On Connection

by Kae Tempest

It’s tempting to define talent comparatively, but you are not in competition with anyone but yourself. You are trying to be a better writer (or lover, or friend, or human) today than you were yesterday. Bettering anyone else is entirely without consequence. But how do you know you’ve done that? How can you tell if you’ve improved, if you are ‘any good’ without relying on the barometer of other people’s acceptance, approval or recognition? The creative compass is the instinct that drew you to your discipline in the first place, and when you are in connection with it, it will tell you everything you need to know about how you’re doing with your work. It will guide you through difficult creative decisions and will help you distinguish between a motivation to act from a need for approval on one hand, and a genuine creative compulsion on the other. Sometimes, the creative compass, a wounded pride and a fragile ego feel similar. They all want you to prove yourself. How do you know which is compelling you? How do you ‘refind your soul’? You learn by getting it wrong. Once you’ve gone miles down the wrong path and ended up in a creative dead end, you learn something about how it feels to have got ahead of yourself. It is extremely important to learn this way. Things will go wrong. You will make mistakes. You will end up doing things that don’t feel entirely right. This is how you learn how to dig at your compulsions, and really feel where they’re coming from. It’s a process of sen...