The Journey
Every story begins long before the first page.
I don't believe creativity belongs to a chosen few. I believe every person posseses it. Sometimes it appears as a story. Sometimes a song. Sometimes a carving. Sometimes a game shared around a table. Sometimes it simply takes a little longer to discover.
Creativity Is My Spark
Creating has always felt different to me because it is one of the few places where there is no single right answer. A story, a carving, a campaign or a song can be shaped with intention, but once it leaves your hands, it belongs partly to the person experiencing it.
I love that. I love that someone can read one of my books, sit at one of my gaming tables, or look at something I have carved, and find something in it that I never consciously placed there.
Creativity is not just making something. It is planting a seed and watching it become different things in different people.
The First Seed
One of my earliest memories of feeling proud of something I created was in Primary Two at Struthers Primary School in Troon (where I grew up). I was around six years old when pupils were invited to write poems for the chance to be included in a poetry book.
Mine was called Just Like Humans. It was about animals, and how they sleep, eat, love, fear and live in ways not so different from us.
Somehow, that poem was chosen. My gran bought the book straight away. I don't think I understood it at the time, but looking back, that was one of the first moments I remember feeling seen through something I had made.
“Stories were never just entertainment to me. They were places I could step into.”
Worlds Worth Living In
The worlds that shaped me came from everywhere: Star Wars, Tolkien, Michelle Paver, Skyrim, God of War, Norse mythology, Greek mythology, games, films, television and the stories passed between people.
I have always found that whatever I consume changes the way I see the world for a little while. That is part of the magic of stories. They let us borrow another lens.
That is what I try to offer through my own work: not an escape from life, but another lens from which to view it.
“I don't think anyone is not creative. I think some people simply have not found the medium that lets their creativity speak yet.”
Making Things Real
Writing, wood carving, music and Dungeon Mastering may look like separate things, but to me they all come from the same place.
They are ways of taking something invisible and giving it shape. A scene becomes a chapter. A branch becomes a staff. Notes become a song. A shared table becomes a world.
When I am fully absorbed in that process, the world goes quiet. Time disappears. I open myself up and let the ideas out before, to be honest, myhead explodes.
Family, Legacy and Why I Keep Going
My family sits at the heart of almost everything I make. My mum and gran encouraged my imagination when I was young. My wife believed in my writing when I was still learning to believe in it myself.
My father-in-law was one of my greatest supporters in wood carving. I would race to show him what I had made, and he praised me like I was his own son.
My children are my finest creations, and watching their own imaginations grow has changed how I see creativity. I want them to know that ideas matter. That making things matters. That trying matters.
I have written books, carved pieces and recorded songs partly because, one day, I want my children to be able to find pieces of me in the things I left behind.
Storms and Rebuilding
Creativity has also been a refuge in difficult times. There have been times when the workshop was not a grand space, but a gazebo in a garden, a desk in a corner, or whatever place I could find to keep making.
More than once, storms have taken that space from me. Grief, moving house and broken workshops have all interrupted the work.
But I am learning that the workshop is not the building or the gazebo or tye shed. It's wherever you choose to create, improve or to change whatever keeps the fire of your passion lit.
The Door Is Open
If you have ever said that you were not creative, I do not believe you. I think you simply have not found your medium yet.
Keep looking. Write badly. Draw messily. Carve carefully. Sing quietly. Build strange worlds around a table with your friends. Try things. Fail at them. Try again.
I hope people leave this website feeling inspired to create.
Enter The Workshop