The act of creation promises Love

by DRM

Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of lik­ing it when you do it. It is easy and inter­est­ing. It is a priv­i­lege. There is noth­ing hard about it except your anx­ious van­ity and fear of failure.

Bar­bara Euland, If You Want to Write

Around the time I dis­cov­ered that more than a decade away from writ­ing had been caused by a mali­cious pho­bia — a writer’s block that had dis­guised itself as a right­eous expres­sion of my per­son­al­ity — I dis­cov­ered a book by Bar­bara Euland about writ­ing. Her sim­ple, ele­gant obser­va­tions res­onated. Over the past two years, the book has been a rein­force­ment that helps keep me focused on the pos­i­tive nature of cre­at­ing, ward­ing off the dead­en­ing habits of my pho­bia. (It is a deep-rooted thing.)

My mother is an artist. She has worked indus­tri­ously, although some­time painfully, for her entire life. I told her about the things that I had come to under­stand about my pho­bia and that I was writ­ing again. I men­tioned Euland’s book. “I’ve re-read that over and over for years,” she said. The same sim­ple truths res­onated with her.

That’s the back­ground. As an aside, that’s a rea­son why I keep my iden­tity in the back­ground on this blog; I’m hid­ing from the pho­bia. It’s out there just wait­ing to stop me.

IMG_0085.jpgThe first page of my work­book is filled with a selec­tion of those ground­ing obser­va­tions from Euland. This morn­ing the quote at the top of this post caught my atten­tion. It is con­nected, in an indi­rect way, with thoughts I’ve been try­ing to orga­nize in response to a ques­tion from Scott Berkun about the idea of substance.

Anx­ious van­ity. Such a rich and loaded phrase.

When you write, what are you look­ing for that is away from you? Van­ity is an exter­nal expres­sion of who you are. Are you search­ing for affir­ma­tion that will quiet the anx­ious voices?

The kind of affir­ma­tion that we seek comes from engage­ment with oth­ers. This engage­ment is part of the act of giv­ing. We dis­play our­self to the world with open­ness and trust, look­ing to our inter­ac­tion with oth­ers to give us a feel­ing of place, a sense of pur­pose, the kin­dling of a con­nec­tion that eases that uncer­tain imbal­ance we expe­ri­ence when the word “Why?” lingers asked, but unspoken.

Com­mit­ting to cre­ative work doesn’t pro­vide exter­nal­i­ties. The work is per­sonal, inter­nal, indul­gent of your own pri­vate dia­logue, a pri­vate act of love, a sta­dium of research, hypoth­e­sis, test­ing, all in an intensely per­sonal voice.

You can’t be any­one else when you cre­ate. You can’t fail. You just discover.

The act of cre­ation doesn’t promise sat­is­fac­tion, but it does deliver love.