"Don’t be afraid to get weird with it!" — Laney Lenox
Creative Dialogue #14
Creative Dialogues is an ongoing project to learn from fellow artists. I’ve interviewed an astonishingly wonderful variety of creative individuals about their art, creative practices, and how they make it all work. I send every participant a list of questions about creativity and the creative practice. They respond to the five questions that resonate most, so every interview reflects the artist’s own curiosities and interests.
Today’s interview is with
, author of .
Laney Lenox is an anthropologist, researcher and writer living in Berlin, Germany. Her research employs the anarchist ethos of consensus building and applies it to garner more nuanced and inclusive understandings of contentious pasts. Writing featured in Salvation South, Burningword Literary Journal, the Anarchist Studies blog, the Writing the ‘Troubles’ blog and elsewhere. She can be contacted via laneylenox.com
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When did you first realize you were a writer?
I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. Writing is the way I make sense of the world and my place within it. This is especially necessary for me as an autistic person. I exist in a world whose norms just were not created for people like me, and I just often don’t understand them. This can be really lonely and leaves me feeling disconnected from other people and the world around me. When I write, it helps me better understand the world and the people within it. I also consider my writing a form of communication (and even a love letter) to the world. I’m much better at expressing myself through writing than I am at expressing myself verbally, so it’s really the best way for others to get to know me or for me to express how I feel!
Writing is the way I make sense of the world and my place within it.
Have there been times when you felt out of touch with your creative self? If so, how did you rediscover your creativity?
I’m always falling out of touch with and having to rediscover my creative self! One recent example I can give of falling out of touch with any creative practice is when I had a serious medical crisis from about March-September 2023. To make a long story short, I went through a series of severe urinary tract infections coupled with intense pain and fatigue that led to a diagnosis of endometriosis and adenomyosis. I was consumed by endless doctors appointments, blinding pain, and just to-the-bone exhaustion to the point that I felt more like a laundry list of symptoms than a human being.
Throughout this experience, I was also experiencing some pretty difficult emotions, including jealousy (of other people’s bodies), low self-worth, and guilt that I suddenly needed so much help from my loved ones to take care of me. These feelings became so overwhelming that eventually I just started to write them all down. This became a piece of autofiction about my experience, which I hope that I can find a home for soon. I couldn’t find any creative work that said what I needed to hear at that moment, so I just wrote it myself. That’s how I most recently reconnected with my creativity.
I couldn’t find any creative work that said what I needed to hear at that moment, so I just wrote it myself. That’s how I most recently reconnected with my creativity.
What encouragement would you give to someone who’s struggling to get in touch with their creative self?
Don’t be afraid to get weird with it! When I’m struggling to produce writing, I just focus on being as honest as possible (even if the work is fiction, I really pursue authenticity in the feelings being expressed in the work). The thing is, honesty is pretty weird! Often our true feelings about something are contradictory, messy, and maybe even a little ugly. But if we’re willing to expose these messy parts of ourselves (without trying to hide them or present them in a way that we think makes us look better), some pretty damn good art can come out of that process.
Which artists do you return to again and again? What do you love about their work?
Sometimes when I’m stuck while writing a piece, I rewatch scenes from certain films or television shows. The most recent show that I find myself returning to is the pirate epic Black Sails. I should say, some light spoilers ahead! My god, that show, I cannot recommend it enough. It is a masterclass in storytelling and, as a writer that comes from an anarchist perspective, its depiction of a group of people fighting against an unjust status quo is just heartbreakingly good. The pirates themselves are so interesting from a creativity perspective because they have to both create new structures outside of the confines of “civilization” (how the pirates refer to law-abiding society). As the show goes on, they must collectively re-imagine the new world they are fighting to bring into existence. The new world the pirates are fighting for is one without slavery, one without forced heteronormativity, and generally a world that is more equitable than the one in which they (or we) are living.
What I like about the writing itself is that the writers created really solid characters and then let the characters tell the story. Too often, authentic character building or authentic dialogue is sacrificed out of a need to move a plot in a certain direction. As someone who mostly writes non-fiction and auto-fiction, I really want to learn to build fictional characters with the level of honesty and believability achieved in that show.
Existing in a community just makes us better people, and that extends to our creative efforts.
What is one thing you’d tell your younger self about building a creative practice?
Don’t be so individualistic! Working with other people not only helps hold you accountable to meeting creative goals, but it can also take you in unexpected and really interesting directions. But more importantly, existing in a community just makes us better people, and that extends to our creative efforts.
What is one thing this community can do to support you and your work?
Subscribing to
, reading other work I have published, and sharing this work to anyone in your community that you think would resonate with it!Any final thoughts on creativity you’d care to leave us with?
Don’t burn yourself out by focusing on producing or output! This also applies to spending too much focusing on something just because you think it’s what you should do. Speaking for myself, being creative is really an essential part of maintaining my mental health. But if I’m really burned out (maybe from expecting too much from myself in terms of a specific kind of output, or in terms of socializing in ways that don’t suit my autistic brain), I just don’t have the mental space to create.
If we’re willing to expose these messy parts of ourselves (without trying to hide them or present them in a way that we think makes us look better), some pretty damn good art can come out of that process.
More ways to support Laney:
Subscribe to
Follow her on Instagram @laneylenox
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Really enjoying this serious and so glad I got to be a part of it- thank you!
I loved this interview!