” and master my craft to be a successful artist. What is a successful artist anyway? I thought it was someone with a book deal and a huge amount of social media followers. Nowadays I’m more interested in the creative process and maintaining a creative practice.
I’m interested in seeking joy.
You’re here because you’ve gone through a fallow period where you didn’t produce much work for an extended period. How did your Long Pause come about?
It started when I became a professional copywriter in my mid-twenties. For years, all my creative energy was dedicated to writing “engaging” copy so consumers would feel compelled to buy a velvet armchair they didn’t need. I was good at what I did and quite happy to work as a copywriter at the time, but I didn’t realize how mentally draining it would be, leaving no space for my personal creative projects. And then I became a mother, so my focus was caring for my baby and adapting to the monumental life and identity shifts that come with parenthood. I didn’t write a single word for myself in five years.
How did your Long Pause change your creative practice?
Before my Long Pause, I would write or make art whenever I felt inspired or when I was bored. I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t have a creative practice. But at some point during that pause, I had a breakdown and experienced debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. During the process of rebuilding myself and getting to know myself again, I realized that it was important for me to be creating. Self-expression and art were essential to my well-being and sense of self. So I started creating again and developed a regular practice that helped me feel grounded.
I’ve had a regular creative practice for the past six years.
Did you attend any formal education or training to learn your craft? (BFA/MFA, college major, workshops or apprenticeships…etc) What, if anything, did you learn in that context about blocks or pauses? Did you have a mentor or teacher who addressed this possibility or modeled how to work with or through a pause?
I studied languages at university, so I don’t have a BFA or MFA. I’d never considered a creative path. Art was just something I did randomly at the time.
When I worked on my first long-form project, a memoir manuscript, I didn’t know anything about structure or character development. I wrote it solely on instinct. Two drafts in, I enlisted the help of a book coach, Canadian novelist Claire Holden Rothman, to help me revise the book in 2021. The process of revising the manuscript together taught me a lot about craft and the writing life in general. At the end of the process, she highly encouraged me to join a writing community. It was the first time I ever heard the term “writing community.”
But how do you find community when you don’t know any other writers? And especially during a pandemic when you can’t meet people IRL?
On the internet! I took online workshops and screenwriting courses and made great connections there. I eventually found my way to The Resort, an online writing community based in Long Island City, NY. Founded by writer and artist Catherine LaSota, The Resort provided support, friendship, and a deep feeling of community through workshops and weekly coffee chats with other writers. It was the real deal, and I’ve made lifelong friends there. That’s where I learned the concept of seasons in a writer’s life. There are seasons for creating and sometimes there are seasons for slowing down and resting. All are important in a creative life.
There’s a ton of research that connects movement with positive outcomes for creative work, trauma recovery, and a host of other benefits. What kinds of physical practices help you access or heal your creativity?
Walking and Pilates. Movement is a non-negotiable for me, just like my creative practice is. Art and movement are the pillars of my overall well-being. My job as an artist is to ensure I take care of my mind and my body the best I can. That way I can show up consistently and do the work. It’s all connected.
What advice would you give another creative about how to move through a Long Pause?
Be kind to yourself. Take care of yourself. Figure out how you can take care of your creative needs, even if it’s something small. You might not be able to create as much as you want right now, and that’s okay. There are so many twists and turns in life, and sometimes you must put certain projects aside for a short or long period. You don’t have to be creating all the time anyway. You can be an artist and not make a single thing for years.
For example, during the first six months of the Pandemic, I had a four-year-old at home 24/7. I didn’t have time to work on long-form projects. So I would post images of Elizabeth Taylor on my Instagram Stories with funny captions to share something about my day. It scratched a creative itch.
Recently, my family and I were living abroad in London. We unexpectedly had to move back to Montreal, Canada, over the summer, and it was such a disruptive and chaotic time in our lives. I was exhausted and stressed, so in the middle of packing up our lives—when there was absolutely no time to lose— I decided to take a break to make collage art. It was inconvenient but necessary. A couple of collages later I felt better, like I’d taken the time to connect with myself and I was ready for whatever our crazy move had to throw at me next.
What have you read/watched/listened to that has been helpful for you and your creativity? Any books or media to recommend? What felt inspiring or comforting or interesting?
Now that I’m back in Canada, I have access to season 3 of Hacks. I love that show. It’s so well written and inspires me to write better jokes in my essays.
I’ve recently watched The Substance, the new Demi Moore body horror film. It was the most unhinged and horrifying movie I’ve seen in my life and I will never watch it again because it was so intense. But I can’t stop thinking about it because it was also excellent and so outside of the box (for me at least, I’m a horror amateur!). During particularly difficult scenes, I would think about the script and how it was written. From an outside point of view, it seemed like a cool creative trip. So it got me thinking… How can I push my own artistic boundaries and step outside of the box too?
A good friend sent me Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write a couple of years ago. It’s a great book that offers tools to help you connect with your creative practice not only on a practical level, but on a spiritual level too.
Michelle Béland is a Canadian writer and artist living in Montreal. Her humor essays have appeared in The Globe and Mail and MotherMag. She’s interested in exploring and understanding the Self through obsessions. Her newsletter, OBSESSED, explores her evolving passions and fixations, from TV characters to birds and collage poetry.
You can find Michelle on Instagram at @michellebeland
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