It’s all felt a little, well, strange lately.  Maybe it’s the swine flu “pandemic.”  Maybe it’s the weather going from summer to winter and back again every few hours.  But I seem to find myself surrounded by lots of negative energy, lots of worrying about the future, especially when it comes to publishing and the state of that crazy industry that seems to decide the writer’s fate.  I know that before I published anything, I spent a great deal of negative energy fearing that my work would never be published.  Now that I am published, I worry that I’ll never be published again.  And I know I’m not the only one out there feeling this way.  So when I sat down to write my blog today all I could think to write was a giant Ugh.  

But then I decided to check out the TED website and see what I could come up with.  And once again, I was inspired, not necessarily to write something new, but — and even more importantly — just to keep going.  Take a look at this video which is actually a short compilation of several talks by Jay Walker, an entrepreneur and businessman, who spent a great deal of his money and a great deal of his time and passion creating the “Library of Human Imagination.”  Watching this reminded me that the creative effort is important.  Our brains are meant to do more than just make money.  And even if we do make some, it’s powerless to affect the world unless it is accompanied by a creative spark.  It is the pursuit of creativity that changes everything.  That’s really why we writers, artists, musicians do what we do.  As Margaret Drabble said the other evening at the Society of Authors reception, “The credit crunch does not bother writers because we don’t have jobs to lose.  We’ll always write anyway.” Recently, I’ve forgotten about my New Year’s resolution to have faith.  Thankfully, there are people out there to remind me (and thanks to Sarah Salway for turning me on to this site in the first place).