Valuing Your Creativity and Trusting Your Own Process. Uh Huh.

I visited a few really pretty blogs about writing today. They were all pastel  coloured and inspiring, upbeat and really 'c'mon now, you can do it!' They talked about creating space for your Important Work, valuing your creativity, and trusting in your own process. All really nice stuff.

What tickled my fancy too, was that all three I visited (following links from one to the other) talked about something that seemed to involve choosing a word that would sum up your goals/desires/focus for the coming year. One woman wrote in the comment section that she'd picked 'passion' for her word as it was something that would really challenge her. Cool. Another chose 'risk it all' or something like that, though that's a phrase rather than a word – I guess there are no hard and fast rules with this stuff. Someone else was going to 'write like a motherfucker', which made me laugh, especially as she had a coffee cup with this sentiment proclaimed in red on the side.

All pretty interesting. Even kinda amusing.

And I like the idea of it – it all sounds pretty good, y'know – all this seriousness about creativity and writing and living. And all that. I like the idea and even spent maybe thirty seconds trying to think up my own word for the year.

But I couldn't think of anything.

I guess I'm just a no-frills kind of girl. The only times I've given head-space to all those concepts of being all lovey-dovey towards my own creativity and setting up my own space dedicated to my Important Work – were when I wasn't producing any of that bloody important work. I remember there was always an edge of desperation to that process-trusting and space-mining and passion-valuing.

The fact is, when I'm being productive with my writing, all that stuff just flies out the window. I don't even have a dedicated space for my writing. If it's cold I'll plonk down on the lazee-boy by the fire, and if it's not cold, I'll likely sit on my bed, headphones on, music playing and typing as fast as my fingers can work.

I never spare a thought for creativity when I'm being creative. I don't care where I do all that Important Work. I don't even think of it as Important Work. That capitalized emphasis just initimidates the shit out of me. My work is important to me – right up there with family and loved ones blah blah, but if I went around valuing it left right and centre, I'd end up scaring myself with all that pressure of doing something Important.

And I can't think of a word that's gonna sum up my year for me, that's going to provide stimulation and focus and motivation. I'm way too busy piling page after page full of words to single any one of them out to frame and put on my wall. I guess if you forced me to, I'd choose a phrase something like this:

Babe, doing it already.

Filed under: Writing Journal