Creating in the In-Between

When people think about creating, for some it's allocating supplies, or finding themselves in the right place.

I don’t create in long, uninterrupted stretches of time.

My work is made in fragments — in the pauses between responsibility, in the quiet moments that appear and disappear without warning.

Creation happens alongside care, not separate from it.

For a long time, I believed this meant I was working against myself. That real creativity required solitude, silence, and hours I no longer had access to. I internalised the idea that fragmentation was a limitation — a sign that I was no longer fully available to my work.

Motherhood challenged that belief.

It forced me to reconsider what creative focus actually looks like. I learned that attention doesn’t have to be continuous to be meaningful. That ideas can survive interruption. That returning to something, again and again, is its own form of devotion.

The in-between moments became my practice.

This way of creating is slower, but it is also more intentional. There is less excess, less performance. Each decision carries weight because time is precious. I no longer create to fill space — I create to honour it.

Motherhood taught me how to trust myself across pauses. How to leave an idea unfinished without abandoning it.

How to pick up a thread after distraction and still recognise it as my own.

There is discipline in this kind of making.

There is patience.

There is care.

Creating in the in-between requires letting go of perfection. It asks you to accept reality as the conditions of your work, rather than waiting for a version of life that allows for uninterrupted focus.

Creativity does not disappear in fragmentation.

It adapts.

And in adapting, it becomes resilient.

I no longer measure my creative life by how much I produce or how quickly I finish. I measure it by my willingness to return — to keep showing up in the margins of my own life.

This in turn is not compromised creativity but sustained creativity.

The in-between is not empty space.

It is where my work learns how to live and hopefully inspire others.

Love

#CarmenGoCreative