Well, I could have done verisimilitude, or villain, or any number of other words beginning with V, but I've chosen Voltaire.
A few weeks ago when I was on holiday in France, I went to visit the chateau at Cirey en Blaise. Voltaire took refuge here when a warrant for his arrest was issued in 1734, following the publication of his inflammatory Philosophical Letters. He stayed for fifteen years, striking up a relationship with the beautiful and intellectually gifted chatelaine, Gabrielle Emilie de Breteuil.
During his stay at Cirey, Voltaire renovated the chateau and built a new wing, for which he designed the beautiful doorway that he dedicated to the Arts and Sciences.
He continued writing and carried out research into metaphysics while Emilie worked on her translation of the complete works of Isaac Newton. They also built a little theatre, for which he wrote plays that were performed two or three times a week.
The reason I'm telling you all this is that Voltaire provides the perfect example of how to max out your creativity. True, it helps to have money and a doting Marquise on hand, but I was struck by the breadth of his engagement with the world: writing in a way which flouted censorship, pushing the boundaries of intellectual thought, agitating for social change, while turning his hand to architecture and amateur theatricals.
I'm sure there is a lesson to be learned here: that you can feed your creativity by expressing it in a number of different ways, cross fertilising, stimulating. If you're tired of writing, read; if you're tired of reading, walk, or think, or bake, or make something. Find your own way to fan the flame, don't let the fire go out.
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