Why You’re Not Writing
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. — Joseph Campbell
Often a writer comes to the page with a certain idea or expectation. But ideally, as soon as the ink begins to flow, that expectation will dissolve and the writer will surrender to whatever unfolds on the page.
Every creative act is an act of surrender.
Maybe that’s why it scares us so much.
We like to hold on to our fixed ideas about ourselves and the world, but writing — authentic, intuitive, egoless, organic creativity — requires surrender.
You need to come to the page willing to be surprised.
To channel the creative vision that’s begging to come to fruition, we must be willing to release all notions of self and other. We must be willing to relearn and reinvent ourselves again and again and again.
This delicate process requires trust, humility, vulnerability, tenderness, honesty, and gentle courage.
Akin to meditation, creativity requires us to release what we think we know, to give up habits and patterns of thought, to let go any attempt to control outcome, and simply — oh only if it were simple — to notice what’s unfolding around and within us, with no input of our own.
To cultivate creativity means to cultivate stillness, quiet, compassion, patience, kindness. It means developing the ability to listen without judgement to the voices within, and the willingness to record their raw, unfiltered truth. It means relinquishing any “plan” and instead following your intuition’s map as it unrolls itself, one step at a time, before your feet. It means trading “thinking” for “noticing,” “knowing” for “experiencing.”
In other words, creativity requires a complete overhaul of the way most of us have learned to live.
We’ve been programmed to believe we have control over outcomes, to bottle up our feelings for the good of others, to value productivity over wellness, to honor competition over fulfillment, to strive for pre-scripted life goals instead of exploring our unique values, abilities, strengths, and passions.
Cultivating creativity disrupts these preprogrammed ways of living, which is why so many people ignore creativity’s call. We make any number of excuses, most of which fall under the umbrella excuse “I don’t have time.”
But more often what we mean is, “I’m afraid of how this will change my life.”
You’re right to be afraid. Committing to creativity will disrupt your life. It will remove the underpinnings of so much you’ve been taught to hold dear.
But when that old structure tumbles, you’ll realize it was never yours in the first place.
What you’ll find standing in the rubble of that old life is you–who you really are, what you really feel, what you really think, what you really believe, what you really want.
What will start growing in the place of that old, inherited structure is a life entirely your own.
Kinda makes your heart flutter just thinking about it, right?
Are you ready? Let’s grow . . .
Cheryl Dumesnil is a poet, memoirist, editor and creativity coach. Her books include two poetry collections Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes and In Praise of Falling; a memoir, Love Song for Baby X; and the anthologies We Got This: Solo Mom Stories of Grit, Heart, and Humor and Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. To learn more about her work, visit cheryldumesnil.com.
