The creative process reminds me a lot like a sale at your favourite store… by the time you finally get there all the good stuff is gone, nothing fits, and you forget what you were actually wanting to do in the first place.

The art of creating (in this case writing) is fluid and yet concrete at the same time. You can always go back and make changes and revisions of what you wrote, but whatever is already out there cannot be taken back. That fear of getting it out wrong the first time often stops us from starting anything new in the first place.

To choose ‘not’ to write for fear of getting it out the wrong way actually is counter-productive. It creates a bottleneck of all of the half-processed, semi-ready drafts of other things that have claimed squatters rights inside your brain. A friend of mine calls the process “taking up mental real estate” (if I didn’t think he’d ever read this, I would be tempted to claim the phrase myself!!!).

Sometimes you just gotta “get it out”. Write it. Say it. Draw it. Shape it. Mould it. Jot it down on some random piece of paper that will journey off like vagabonds with random socks and cutlery that have also seemed to have gone missing in your life.

To create, whether it be written, oral, visual, musical… you name it, is an incredibly vulnerable act to do. It’s revealing a part of you which makes you ‘you’ and ‘different’ and ‘unique’. And the time it takes to wait and find out people’s reactions seems endless and daunting.

But to ‘not’ create, in whatever form, allows a dormant part of you to fester waiting to show itself and say to the rest of the world, “This is how I see life. What do you think?” That part of you will always wonder if there are others out there willing to accept it for what it is and validate its unique vantage point.

So the next time you want to say something (even choosing to write a blog about the need to write in the first place) get it out of your system. You’ll be glad you did. No one may appreciate it other than your mom (I’m not even sure if my mom even knows I have this account) but  you will have finally evicted some pretty stubborn tenants too afraid to leave; stopping you from moving forward or better yet, actually finding them a great place to live on forever in infamy.

 

At at least that’s how I see it… right now,

 

C