Creator, Critic And Courage
Don't let your Creator and your Critic live together. They'll never get along.
Writing a book is like living a life. The last chapter talked about the planners and pansters in writing and in life.
So, there’s also a creator and a critic in life … actually, they’re in you. Physiologically, two of the many parts of our brains are the creative and the critical parts – creative on the left and critical on the right … and never the twain shall meet … and never should you try to get them to meet. They’ll cancel each other out.
The creative part doesn’t remember past set-backs and failures and only knows of the wide blue sky above – no clouds, limitlessness and the simple access to God or your inner wisdom.
We all know how children will jump over cliff and put their hands on naked flames unless restrained by a caring parent. They don’t know what’s hot, cold or dangerous until they’ve experienced it. They have to learn for themselves and, if an adult tries to stop that learning, they’ll just try it later in life when no adults are there to censor them.
Because there’s no clouds (logic) in our creative sky, there’s no barrier to God, intuition or whatever we call that which is bigger than us. So, we play – we build our sandcastles, invent our stories and concoct the most illogical fantasies the critic might want to quash.
The critic develops later in life, typically during the second seven-year cycle. Its growth may be fertilized by the critics our parents, teachers and friends are.
So, the advice writers are given is to just sit down and write. Let the words flow onto your blank, white paper or blank, white screen. Put your internal critic (editor) aside and just let the words flow in whatever order they arrive in your mind.
As soon as you stop to edit or criticize something you’ve written, your creative writing will stop – creator and critic cannot operate in the same place and time. Sop, if you want to finish writing your book, finish writing your book. Don’t stop to analyse. Send your critic on a long holiday and just write, write and write.
Then, when the creator is finished and out of words for a long moment, send it on holiday and recall your critic to be let loose to pull it all apart and fix all the errors your creator left behind.
Most creative people – and that includes business people, parents and anyone else involved in a creative venture – don’t like the critical phase and there’s always the option of hiring someone else iron out the kinks … have an accountant assess your business proposal, have a lawyer check your funding application, check with your parents if they have any better ideas on parenting and so on.
Do what comes naturally, first – the creator – and then do the critical part last.
What many people try to do is write creatively and edit as thy go along. That slows the process and sucks out the juice of your artwork.
What many other people do is delay their project – book, business, travel plans or whatever – until they have all the details correct and the fully formed plan in their mind. They call themselves perfectionists but, most likely, they’re scared – they’re scared of starting their project for fear of failure, fear of ridicule and fear of making a fool of themselves.
Whatever you do and for whatever reason, putting creator and critic together is a recipe for disaster and stalled plans.
An interesting thing is that our creativity is with us from birth to death while our critic starts up in our teens (typically) and dies off well before we do.
So, as people age, they often find the creativity of their youth returning. Why? Because, as the critic withers, it leaves more space for the blossoming of creativity. The weakening critic ceases it’s holding-back of creativity.
So, what can we take from all of this? Two things:
1. Let the creator and critic do the jobs they were designed for in the time they need. Start with the creator to have, say, 80% of the work done and then let the critic tidy up all the loose ends … after the creator is finished.
2. If you are finding your creativity is improving with age, let it. That’s what’s supposed to happen!