Fear and Creativity

I can’t believe it has been 16 days since I last wrote…it was going so well for a while. What happened?

About 2 weeks ago, I met a wonderful and inspiring woman as part of a work/networking line of experimentation. For whatever reason, I confessed to this woman my deepest dream of writing a book and quickly described the premise to her. I don’t know what I expected by confessing…but for sure I did not expect her response. She thought the idea was strong and that I should talk to her agent.

What?! An agent? You mean, I could get this book published one day? Yes? Wow. Wow…

And the weekend was taken up with the excitement of this new way of thinking. To date the premise of the book only lives in a short story I wrote ten years ago. But that weekend, I had an outline. But not a word on a page. And then I thought – well what if the agent doesn’t like it? What if the idea is great and the execution is crap? What if this book does not get published? Fear. Doubt. Hesitation.

I kept hearing the woices of the characters and their need to be committed to the page…and yet, I still didn’t write. Fear of judgment. Fear of backlash. Fear. And then the voices asked me, wouldn’t it be ok if the only thing that happened with this book was that it got written. Wouldn’t it be OK if the book wasn’t made into a movie. And I thought – yes!

The only reason I want to write this book is to create! Once it is out in the world, I can’t protect it…it will be what it is. This book is a “child” for me. WIth this sense, I re-examined my fear and saw it shrink. Saw that it did not matter.

And so, with the fear under management, I look forward to the long weekend and writing.

Inaction vs. Poor Execution

Lately I’ve taken to conducting experiments in my life (this being one of them). Another is cooking more regularly for myself and seeing if it changes how I feel. Yet another is hiring a personal dating coach.

These experiments come from the idea that creativity comes from experimenting and learning from “failures.” Not everything will succeed…but a few things may. I read an internal white paper that talked about the perils of poor execution, as opposed to inactivity, in a maturing industry. It took me back to all the crap dating advice I’ve heard over the years. It made me wonder, as I “mature,” is inactivity better than poor execution? I am happy enough cooking on Friday night and catching up with my Netflix, how does that rate against a bad date? Hmmm.

Not necessarily the most productive line of thought since life is not binary. Most behaviors fall across a spectrum. I’ve been telling a few friends here and there about the date coach and their response has been ridiculously enthusiastic. Inactivity is not an option for me. Nor is poor execution. The coach, hopefully, will help me develop some real options.