Friday, November 2, 2007

Creating Something New



If you're wondering what all this is about, please read my first few posts about following in the footsteps of published authors until I find my own way, starting with Here's the Plan.

Yesterday I posted about Michael Palmer making time for being a dad on top of his medical and writing careers. Being a parent surely does cramp your style if you like to set aside large chunks of time to write, musing and typing and taking coffee or chocolate breaks.

I have a confession to make. If I had all day to write, muse, and ingest comfort food, I would write less than I do now. Most of the time, I would get exactly zero words down on the page. There's no sense of urgency in a schedule like that. Urgency isn't the only thing needed for creation, though.

Almost as soon as I could read, I wrote and illustrated stories about princesses and poor girls from humongous families and aliens. When I reached a more self-conscious age, I stopped writing because I started wondering what other people would think of my stuff. Enter sixteen years of almost uninterrupted writer's block.

There were four things that helped me break the block: Dr. Clark's Career Development course in grad school that helped me see what career I really wanted, the book Wishcraft by Barbara Sher, discovering National Novel Writing Month, and getting pregnant.

It's the fourth block-breaker that really puzzled me. Getting pregnant? Shouldn't that have slowed me up, made me sick and tired, and given me a different priority? It did all those things, but those things suddenly didn't interfere with my writing. My day job suffered and I fell asleep involuntarily at 8:00 every night. I daydreamed about my baby and planned for him. I also worked steadily on a novel until I reached my goal of 50,000 words.

After my baby was born, I completed most of another novel, submitted short stories, started a copywriting business, and got a few articles published.

So now I have a theory about creativity. When my body accepted the role of creating a new human being, my mind was able to take the role of creator, too. I no longer thought I wasn't good enough to bring something new into being.

How amazing is that?

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