“queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” bell hooks

reinventing creative process is queer, as in at odds with the ideas of creativity that capitalism has instilled in us. reinventing creative process is meant to help us break from capitalist ideas that say creative production must be constant and public/”successful”. reinventing creative process is meant to return us to the necessity of making as a way to continue living, to better understand ourselves, to play and find pleasure, and to connect with others by sharing stories we may otherwise not have space to share.

reinventing creative process is meant to move us away from ableist ideas of how art gets made in specific ways and at specific paces that are supposedly comfortable for abled bodies, and instead, move us closer to listening to the needs of our own bodies while making art, and respecting the needs of others’ bodies as well. reinventing creative process is neurodivergent and honors the reality that our neuro-types are diverse and therefore our creations and creative processes can be wildly diverse and imaginative in ways that help us form a better world. reinventing creative process is meant to deepen our awareness of how whiteness has impacted not just how we create but also whose work gets attention so that we can actively work toward anti-racist creative processes, creative works, and creative spaces, while we uplift art made by those most oppressed by white supremacy. reinventing creative process is queer as in against binaries, in love with messes and mistakes, aware of how hybridity and mixed media/forms can expand our understanding of the strangeness of being alive. reinventing creative process recognizes that all our liberation is tied together and that liberation within our creative processes and work is tied together too.

My story

I began writing to tend to a wound. and as I wrote, the wound opened. and as I wrote, I was told that I wasn’t supposed to be writing about the wound. I was told that the wound was meant to be secret, internal, never discussed, never made public. But the more I wrote about the wound and the more I found others’ art that was about the wound, the more I felt certain : certain that I had to speak up about the wound because the wound wasn’t just my wound – it was a wound that so many others had experienced. and the wound was harder to heal the more alone in it I felt. so I kept writing about the wound in the hopes that others who were wounded would find relief and comfort because if they read my writing, they would know they were not alone, too.

As I grew into myself as a writer and began to take classes, pursue my MFA, and try to get my work published, I noticed new wounds opening. Wounds bound up in fear, in grief. wounds bound up in myths about what it meant to be a creator and myths about what creative process was supposed to look like. The harder I tried to fit my creative process into what i thought it was supposed to look like, the less I was able to create at all.

“when the enthusiasm fades, you start using words that are dead, that stifle you like ash burying you. so you must react, shake it up; you have to dive into yourself and recreate, reinvent almost everything to escape the dead things that crush you.” le joli mai

reinventing creative process’ story

reinventing creative process began the same way my writing did. I needed to tend to a wound. And I hoped that by tending to my own wound publicly, others with similar wounds would feel relief and comfort that they were not alone. I designed the workshops that I needed and found that others needed them too. 

reinventing creative process is an invitation to shake it up, to recreate and reinvent our creative processes. By facing our creative wounds, by allowing those wounds to move through our minds, hearts and bodies, new space is opened for vibrant creativity. My offerings are designed to support creators in finding more embodied, pleasurable and emotionally safe ways to create. 

reinventing creative process is similar to my writing and art. It cross-pollinates with other forms of healing and creates connections, asks deep questions, and posits that exploration is perhaps a more transformative path than a specific destination or answer. 

In my workshops and creative process support, I seek to guide you back to yourself, to your parts, to your body, and to your inner wisdom and knowing. To help guide you, I offer meditations, mindfulness practices, breathwork, embodiment and somatic practices, parts work and IFS (internal family systems) frameworks, journaling and drawing prompts, dance experiments, and exploratory creative exercises.

about lauren samblanet

I received my MFA in poetry at Temple University. My first books, like a dog, was published through punctum books. Some of my writing has been published in A Shadow Map: an Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault, FENCE, Passages North, Dreginald, Entropy, Bedfellows, the tiny, Crab Fat Magazine, and aglimpseof. Visit my website to read my work and learn more about my history as a maker.

I talk about my creative process, as well as the workshops I offer in the 6th episode of the Write Space Podcast and in an interview on Hillary Leftwich’s Substack.

Trainings/Certifications:

• M.F.A in Poetry from Temple University (2017)
• Mindfulness Mentor Training: In-progress (to be completed by February 2026)