Living creatively on and off the page with Layla O'Mara.

#10 ATELIER, a collaborative interview series exploring our creative spaces, processes and rituals.

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Nov 03, 2024

Hello, I am so glad you have found your way here… I’m Lyndsay — mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR.

Step inside Story & Thread., a cosy, layered home where the threads of creativity, interiors and mothering meet. Here, we unearth the stories from the seasons of our lives, with a house & a garden at the heart, and everyday beauty as our guide…

“I’ve…started to recognise how so much of what I do in my day to day life is also a creative act — how I tend to my home, how I mother, how I tend to the land I live on, how I choose my clothes, my knitting hats and jumpers and scarves, how I observe the forest when I walk the dog. I’ve been able to start to see all of this as part of a creative life, too”.

—Layla O’Mara.

Dearest reader

How are you settling into this first week of November?

We are passing through a potent portal punctuated by the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, meaning ‘summer’s end’ in Gaelic, a time that also marked the beginning of a new year. I am certainly feeling a shift as we move into November — from the gathering, harvesting and layering of abundance in early autumn, to a quieter distillation, discernment and shedding as we move deeper into the dark. Do you feel it too?

It’s one of the themes we will be exploring in A Seasonal Salon, an online creative gathering that will take place 11am-12pm GMT this Tuesday 5th November for members of The Beauty Thread.

I have been pouring much of my heart into the preparation in the small pockets of time I have had over the last couple of weeks which have been filled with so much (notably half term!).

Thoughts of frost, fireworks, and flowers are already lighting me up. My hope is that everyone joining us will feel interwoven with the season and able to take some flickers of light from the afterglow of the fire into the darkest days ahead. I am so looking forward to spending the precious time together.

More details about the salon at the end of this post…

Today, I am dropping in with the 10th ATELIER interview, with

Layla O'Mara

— Irish writer, mother, five elements acupuncturist and creator of beauty & bone. I first came across Layla’s work in the summer via a Note she had written about sharing our snapshots of the summer solstice, which she then collated into a beautiful post. It has been a joy discovering Layla’s tender, raw and soulful words over the past few months, many becoming deeply imprinted on me. I was delighted when Layla asked me to write my notes from the garden for her Element Sessions series earlier in the autumn.

I invite you to discover more about Layla’s creative process, practices and her creative space in the latest instalment of the ATELIER series…

ATELIER, noun, [French atuh-lyey].

a workshop or studio, especially of an artist, artisan, or designer.

Tell me about yourself and your creative life.

I think on one level I have been a writer and maker of things since I was a little girl, but on another it feels like I have only really acknowledged this in very recent years.

I have always placed myself close to amazing people who make beautiful art, be it by working as a publicist for theatre companies and festivals, dating a theatre director or marrying a rock n’ roll musician turned composer. Many of my friends are really successful writers, fashion stylists, chefs, designers, visual artists, journalists, rock stars! But until very recently (I mean, the last three or four years), I’ve always placed myself on the periphery of that. Around all this great making, but never stepping into that myself.

Something shifted for me in my early forties. Realising that it was now or never. Starting to listen to my heart. The thought of being on my deathbed and not having tried to ‘become’ a writer, to commit to a creative life, to have a book by myself on my book shelf, well, that really scared me! And it was like a switch was flicked. I simply cannot imagine now, after five years of writing almost daily, of ever not having this outlet in my life.

I think I’ve also started to recognise how so much of what I do in my day to day life is also a creative act — how I tend to my home, how I mother, how I tend to the land I live on, how I choose my clothes, my knitting hats and jumpers and scarves, how I observe the forest when I walk the dog. I’ve been able to start to see all of this as part of a creative life, too.

Where do you write?

I accidentally built a beautiful writing space for myself.

It was just after the first wave of Covid-19 and myself and my husband had the realisation that it was madness for me to be driving for an hour each way into Dublin city to my acupuncture clinic from where we live in rural Co. Wicklow. And so, we began to dream of building a treatment space beside our family home (a flat-pack German passive house we had moved into a year before.)

There is no way on earth I would have ever been able to justify building the space I have if it was ‘just’ for writing, but knowing that it was going to be a space for receiving clients, and that it should be a healing, welcoming space for them, I really poured my heart into making it so (as did my husband who designed the space).

Cut to five years later, and I am in the remarkably lucky position to have my own room separate to our main house in which to write, nestled in between two old oak trees, with a view of the stream at the end of our garden and the mountain beyond.

It is a wooden cabin made of larch wood, with a sedum living roof on top. I have my desk that looks out at the stream, a set of string shelves that hold as many of the books I’ve recently read or that I want to reference as I can fit, I have a beautiful armchair that sits tucked into one corner that my husband bought for me to sit in while I was recovering from my hysterectomy four years ago.

The room is still also my acupuncture treatment space, but I now only treat two or three days a week, so the rest of the time it is my writing haven.

Layla’s writing cabin nestled amongst the trees.

All that said, I don’t always write in my room! I’m a mum to three kids, I work, I’ve an acre of land to tend to, I’ve a dog to walk etc. etc. and so a lot of my writing and creating is done in the gaps between things.

I write at my kitchen table early in the morning before the kids get up, I write in the car park outside my daughter’s dance studio, my son’s karate lessons, my son’s Scouts group. I leave voice notes to myself whilst walking the dog in the woods. I write in bed before going to sleep. I’ll sneak into the loo to make a note on my phone when the kids are running riot in the house!

How do you like to approach a creative workday?

I am learning to not be too rigid in the planning of my weeks, there’s always top line things that need to get done, but after that I’ve learnt in recent years (and especially since learning that I am a mental projector in Human Design), that I get so much more done when I am flexible and hold lightly any plans I might have made.

