Being Creative Scares Us. So What Do We Do About It?

Up until three years ago, all my creativity was hidden in Word files on my laptop.

I always enjoyed writing. As a kid, I’d constantly write and illustrate my own stories, and Writing Workshop was my favourite lesson in school.

But as I got older, I noticed that other people were really good at writing. It got more difficult to make the ideas flow. I found it was competitive to get my work noticed. I started writing only when I had a really good idea. Which wasn’t often.

Finally, I’d only jot things down once in a blue moon. When I did, they were just for me.

It’s the age-old story: fear of attempting creativity. I was afraid of putting myself out there, afraid of looking like an amateur, afraid that my ideas were dumb. I was worried I wasn’t creative enough. Even if I was creative, did I want to be? Describing yourself as “a creative person” makes you that person. So I was afraid of that, too.

Well, I still don’t think I’m creative, and I’m still scared. It can feel harder than ever to attempt creativity. But I’m creating anyway. And a lot of that’s down to some great advice that I heard from authors and artists.

Here are a few of my favourites.

Fear is going to follow you around. But it’s going to be okay

T.S. Eliot said, “Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.” Fear is an all too common companion for creative people. It’s not a sign that something’s wrong; it’s probably just a sign you’re alive and being creative.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love, talks about this subject in the TED Radio Hour podcast episode The Source of Creativity. Success, just as much as failure, triggered fears for Gilbert. After her bestselling book was released, she started being asked if she felt like she’d ever top such a success. Would she ever be recognised for her work again? And Gilbert had to admit to herself that yes, her best work might be behind her. And fear would engulf her.

But over time, she realised how crazy it was to be afraid of her own creativity – and she formulated her own ability to cope.

You can read lots of motivational talk that tells you to “kick fear’s butt” and so on, but Gilbert doesn’t do that. She says:

I have come to believe that Creativity and Fear are in fact conjoined twins; they share all the same major organs, and they cannot be separated without killing them both. And you don’t want to murder Creativity just to destroy Fear! (People do this all the time, and it’s tragic….don’t do it.)

Accepting that Creativity is likely to be accompanied by Fear is not failure, but simple acknowledgement. Gilbert goes on to describe this in an analogy of a road trip. She and Creativity are in the front seats, making decisions and choosing the route, and Fear is sitting in the back. That’s ok. Fear is coming along for the ride, but it’s not allowed in the driver’s seat.

Fear is more like your annoying younger sibling than an evil overlord that needs to be vanquished. Acknowledge its presence, know that it’s probably not going anywhere, but tell it to stay in its lane.

Owning what you have to offer

Stephen King is unapologetic about what he writes, but he wasn’t always. Even while his books were commercially successful, he’d have critics nipping at his heels and calling his work schlocky and low-brow. But King has become philosophical about this over the years.

In On Writing (one of my favourite books about creativity), King says that his talent just so happens to lie in spooky tales, ensemble epics and page-turning thrillers. He’s described his books as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries”, but he doesn’t seem to care. It’s what he loved to read as a child, and it’s what he still loves to read – so that’s he writes. He says:

I was built with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin, that’s all. If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It’s what I have.

In other words, what of it? He doesn’t need to be anything else.

King isn’t saying we should pigeon-hole ourselves. No, his point is that you shouldn’t feel pressured to be anything that you’re not. If people are going to criticise you for what you love to make, then maybe it wasn’t for them anyway.

Martha Graham took a more lilting approach to this same sentiment:

It is not your business to determine how good [your expression] is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Maybe it won’t kill. Just do the best you can with what you have.

Keep showing up

Many of us procrastinate on being creative because of fear – worrying that we’ll disappoint ourselves or others. It’s important to show up anyway.

There’s a romantic notion that creative inspiration hits you like a bolt, but I think in nine times out of 10 this is a myth. Pablo Picasso said once, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.” The implication here is that Picasso had already started working before he felt inspired. That takes some courage. It’s easy to wait till you’re ready, but the idea here is that you show up and start work anyway.

Athletes may feel tired or out of shape, but they show up for practice if they want to be great at it. Creative people need to do the same thing. In her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Twyla Tharp wrote:

Athletes know the power of triggering a ritual… A basketball player comes to the free-throw line, touches his socks, his shorts, receives the ball, bounces it exactly three times, and then he is ready to rise and shoot, exactly as he’s done a hundred times a day in practice. By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.

Habits are harder to be afraid of.

Sir Ken Robinson (who can hear in his famous TED Talk about creativity in schools) echoes the idea that you have to start working before you’re sure:

Talent is often buried. You have to go looking for it and create the conditions for it.

Making creativity a routine helps you stay in the zone for that talent to appear.

Here’s one final thought that I enjoyed reading in my research:

Our lives are the research laboratories of our unique possibilities. The worst thing that we can do to our creativity is to be ashamed of it; to believe that what we create, or want to create isn’t good enough and will never be good enough, and therefore we have no right to do it. This is when we need to get out our tenacity and put it to work in service of our imagination, regardless of what we are feeling.

What I am capable of doing is my natural habitat. May as well accept it for what it is, and make it the best it can be.