Once upon a time, I played

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, although there is evidence of other desires, like a Mother (1977), a Skater (1978) and a Ballerina (1978). Maybe a Princess. But the memories about writing are the strongest.

I remember being 13 years old, in grade 8. I'd just won a short-story contest held by the high school I'd be attending in a few months. It wasn't the first contest I'd won nor the last, but this one stands out in my mind. I am proud and fiercely protective of my words. I am talking with my teacher about the fact that I want to be a writer. He tells me that this is wrong, that I'll never make any money, that I should be a journalist instead, because journalists are writers who get paid for writing.

Fast-forward to my third year at university, after I'd picked magazine writing as my major in my four-year journalism undergrad. There are something like twenty-seven of us, sitting at desks in an uber-modern classroom. And a teacher, a well-respected writer and journalist, is telling us that if we're a really successful freelance writer, we can expect to make about $27,000 per year. Canadian. How disappointed we were. How we staggered from that classroom and took the last few dollars left over from tuition and rent and went out that night to drown our sorrows in pints of beer because we'd likely be poor forever so what difference did it make if we had to eat KD for the rest of the month?

These things happened well before I became paralyzed, became mute, unable to communicate in a creative way. When I wrote short stories and plays and poetry. And sure, lots and lots of it was juvenile. I was a shy child, an overly dramatic, angst-ridden teen. But some of it was strong and good. All me.

While I can sort of get a sense of when I stopped being creative for creativity's sake, somewhere around the end of university, I'm trying to figure out why. Fear is at the heart of it, I'm sure. Busyness too. Journalism was serious. A smart choice, serious pursuit, solid profession. Writing, the kind that I really loved, wasn't exactly serious. At least not everyday. It wasn't always smart. It was introspective and painful and emotional. It was sometimes silly and playful, without direction or purpose. Not easy, putting yourself out there. Definitely not solid.

Are we taught to believe that only remuneration makes us successful? Makes us happy? That doing something creative just for the sake of being creative, for the sake of our sanity, for the sake of creating meaning out of this existence and maybe nothing more isn't worth the effort? And when does that lesson take it's stranglehold on us? When does that piece of us that is so fearless as a child wither and die or, at least, crawl away to hide? How can we coax it out again? How can we protect it when it does come out to play?

Writing is a tortuous process. As is design and other creative endeavours. It is painful and beautiful and full of angst or goodness or both. Sometimes it blows us away. Sometimes it just plain blows. The end result can be heartbreaking. Frustrating. It can be full of "staggering genius" like Dave Eggers or be superficial and silly and yet still very real and poignant, in a Helen Fielding/Sophie Kinsella kind of way.

Creation can feel wonderful. But usually that feeling arrives after it's all over and you've given birth to something really good. You feel empty, drained, but in a good way, like after hot, sweaty, intimate sex. You've given something of yourself and you cannot ever get it back and somehow it feels so right. How many times do creatives really get to feel that way in a lifetime? And is the joy diminished by the work or words never seeing the light of day, like paintings hidden in a closet? Or by facing a client or an editor with a loud voice or big red pen?

It's like in Kissing Jessica Stein when Josh says that he critiques and edits the work of other writers who aren't as talented as him but also aren't as paralyzed. "Any artistic frustrations I feel now I just take out on them." How dark that seems and yet, while it's not something I do for a living, it's a sentiment or situation I totally understand. It feels too hard, writing, creating, being that earnest and open all the time and it becomes easier not to, especially when you can make more money doing something else. I've met people like Josh, who seem to be frustrated creatives themselves, constantly taking others down a notch, telling them they aren't very good. And at some point, no matter how hard you try, a sliver of their words and actions gets inside and starts to fester and part of you begins to believe them.

In the years since university, I have struggled to find a voice. And the creative stuff I do has become full of that voice in varying degrees, the essence of me, slightly humorous, sometimes self-deprecating, even Mark Morford-like in it's rambling twistedness. I like to tell stories about things that happen to me. I like to use words to connect to others. Sometimes as a way to humanize the communication I'm doing, especially in the corporate world. Sometimes as a type of therapy if I'm writing for me. To know how I feel about something, I need to write.

This week I realized the risk of creativity. The fear of the red pen. At the day job. Because for the most part it's the only place I'm creating something, unless it's the wee work I do on this website or the photos I'm now taking. This is a danger. Because sometimes I don't win. Sometimes I get crushed. And as much as I believe that I shouldn't give so much of myself at work, that I shouldn't let it be personal, it is. There is some element of the work I do that is me; my voice is there somewhere. I believe in my company. I believe that I can make a difference. That I can help something real to be broadcast out there and help reflect that we are real and human and wonderful and funny and smart and all that good stuff. Because we are. And so, for the most part, I put myself out there everyday. And sometimes I get burned.

Being a so-called creative is tricky, because creativity is personal. Has to be. Or the end product rings false. And when your clients are creatives too, they see through the BS really fast.

How do we face all these challenges, the red pen, the lack of faith in the work we do and not start to believe that we cannot do it? How do we keep the faith?

Maybe it's bad that we push kids into thinking about what they want to be when they grow up. How can you know what you'd like to do for the rest of your life when you're 13?

While I don't regret the path I took and certainly don't regret where I've ended up or what I'm doing, most days at least, sometimes you just have to wonder about the other path. If I'd made a different decision when I was 13, if I'd never moved away to school, never left home, if I'd studied English and read really great writers non-stop for four years, what would my life look like?

Would I have faced the corporate world? Would I be so very afraid to play?

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