Sinfully uncreative

Now that I’ve had this stupid little blog going for a whole month and written something for it more days than I haven’t, I wonder why I didn’t start it earlier. It’s fun, and it’s easy. All I have to do is write down the things I talk to myself about all day anyway. And as anyone who writes already knows, the process itself produces more ideas. Every one of my posts so far has come out longer than I initially imagined it would be. Once I begin saying things, I find I have more to say. 

In the past thirty days I’ve done more creating than I had done in the previous three years. That’s not so much a statement of the achievement of the past month as it is a statement of the tragedy of the time preceding it. 

Most of us spend hardly any time being independently creative. The things we create for school typically consist of phony ideas crammed into structures determined by others. The things we create for work (if anything) typically reflect no ideas at all and adhere to structures even more rigid and imposed. And in both cases, it’s someone else (the prof or the boss) initiating the project.

I now feel mildly ashamed for having spent so much time creating nothing of lasting and unique value. Sure, I’ve spent plenty of time creating valuable things like good meals or my physical fitness (exercise is a type of creativity), but these things are transitory and difficult to share with many people. There are few tangible items from my first 25 years that I can point to as my own.

For a long time I thought about doing more writing, starting a blog, doing something other than just going to work everyday and fulfilling the few personal responsibilities necessary to maintain my self-respect. But I always made some kind of excuse. I would say I had no time (untrue), that I had no ideas (How could I know that until I tried playing with them?), or that I would have a tiny or nonexistent audience (Maybe so at first, but who cares?).

Now I think there’s no excuse for any self-proclaimed intellectual not to have a blog. You’re a thoughtful and articulate person, right? Then why aren’t you writing and sharing it?

The internet would be a dream come true for any struggling writers of previous centuries. It’s an instantaneous and free vanity press. At the click of a button, your ideas are available to an audience of—potentially—the entire world. It’s a way to practice your craft at almost no risk. Anyone with a genuine love of writing would take advantage of that in a heartbeat.

Lest I sound grandiose, I should point out there are only about four people who currently read this blog of mine. I lack either the confidence or the shamelessness (sometimes the same thing) to promote myself very heavily, so my audience remains small. But still, the opportunity for me to reach more readers is available should I choose to take it. 

In university English programs, you hear a lot of talk about being a writer. Kids say they want to write novels or that they want to enroll in an MFA program and “learn to be a writer.” I was always skeptical of these kids, and now even more so. The first question I would ask any undergrad who says he wants to write is “Do you have a blog that you post on regularly and at length?” If not, why not? Blogging is writing. If you’re not willing to write about difficult questions you haven’t totally answered, for no pay, for no real recognition, and on a consistent basis, writing probably isn’t your thing.

Most of the college kids with authorial ambitions just like the idea of proudly holding up a well-received hardcover book with their name on it. But to succeed at it, I think you have to like the mundane and unglamorous part of just putting words on a page. I’m not saying I will succeed at it. I’m only saying that great novelists and essayists have probably all started small, written what came to them naturally, and taken whatever audiences and publishing opportunities they could get. 

Seizing opportunities and practicing are usually the only ways to get good at something.  Excluding a few extreme outliers, no one begins any career as a titan. Creating daily is how they get there.