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.

A Quiet Weekend

A friend commented on a previous post about a sense of longing that comes through in my writing. I think it’s always been there and I wonder if I can live my way out of it. I think that voice speaks to always feeling as if life was happening to other people. Other people got to play outside at recess, other people didn’t have to study as much as I did, other people fell in love. And if that is the story I have been unconsciously living…no wonder I am where I am.

I watched a very powerful documentary this weekend on Joseph Campbell and his thinking. What a wonderful human mind he had. It was so overpowering – the ideas of myth and story, of God, the need for creation, the symbolism of snakes and dragons, so much of it struck a cord.

I’ve been thinking for a long time that I need to change my story from the inside. The story of the diamond in the rough found by an explorer, Galatea waiting for her Pygmalion. My story is so much more active and dynamic than that. The experience so much richer. A long time ago, I did write a story about a woman who descended to the depths of the earth because God had cursed her. And as she grieved in the depths, she was able to strike a bargain, to come back to the earth and live many adventures. It’s funny to see how I have lived that arc in the last ten years. But back then, I didn’t know how to talk about love and finding the partner. That’s the story I need to write. This week.

Showing up to the screen

I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a long time and it’s funny to come to it now…after reading blogs for years. So, in this first post, I want to share a little of why now and why this medium. After that, who knows where this will go.

I’ve kept a diary since I was 13. That’s a good 17 years now. Back then, I was such a reader and a writer. Fiction. I dreamed about being published…about having a book out in the world that had my voice. But, over the last ten years, I’ve lost that will to write and maybe even the ability to. Then, a few weeks ago, a friend who my writing from back then asked me why I had stopped. What was keeping me from writing now? And I didn’t have an answer for other than…I think I had forgotten how.

This conversation reminded me of a poem or short story I had heard recited once and could never forget. About a little boy who loved to draw flowers. He would draw all sorts, with so many different colors. But then, the little boy went to school and his teachers taught him to draw flowers in only one way – with five red petals and a yellow center. He had been able to draw peonies,birds of paradise, and so many other types, petals upon petals…and over the years they became the 5 petal flowers. And then one day, a new teacher asked him draw whatever type of flower he wanted and he could no longer draw the peonies or birds of paradise.  Just that one type of red flower.

A few days after this conversation, I went to a talk held with Carol Gilligan and she spoke of the true voice a girl – the voice that comes out when she is 9 and 10…the voice that had been the writer.

So with all these coincidences coming together, I thought…I want to call back my creativity, call back my voice. So my goal with this blog is write a finite number of posts that allow me to explore what I want to write. Some of the posts may be fiction and others may be what happened that day. But the goal is to write again and share this writing with friends and acquaintances.  Maybe start some new conversations in my life, new energy. The red flower is an experiment. I still have my journal – I still show up to that page. And now, I show up to the screen.