I recently went to the excellent exhibition Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up at the Victoria & Albert Museum. I was captivated! And I am still working out exactly why it beguiled me so much.

I’ve liked her work, though I’m not sure I have really loved it, and I can’t be sure I’d have gone to the exhibition until someone told me how good she thought it was, and then someone else I’d not seen in ages told me that she’d love for us to meet there. And I went, and I loved it.

Something funny though: a publisher friend had also seen and she did not enjoy it in quite the same way. We usually have similar tastes , and we tried to work out this difference: she said she wanted more of the art and less of what might be seen as an objectification of the artist, while I realised that this embodiment of the artist was what I found so enticing. So much there – so many details of the artist’s life. Perfume bottles, Frida’s illuminated false leg, beads spattered with green paint, the retablos (devotional artworks), and the clothes – remarkable in their bright colours after being locked up in a bathroom in the Casa Azul for fifty years. And in fact there is quite a lot of the art – enough to make me want to take a more serious look at the paintings. The life on show is in fact giving me a further route back into her work. 

I also recently read Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Lacuna (where Frida plays a significant role), and watched Selma Hayek’s film Frida, and I’ve spent a few hours looking at the gorgeous V&A exhibition catalogue (exquisite bit of publishing). What a life: it’s impossible to separate her everyday life from her creations from her friends from her lovers from her family from her politics.

This immersion into so many things Frida set me to thinking about the ways in which the life of the artist and the art itself are enmeshed. The world of creative writing involves itself with serious matters of mastering the craft and pitching and publishing, but sometimes (often) there’s room for things that might seem silly or indulgent but are inspiring and sustaining, or simply feed your soul in some indescribable way. I have a hunch that sometimes writers (and especially British writers?) don’t indulge themselves as artists as frequently as they could; they might even be embarrassed to think of themselves as artists, or to regard what they create as art. Someone might be writing the pulpiest fiction, but it’s still art, I say. 

I am also inspired by the award-winning poet Anne Waldman – beyond her writing, she lives and breathes Art in every way, whether in a grand hundred-year project, such as cofounding an alternative university (Naropa, where I got my MFA), or in something more personal, such as her flamboyant choice of scarves. 

In her book Vow to Poetry (the clue is in the title), Anne includes an essay called ‘Creative Writing Life’ that starts ‘Be in the mind/perspective of a writer twenty-four hours a day’, and then continues for nine pages with a manifesto listing things to feed your creative energies, ranging from carry writing material at all times, to organising sessions to exchange work, to recording your dreams, to writing a radio play, to proposing a question before you sleep (‘See what happens. Keep a notebook that will “worry” the questions).

So, inspired by Frida’s mantra ‘I am my own muse’ and Anne’s ‘Creative Writing Life’, write a manifesto for yourself as your own muse. You might include:

• Activities to add to your routine (maybe something nonverbal – a sport, or yoga, or gardening, or chess)
• A class you can take in some field other than writing (oil painting, or singing, or dance, or astrology)
• A class you could take in writing (come to one of our masterclasses!)
• Things to wear (scarves! beads! flowers in your hair!)
• Things to put in a shrine on your writing desk or a bookshelf (little Aztec figurines, if only from a museum gift shop? a pretty coaster for the mug of tea that sustains you while you write?)
• Expertise and resources you can share with others and, e.g., put into a workshop offering of your own or offer as consultancy (this can become a whole other purpose to develop for your artistic self)
• Blogging, or careful tending of some presence on social media (I hesitate to suggest Twitter or Facebook, because I’m not wild about either, but I know others use them very well indeed)
• Routines and rituals you’ll create for yourself
• Artist Dates (as inspired by Julia Cameron)
• Buying a new journal (any excuse for new stationery)
• Also think of people to be around – a company of fellows. Maybe arrange to see them in some regular way, and not just as a writing group, e.g., outings to exhibitions, or a book club: a salon of sorts.
• Getting a dog, or borrowing one (or another animal – I am a dog person, much more than a person person, I suspect), because company that speaks in nonverbal ways can be ever so important
• Like Frida, you could even take an artist-lover and have a wild affair

Then start doing these things – give yourself deadlines and targets, perhaps.

I think of the following as people who in some way serve as examples for me: the artist and writer Austin Kleon (I always look forward to his inspiring Friday newsletters), my friend Bhanu Kapil and her blog, my friend the curator and writer Jennifer Heath, the all-round shiny brilliance of teacher and writer and cartoonist Lynda Barry. And RuPaul, of course: ‘We’re all born naked and the rest is drag’ – a relevant analogy for self-creation and finding the muse within.

This isn’t just about their work, but about who they are: the artistic fire, intelligence, and generosity that comes across in all that they do. For them, writing is not something done to a schedule to get a book deal (though it can be too); it’s whole, it’s consuming, it defines their all.

Thinking about the lifestyle of an artist may not seem to involve the hard graft that’s needed for developing the craft (that comes elsewhere), but these are the artefacts and activities that get documented in exhibitions years after we’re gone. Or maybe these things just make life better, or raise our spirits when other things aren’t working out, or they lead us into new communities? Success in writing comes in many forms, and not just through publishing – lead a life as a joyful artist, rather than a struggling one.

Also, if you get chance:

• Visit Frida at the V&A (runs till 4 November – and I’m actually going again tomorrow …).