The Art of Holding Things Lightly
Your creativity shouldn’t be a yoke. It should be more like a feather that you hold in your hand.
I have a paradoxical proposal for you: Take your creativity seriously, but hold it lightly.
It’s a Zen koan of sorts, a riddle. So much creativity advice is about digging in, fortifying your commitment, developing routines and systems of accountability. All of that is important. The novel you’re working on is important. The poem you wrote yesterday is important. The idea for a story that you’re going to imagine tomorrow morning is important.
At the same time, it’s all ephemeral. It’s easy to clutch your talons into a project, but the tighter you hold it, the less space you might give it. Sometimes you clutch it so tightly that you’re unable to leave it behind, even though all signs point to moving on. It isn’t helpful to push, grab, or pull at things, and yet it is somehow easy to allow creativity to become such a melee.
I had a novel like this. I worked on it for 10 years. The longer I worked on it, the tighter I held onto it, even though I felt that there was something missing, something wrong. Still, I listened to all of the voices telling me to be determined, that my persistence would burnish whatever was missing, and with just one more draft, I…