Most mornings I do try to get up before the kids around 6am (I’m trying to do earlier, but I keep falling back asleep!), do 20 minutes of pilates or yoga and write my morning pages — moving both body and pen first thing somehow seems to open the creative portal for the day.

I live in really beautiful countryside quite close to the sea, so I’ll mostly always also get a walk in with Charlie my dog, either first thing after school drop off, if there are ideas I want to walk out, or before school pick up if I’ve been writing all morning and want to clear my head.

My dream creative workday would involve an early start, a good long walk, some gardening and four or five hours of writing peppered with cups of coffee and yummy food.

My real life creative day involves a lot more writing ideas on the backs of envelopes whilst cooking the dinner, although I do love this too – how your mind can still be making and creating whilst family live whizzes on around you!

It can sometimes feel like time has remoulded itself and is overlapping and spiralling, that you are in two places at once, that a portal has opened up.

Are your surroundings important to you?

They really are. I’ve discovered that I am quite an introvert and so living in a pretty rural setting suits me well — more time alone, more time up in the woods!

In terms of interior surroundings, I’ll often spend the first few minutes of my writing day, whether that is to be in my wee writing room or in our family home ‘bedding down’, doing small things that have me feel at ease. It might be putting on a wash, it might be putting flowers on the table, but there is something in the act of having most things in my surroundings how I like that settles me.

I like my surroundings when at home or in my writing room to be calm, comfortable, homely in an Irish cottage meets Scandi-style sort of way! That said, to write and create outside my home I don’t mind half as much, I can write anywhere there isn’t a lot of noise. I’m not great at working in cafés though, I think I’m just too nosy and my ear is constantly drawn to other people’s conversations!

How do you like to feel whilst you are working?

Quiet, in flow, inspired.

How do you set the tone and energy of your environment?

I’ll almost always light a candle.

I like a good pen if I’m writing on paper.

Music-wise I have super specific pieces I play over and over again. I can’t write to anything with lyrics for the same reason as I can’t write in cafés! I think I respond to these pieces of music now a little like Pavlov’s dog; when I hear them, I click into a different headspace and the world falls away. Max Richter’s Sleep album is one. My husband Brian Crosby’s album Imbrium is another. And a song called In the Deep Shade by Irish band The Frames is a third – I’ve been creating to this same song for more than 20 years!

Sometimes I also prefer silence.

Do you have one place dedicated to your work, or do you move around?

My main writing place is my cabin, and this is where I’ll be if I have any sort of stretch of time, but a lot of the ideas and threads are found while on the move, doing domestic tasks during my day.

Early morning writing is always done at the kitchen table. I love the feeling of being awake in the dark whilst everyone else is asleep. If I ever have the chance to be home all day on my own, I might spread out on the kitchen table or nestle up by the fire (where I’m writing you this, now).

Where do you source creative inspiration?

Oh I think there is inspiration all around us! For me it is more about constantly reminding myself of this, continually finding ways to keep these pathways open. Writing morning pages helps do that for me. As do walks in nature, which I am eternally blessed to be surrounded by here in Wicklow. Also reading other people’s words. I have a worryingly large pile of ‘To Be Read’ books. I also find I get a lot of clarity and great ideas listening to music really loud whilst driving.

Do you have any rituals around your work?

A candle lit.
A cup of coffee or cacao steaming.
A bottle of water to hand.
My ‘world vanishing’ music playing.

If it is in my journal I’m writing I use a ritual my friend and mentor

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

introduced me to. I’ll write the date and time on a fresh page on the top right hand side. I’ll then write two lines about the weather outside. And two lines about how I am feeling in my body. And then I’ll just write whatever comes to mind for three pages. Sometimes I am simply describing my environment, sometimes I’m recalling an experience I’ve had, a fight, a memory, an interaction. It might be a dream from the night before. It might be thoughts around whatever it is I’m working on, or thoughts from what I’m currently reading. It is my little peculation pot!

What would your dream creative studio space look like?

I honestly think I am blessed to say that I am pretty close with what I already have. I find it so interesting that I built this space really before I had fully committed to my creative practice as a writer. That I would never have done this for myself as beautifully if it had ‘just’ been for me.

If we are talking über dream studio it would no longer have my acupuncture treatment bed in the room (although it is handy for an occasional power nap!), I’d have more of my books in the room rather than in our main house, I’d have a standing desk (I tend to get sore hips when I’m writing for hours on end sitting down), I’d adore to have a giant loom (I don’t even know how to weave yet, but it is on my bucket list!).

But I do think it is important to say that whilst having a dedicated space is a massive gift, especially with young kids, words can be found everywhere, anyway. I found the book The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips particularly inspiring on this front, reading of how women writers managed to find ways to write and create amongst and around and within family life and day to day pressures.

Layla is an Irish writer and tender to many things, fuelled by mucky walks, good coffee & early mornings to herself. Her writing has recently been published in journals including Sonder and Banshee Literary Magazines and Motherlore. Layla writes the beauty & bone newsletter on Substack, where she explores, through weekly written posts, podcast conversations, live calls and journalling sessions, how it feels to live, create and hold on this beautiful, tattered planet right now. Layla has also written a memoir about her unruly body, about longing, belonging and coming home that has recently found itself an agent and will be going out on submission soon.

To find out about what Layla has coming up in the coming months, including elemental journalling sessions & podcast interviews, her ‘Sitting in the Dark’ series, conversations around mid-life and more, head HERE.

laylaomara.substack.com | IG @mslaylaomara

I loved learning how Layla weaves creativity into her life as a mother and tender of many things. It resonated as I put the finishing touches to this post while my son naps and I sit next to my daughter as she draws (and sings very loudly!)

How do you bring creativity into your everyday?

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Layla’s creative world on and off the page — as always, your thoughts and own experiences are very welcome in the comments.