Together we can do this!

Writers are artists.  As created beings, we are destined to create. It is part of our sense of self.

We have only one problem. FEAR!

Doubts arise, swarming around in self-talk, awful critiques, and sleepless nights: I'm a phony. Others are better. I'm not good enough. Nothing I have to say is worth saying. I have no talent. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'll never be as good as (fill in the blank).

And so on.

In creating, we enter dangerous territory. We reveal ourselves.

The reality is, we can hear the music in our heads far better than the way our fingers play it on the keys, and this is something that never changes.  As Stanley Kuntz once said, "The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance comes when you try to convert it into language."

But, oh, how we love it, the creative endeavor, I mean, the vivid colors of paint on the palette, the damp unformed clay in our hands, the potential message that comes from a certain pen, the exquisite sound when a bow is drawn across the strings of a violin; and we are hooked.

David Bayles and Ted Orland in their reassuring book ART & FEAR say, "Talent is a snare and a delusion. In the end, the practical questions about talent come down to these: Who cares? Who would know? And What difference would it make? And the practical answers are: Nobody, Nobody, and None."

Good work, they imply, is NOT synonymous with perfect work. Work is flawed. We're human beings, after all, human beings making art. If we demand perfection, we are denying our universal humanity.

So why not take a huge risk and give it our best shot? What a relief to know that we simply must make peace with our striving, imperfect, all-too-human selves, and continue on in spite of the fear. What choice do we have? Creating is about self-expression, but it's really more than that, isn't it? Bayles and Orland say is succinctly: "The need to make art may not stem solely from the need to express who you are, but from the need to complete a relationship with something outside yourself. As a maker of art you are custodian of issues larger than self."

This is what Julia Cameron tells us in THE ARTIST'S WAY and exactly what I tell my journaling students on Thursday mornings. It's what people like Sir Ken Robinson and Joseph Campbell and Natalie Goldberg and so many others have been saying for a long time.

We are creative beings; therefore, we must create. To do so, we must face the fear and trembling, risk all, and continue on.