Three Unhelpful “Truths” About What It Takes to Be a Creative
By: Alana Hippensteele
Tags: Writing Tips, Creative Writing, Creative Process, Creativity, Writing

J.E.D. Esquirol, 1838

Throughout my long, weird life, I have been told a few unhelpful “truths” about what it takes to be a creative that have not only been unhelpful, but also harmful to my ability to actually create work. Often out of kindness, people apply these clichés as advice intended to imbue “lessons learned” onto fresh ears. Granted, these ideas may perhaps be true for these individuals, in some way, but they are not true for everyone.

In actuality, these “truths” may be things these individuals have told themselves to excuse or explain behaviors in their own lives or the lives of others they know. However, these ideas, when forced upon the ears of the young, can cause more harm than good.

Creatives Are Naturally Unstable and Sensitive People

The first unhelpful “truth” is that creatives are more unstable with lives more naturally imbued with strife and pain than others, which lends itself to creating better art. This is a trope that is often applied because there are many sensitive people who have experienced strife and pain (as many humans existing on the planet have) who also create art. The sensitivity of these individuals may be natural, or may be something learned, or perhaps even a combination of the two. But not all creatives are inherently sensitive, and not all sensitives are inherently creative.

Although many sensitives might be more affected, altered, or perhaps more easily harmed by the world around them, creatives do not inherently need to be sensitive to their external world to apply interesting alterations to it in a creative way that engages others. However, there are central stories that have helped to define the plight of the creative as the tragically sensitive, and thus also “unstable,” such as the story of Vincent Van Gogh and his woeful ear. This story has been applied and misapplied to the plight of the creative, assuming mental illness somehow lends itself naturally to creative inspiration.

Vincent van Gogh, Dr Gachet, 1890, private collection

Au contraire, my friend, mental illness does not naturally lend itself to creative work, and mental illness is not inherently connected to sensitivity or instability in one’s life. In fact, there are many individuals with mental illness who may seem externally quite stable who are struggling exceedingly internally, while others may seem incredibly unstable externally while remaining quite peaceful and stable in their minds.

For many creatives with mental illness who do create art, it is often in spite of mental illness that they are able to produce anything creative and successfully face the rejection inherent in presenting creative work to the public. There are numerous creatives who have overcome mental illness to create work, such as the author John Green, who has OCD, or the comedian Maria Bamford, who has bipolar disorder and OCD. Their experience of mental illness may directly inform their work, such as in the case of Maria Bamford, or it may not directly do so at all, such as in the case of John Green.

There is no rule that one must be in pain to be creative, and in fact, I think intense pain may be an unhelpful tool in thoughtfully assessing one’s own work with enough distance to adequately address issues and think through ways of improving it. Of course, this may not be true for everyone or true for all mediums, but I have found personally that I am not always my most interesting when I am in the throes of despair. I may find my own woe incredibly relevant and important, but that may not translate naturally to conveying what is actually interesting about my sadness to anyone else.

Creatives Are Compelled to Create

The second unhelpful “truth” is that creatives are compelled to create. This is something I have heard over and over again throughout my life, and it is frankly unhelpful and harmful crap. I believe this can actually be a way of excusing the work it takes to motivate oneself to make anything, as it allows one to say to oneself, “I’m not actually a creative because I don’t feel like creating right now,” instead of, “I don’t feel like creating right now, but I need to push myself to do so anyway because it’s important to me.”

This “truth” has been incredibly harmful in my life, as it denies the actual work that it takes for many creatives to not only get out of bed in the morning, but also devote some portion of their day to making something worth presenting to an audience of anyone else. Committing to creative work is an act of self-motivation that takes effort, and sometimes requires some additional internal coaxing and outright lies, to make it to the point of sitting down (or standing, as it were) and actually doing the work.

This is because creative work is hard. It takes time, it takes skill, and it takes effort. Sometimes it also takes collaboration with other creatives, which adds even more complexity to the stew of difficulty and vexation inherent in making anything interesting.

I still struggle with this “truth,” as it is hard to know when it is the right time to force myself to do creative work I am too tired to do, or when it’s time to listen to my exhaustion and do nothing. There is no clear rule, but the false notion that my exhaustion inherently means that I’m not “intended” to create, by perhaps some god-figure doling out creative virtue to the certain lucky ones who feel compelled to “art” in their free time, does not help me any when I attempt to convince myself that the harder thing may be the right thing for me.

Create for Yourself

I have been told by many well-intentioned individuals that true creative inspiration comes when one is creating for oneself. I think this idea is derived from a valid place, as it is from one’s own tastes that one is best able to pull and develop one’s own style. However, I have found that creating for myself truly misses the point.

No one creates art in a vacuum. Although people may argue that art exists for art’s sake, this does not deny that art is primarily a method of communication, whether the audience is considered or not.

For me, this also means that creating art for “myself” means that my writing has no idea what its purpose is. Instead, it remains lonely like a melody hummed while sitting on a toilet at a rest stop. Although the melody may seem beautiful to me, as I stare at my feet while they gently tap to the rhythm on the dirty bathroom floor, the sight somehow can remain vaguely pathetic and unnecessary to observers.

I have long been concerned with why my writing, when my audience is primarily me, is so god damn sad. Others have remarked on it after happening upon my blog, and I have always found their misgivings understandable (I have them as well). I have explained the seeming dark depression my writing conveys by telling myself that perhaps the act of writing is tapping into some well of sadness in my soul that I am not able to naturally tap into otherwise. I also figured that if I continued to write, eventually my writing would stop being quite so sad.

Unfortunately for me, that cessation never came. I did not find that “writing for myself” ever lent itself to writing that was anything but dreary, verging on maudlin.

This revelation came to me when I had the potential for an actual audience in a friend who was kind enough to offer to read my work. Immediately, I was better able to formulate my goals and have a clearer sense of what would be interesting to write in a way that person might enjoy. Ultimately, this may perhaps say more about me and what may be some deep-seated repression of sadness and pain that I don’t know how to process, but let’s put that off to a later date.

Creative Work Is Hard

The reality that these “truths” try to simplify is, ironically, quite simple: Creative work is hard. There is no easy answer that can be applied to everyone that explains how to create work the right way, which ultimately means each of us have to figure it out for ourselves, while probably failing miserably in the process. However, it is not necessary to be sensitive, mentally ill, or emotionally unstable to make creative work; those things may be a part of a person’s reality, but they do not naturally make creative work harder or easier.

We also don’t have to be compelled to create to be a creative. Like anything, committing to a practice takes effort, and creative work is in its nature a practice. It is an act or process that one continually decides to engage in, which takes effort to actually do. Not having the energy to do it doesn’t mean a person shouldn’t do it, it just means it may require either more energy than that person would like to give, or more energy than they have to give at that time. Either way, committing to a creative practice can take self-reflection and self-compassion that is hard for everyone, and this difficulty may not ever be alleviated by a push from a god-being to finally “art” right.

Iconographis Photographique de la Salpêtrière, Extase, 1878

Lastly, work doesn’t need to be created for ourselves in order to be valid or good, as we may not be the best audience for our own work. I think I hate my own writing more than anyone else could ever care enough to do, which can either make me a fantastic critic or a terrible one, depending on my mood. Either way, having an audience in mind, or even a specific person in mind that is willing to read my work, has helped me infinitely to make work that is less maudlin and pathetic. When I imagine who I am writing to, I am no longer shouting down a well about trauma from 20 years ago and listening to my own voice echoing as my reply, and I am instead yelling at a friend across a room about something interesting I was thinking about that I think they might also like. The latter is definitely my preference.