They're All Going to Laugh at You!

The rewards and challenges of grappling with the bumps in the road in a creative life

Dear Reader, 

Thank you so much for being here. Together, we’ve summited a big milestone: We’ve grown to a community of more than 100 subscribers! I'm so glad you're here, and I don't take for granted the inbox space and head space you've granted me. I'd love to get to know you better. Please share a little intro in the comments along with one song that was on repeat as part of the soundtrack to your childhood or the tune that  currently fuels your dance routines. 

That aligns nicely with my focus for today: creativity. Creativity is an intrinsic part of childhood and was an essential part of life before we cast it aside. Every child I have known well enough to discover what they did for fun did something creative amongst myriad other interests. Me? I choreographed very literal dance routines to the soundtrack of the musical Cats and Paula Abdul’s album, Forever Your Girl. I directed the local newscast with my parents’ camcorder and a very uncooperative victim of a rock slide who flailed her legs wildly while I reported she was paralyzed from the waist down. I created pointillist drawings of my favorite football player, Sterling Sharpe. I took piano, singing, and dancing lessons and participated in band in school. However, for me, grown-up organized creativity worked a very different part of our minds and souls than that pure, unencumbered wacky creativity of childhood. 

What do you remember about your creative pursuits as a child? For many of us, there are specific moments of shame related to these endeavors that left us certain that any creative dreams we had weren’t meant to be. 

I was a late bloomer regarding motor skills. I had trouble cutting in a straight line in kindergarten. My teacher and my mom thought I might be left handed, so my mom bought me ambidextrous scissors. This thoughtful and attentive accommodation had the unintended consequence of building a story in my mind that I was bad at art. That lack of fine motor skills led to some reckless gluing on school art projects that solidified that story. I had a solo in the school Christmas concert in fifth grade (the intro to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, if you were curious). Afterward, my family told me I had done so much better than they expected compared to when they heard me practicing. Their intention was to tell me I had done well, but the impact was feeling that they didn’t believe that I was a good singer or could be a good singer. It’s fascinating to me what tender shoots these early projects and undertakings are. It is so fragile and vulnerable put your heart into the world. It is so easy to shut down permanently. It requires so much tending and careful nurturance to allow these little shoots to grow and blossom, particularly in a society in which efficiency and productivity are so prized and where there is almost always a black-and-white “right” way to do things. 

Aside from structured creativity like band or whatever I was required to create for classes at school, I had let go of creation as fun, as essential, and as a birthright by the time I was in junior high. 

I was the smart, awkward kid. The creative, cool kid was clearly someone who was not me by that point. 

Rationally, I know that if push came to shove, most of you would not think twice and would trust me to put a central line (large IV) in your neck. I could swiftly and smoothly place an arterial line in your wrist to check your blood pressure, or put stitches in your face. With time and practice, my fine motor skills became, well, fine. However, the story that I can’t be an artist because I don’t have fine motor skills lives on. 

In adulthood, I started vegetable gardening and scattering seeds. Gardening can definitely “count” as a creative venture depending on how you design it and what your goals are. That said, it is definitely not the same as when an entire poem comes through my pen as if it had come from somewhere outside of me. (From the divine, I would say.) 

As I mentioned last week, I am very much a baby creative. I have been writing for about a year, drawing and doodling only a little longer. I started, in part, because my husband was writing lovely poems and stories, which made it seem like something my kind of people could do, and, in part, because Brene Brown told me that it is a necessary component of a whole-hearted life where one feels worthy of belonging. I had also stopped repressing my feelings and was/am still figuring out what to do with them.  On my path to returning to creating art, there have been some obstacles to traverse that I think are common, if not universal. The first, and biggest one, is getting up the gumption to start. For me, my confidence grew when I realized art was meaningful or beautiful to me because it wasn’t technically perfect—not in spite of that fact. Almost all of my favorite art falls into this realm because it conveys something that was necessary for that soul to express rather than simply being “pretty.” Storyteller

Martin Shaw

often includes a simple drawing with many of the tales he shares here on Substack. Those drawings gave me courage as I stepped over the threshold; a little foothold from which I could create with a goal of truth rather than perfection. 

The other barrier to getting back to my creativity roots? Grappling with my sense of self-worth. What is the point of creating if you don't have something worthwhile to share? It’s easy to feel like it’s all been done before, but I like to think of creativity as similar to a kaleidoscope: your experience mixes those bits of inspiration into different designs. For example, one of my favorite creative themes is the magic of science, as I shared in my poem, The Messengers, or in this drawing of the heart inspired by Japanese kintsugi (below). In the near future, I am hoping to make some drawings in the shape of a head CT or chest x-ray that include magical and natural elements interacting with this very mechanistic way of looking at the mind. I really enjoy bringing to life this kind of art, and feel it is a unique perspective that not many other artists have. Another favorite theme of mine is using the ecosystem services that plants provide in poetic ways. 

Initially, I was content to create for my own sake, to take something that was stuck inside and let it out. Then a new, interesting battle came to the fore. This battle can be summed up as “Is this thing I made any good?” versus “They’re all going to laugh at you!” 

I don’t know about you, but when I started making things, some inner part of me was very effectively channeling Carrie’s mother from the movie Carrie. The first time I wrote a poem for my husband for Father’s Day, I believe I basically threw it at him and ran from the room because I was so nervous about his reaction. On the other hand, I was uncertain of what made a piece of writing “good” and couldn’t even tell if I liked a piece that I wrote. I found myself really craving external validation to determine whether it was worth it to continue creating. I was fortunate that the people I shared with received my creations in good faith and with immense kindness. They were supportive and offered useful feedback. Even so, my fragile creative sprout didn’t have strong roots, so even a gentle trickle of feedback from the watering can was enough to uproot it from the soil. I didn’t have my own ground solid enough to know whether the feedback was accurate or if I wanted to use that feedback or ignore it. 

It took a good 4 to 6 months to know what was ready to share, with whom, and how to directly ask for what I was looking for: encouragement or feedback. I also sought out some gentler forms of feedback that didn’t send my little artist running for the hills. After this battle, I hit a sweet spot for a while. I even shared some work at a few open mic nights. 

A few weeks ago, four different people told me about the book, The Artist’s Way, within one week. I took that as a sign that it was time to check this book out. In the book, she encourages participants to find an affirmation, write it 10 times and take note of what comes to mind during this. (For most individuals, this is some mean-spirited internal dialogue that’s designed to censor the creative part of one’s brain). 

I wrote “I am willing to be of service through creativity.” The most surprising and important internal dialogue that came up was a subconscious belief that creativity can’t be of service, isn’t important or useful, or is, in fact, selfish and self-indulgent. Rationally, I can think of hundreds of works of art that have transformed me in remarkable ways. I am referring to various books and their impact on me nearly daily. However, this feels like a big new story that I need to work through to reach higher heights and deeper depths in my writing. Right now, this feels like where creativity and spirituality intertwine. 

If art is divinely inspired, which it often feels as if it is, who am I to confine it or restrain it? Perhaps an idea I put into the world could mean as much to someone as my favorite writers mean to me. That is a novel and encouraging thought that gives me courage for the journey ahead.