Notes on Creative Purpose
Creativity is not just having novel ideas
Yes, your work matters. The soul craves beauty, etc. You could plant an image in someone’s head that saves their life. You could give someone an idea they turn over in their minds as they try to sleep.
But I don’t want to talk about why the work itself matters right now; I want to talk about why I think creative engagement as a way of being matters so much — personally and collectively.
Creatives are experts in process itself. Our culture doesn’t celebrate this ability. It loves what it can control in advance.
Yet the most common interview question for someone who’s made something is, “What inspired you?” Because to pay attention to something invisible — a thought, an image, a possibility, and THEN, over time, to shape it into something visible?? What sorcery!
Because of this, creatives know in our bones that every day is NOT supposed to have the same quality — a series of steps where we hop from one win to the next. We forget it, but we know it.
Sometimes I fantasize about a 10 year plan where all I have to do is follow the rules and I’ll get there though. Where? Somewhere me and my loved ones can coast, I suppose.
Alas, I have chosen a life in the Olympics of trust, of responding to what is in front of me. That is, a creative life.
Creativity is an existential, spiritual, and social issue because creativity defines how we relate to life.
I am not being cute. I have a very particular definition of creativity: a collaboration with life to draw out more life. And life is process.
Denying this is domination — violentingly pushing back on life as process. It always leads to stagnation: artificial death.
Like stripping a landscape for parts until the birds’ songs are silent.
You cannot dominate the creative process. When you try, it is something other than the creative process. At its best, creativity is collaboration over domination.
This is why creativity is not just having novel ideas and executing them. Elon Musk has lots of ideas! He also has the money to pay other people to figure them out, to hire and fire people until they obey his will, and to cover over his failures instead of reckoning with them. His vision is not a collaboration with life, but a fantasy of domination.
Octavia Butler showed us in her novel The Parable of the Sower, “All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.”
No experience is excluded from the process: wanting to curl up under the covers, thinking with an empty brain, squealing with delight, acquiring haters, gazing upon your efforts with satisfaction.
No part of the process defines it. No moment lasts.
If you’re reading this, you know all that. You practice its truth every day. Your process is the point.
What part of the process are you in now? How do you stay awake to it so it can move through you?
Love,
Maria
P.S. I’ve poured my own creative crisis, insights, and stubborn love for process into a new book. Making Time: A New Vision for Crafting a Life beyond Productivity is now available for pre-order!
To make this launch a little more special, I’m offering some exclusive bonuses for pre-orders. These include:
early access to select chapters
a copy of the audiobook version to boot (two books for one!)
and a workshop just for those who pre-order called Creating in the Face of Chaos: A Maker’s Guide to Change.
If you’ve connected with any of my work, I have a feeling you’ll find something for you in Making Time. Pre-order your copy here, because who doesn’t want to find a book in the mail in the new year?