Believing in Yourself as a Creative Person

Our culture is not particularly kind to creatives. We are pushed from babyhood to be good, quiet children and to color within the lines. Some of us absorb these strictures so thoroughly that we are, even as adults, ashamed of our weird, naughty, noisy, undisciplined, crazy, creative impulses. “What do you mean you want to write poetry, paint pictures, make music? Act, sing, dance, write a novel? Do something practical,” urges that stern voice in your head. “Be a teacher, a lawyer, a nurse, a doctor, a CPA. Why are you spending all this time on what can never be more than a hobby? Get real.”

As for those brave iconoclasts who have the guts or foohardiness to buck the system and actually do their art, we vacillate between hating them and envying them. “There, but for the doubtful grace of the voice in my head, go I.” “I could do that—maybe better.” But I didn’t.

I have decided to stop being a good girl and start coloring outside the lines. I’m going to challenge those voices in my head and listen instead to the girls in the basement: those subterranean spirits who’ve been holding on for dear life through all my long and less-than-creative life. I’m going to let them out into the sunshine, pale, dirt-smeared and hollow-eyed, like the prisoners emerging from the dungeon in the last act of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
 

Imagine being locked up in this dungeon.http://tinyurl.com/h6g749q

With the help of friends, books, and sheer cussedness, I’m going to let my creative self go for it. I’ve begun by publishing a book of poetry. I’m going on there by grabbing any chance I can to do something different and creative.

This Saturday I’m taking a painting workshop. As someone who decided in the second grade that she had no artistic talent because Miss Kittleson gave her a “C” in art, this is a stretch. It may turn out so bad that I’ll end up just scraping the paint off the canvas, like Van Gogh in the asylum. But I’m going to do it.  

And next week I’m auditioning for a part in a musical! My years of singing alto in the church choir and taking tap classes on Thursdays should come in handy, right?

I’d like some company in my creative madness. If you would like to join in this quest to become a truly creative person and to have some fun while doing it, feel free to share your breakout creative plans here. Use the comment section below or send me an email at shirleywilsey@gmail.com. Together we can change ourselves and may be even the world.