The difference between producing and creating
*Creative Courage is a free weekly newsletter about being alive as a creative person in the face of ~gestures at the world~ all this. Here, we get out of your heads, into our process & resist the attention economy. If you want to support this space, you are welcome to forward it, text it to a friend, or share parts of it on social media. Thank you for reading. ☼
In the first class of my MFA in poetry, six poets sat around a large table under fluorescent light with a venerable writer in his 70s at the helm. He passed around a sheet of paper: a list of Rules for Writing. I don’t remember any of them, but I think there was something about how you should write about your mother. (I guess the idea is that childhood makes for good material?)
I forgot the rules because after class, I quietly slipped the paper in the trash. I was done following advice from Men with Opinions.
I came from academic and the publishing world, and I thought the MFA would be completely different. Publishing and the academy are, for good reason, worried about Correctness. It’s part of the job to anticipate criticism. You must specialize in argumentation and in finding your way through “the discourse.”
I bet there was some wisdom on that list I threw away. And of course there is a time for everything, including a time to follow someone else’s rules. I know this as a parent; I often teach my toddler new things by showing her the steps.
But most adults are already plenty obedient to the 10 million criticisms we’ve absorbed over our lives. Most of us don’t need more “what to dos”, but more clarity about who we are being, who we are becoming, and why.
Energy comes from these better questions.
So it turned out the MFA wasn’t much different than anywhere else. My colleagues in the program were (still are) smart, curious, passionate people, but we were given such a limited set of questions to ask each other. We had to speak the language of the classroom, of “craft”.
Sometimes in workshops, if we were really lucky, something real happened. A light bulb turned on to show the writer their own work more clearly, see themselves and the world more clearly. More often though, we were limited in how we could support each other. We could politely prod at “the work” as if we were dissecting frogs, then go for beers and commiserate.
With those parameters set, we produced. We produced new ways to criticize. We produced drafts. Sometimes exciting things grew out of that work, but the whole time we felt weary because our fuel was our own effort and ambition. But there’s a more sustainable fuel.
Every spiritual tradition has a stream running through it that reminds us of the importance of being over doing. On some level, we know we need this.
We might act as if soul-deep satisfaction will come from paying off the mortgage, or a rave review in the Times, we know that it will not. We act as if it will be satisfying because it’s the most obvious thing to do next.
That’s capitalist alienation for you: you are what you produce. Doing is all there is. That’s why we can even experience doing what we love, or caring for those we love, as a grind — because action without connection to who you are and the world on the other side of your work is exhausting. It makes us feel disconnected because it is disconnecting.
That’s what I mean by producing. You can “produce” a song on the piano by pressing your fingers in the right way at the right time. To play a song comes from the inside out. You might not do this consciously, but on unconsciously you’ve asked, “Who am I in relationship to this song? To this piano? To the real or imaginary listener?”
When you create, you believe you’re in a living relationship with the world. And relationships aren’t about what you do together, but who you are together. You’re alive, open, and responsive because the relationship itself makes a new thing between you.
When you’re producing, you move outward, hoping it will move something inside you or in another.
Don’t get me wrong – you can make good things from producing. It’s bound to happen.
But when your actions flow out of the belief in who you are in relationship, your creation is alive. How could it not be?
I’ll explore this more deeply in a future newsletter.
No anti-advice column this week because I am working on the upcoming workshop! I’d still love to get your questions for an upcoming column though, so just hit reply and tell me what’s on your creative mind these days.
Speaking of the workshop, have you heard of the enneagram of personality? It describes your inner world and how you get in your own way in eerily-specific detail. (It’s also so fun.) I often use it in coaching to help you see yourself more clearly.
The workshop is called Your Creative Personality: Making with the Enneagram. It will be a playful and practical romp through this ancient system with actual tools for overcoming where you’re stuck. Register here! There’s a replay available if you can’t make it live.