My Tortured Path to Creativity

I spent most of my life running away from the thing I wanted to do most. What I really wanted to do was write, and who I really wanted to be was a writer.

Yet, I refused to do the thing that mattered to me most. Why? Fear!

I was terrified of putting pen to paper, or fingers to computer keyboard.

I knew that I had creative ideas, but I was never able to carry them out, not even in the slightest. The truth is, I was scared. I was petrified. What was I scared of? I was scared of failing at being creative, and I was scared of succeeding. I was constantly depressed and I felt out of place everywhere.

I have met many other creative people who also had similar problems. I’ve had many talks with them about what our fears really are. Fearing success, and fearing failure. Some creative people I’ve met had only one of these fears, and some of us had both.

Why is fear of success and fear of failure so strong in creative people?

I think that many creative people have such incredible, inspiring visions in their minds of what they want to create, and what they want to be, that the reality always falls very, very far short of what they want to accomplish. Then they start to hate themselves for not being able to create what they wanted in a perfect way.

They start on their creative project, but as soon as they are about two percent of the way into it, they realize that it’s not turning out nearly as good as they expected. If they keep going, will the entire project be as bad as it looks right now? What does that say about the creative genius they imagined themselves to be?

Isn’t it easier to stop right now? Just bury the whole thing? Give it up, throw it in the trash?

For me, the turning point came when I took an   aptitude   test  after I lost my job. The test said that I tested extremely well for talents like writing and creativity. In fact, I was in the top percentile for writing ability.

The results of this  aptitude  test  shocked me. Suddenly, I had no more excuses.

I realized, that if I wasn’t supposed to write, who was?

After that, I made creativity my life.

As I finally started to do those creative things I had put off for so many years, I started to learn much more about what creativity was, and what it wasn’t. I learned that creativity can improve the more you do it, but you can’t think about it too much.

I used to think I had to wait for inspiration to strike me, but now I realize I get better results when I think of creativity as my job, I just go ahead and do it. I don’t moan and complain that I don’t have inspiration today. I don’t complain when things don’t work out the way they were supposed to.

Now when I see that a creative project isn’t working out the way I thought it should, it becomes a challenge to me to fix it. Working on that challenge feels good, not frustrating the way it used to. I no longer view a creative project that isn’t working as a proof that I am a failure and that I should just give up.

The truth is, creativity is not about perfection. Creativity is messy. If you think creativity is about achieving some standard of perfection, you are chasing perfection in the wrong place.

To be creative, you have to find the courage to say, yes I can do this, I can make this, and I stand behind it. It can be less than perfect, but I did it, here it is, I can live with it!

Creativity is more like a very subtle muscle, you have to exercise it a lot before it will grow.

As any creative person knows, you learn so much from wrestling with your creative problems. What you learn from this struggle is very hard to explain to anyone else who isn’t creative, but it’s a deep and rewarding encounter with some part of you that can’t get expression any other way.

My Tortured Path to Creativity