Courage to create...

“Another word for creativity is courage.” ~ George Prince

I let my thoughts run rampant…a lot. My imagination has a quick trigger and one reverie tends to lead to a whole train of musings, and the end result is typically me scaring myself out of something. Aquarians are notorious for thinking too much and for wandering (and wondering) too far ahead, and what can I say? I am a proud Aquarian.

I try to stop my thoughts from going off the deep end. The only problem with this, however, is that it stunts an ability that right-brained people (like me) usually nurture – creativity. I took a test my freshman year in high school, that told me whether I was a left-brained (logical) or right-brained (creative) type. My test showed that though I fall more so towards the right brain way of thinking, I walk the fence ever so slightly into left-brain territory, which means I’m a creative type who overthinks. The crazy writes itself, doesn’t it?

I’ve seen this dichotomy exercised often. I’m so guilty of it. All my writing classes, in college and some I’ve taken since, have all preached the practice of: Write Now. Edit Later. Writers, artists of all types, are encouraged to run through their process without stopping; let your creativity guide you. That’s what drafts are for, for crying out loud. But no, I can’t help but write….edit…write…edit…edit…write, which is why I seldom have more than one draft of ANYTHING.

There are various reasons for holding out or stopping yourself from going at it on instincts, and a major factor is fear. I had a writing teacher tell us once, that we store all of our painful experiences in a well deep inside our psyches; somewhere that’s relatively unreachable so that we’re not reminded of those hurtful moments often. But for writers to produce anything worth reading or sharing, we don’t have a choice but to pull from that “well of shit,” she called it, in order to create something that’s real, even if it brings forth old pains.

Creativity isn’t based on random, spontaneous conjecture – it comes from somewhere/something familiar and close. In order to take advantage of it, we can’t stop ourselves from letting it run its course. We can’t be afraid of what it will create.