Happy Independence Day, Monkey Lovers! I am a girl who loves a theme so when my website duties fall on a holiday you know I just can’t help myself. I decided to combine the ideas of independence, freedom, and creativity to bring you this week’s post.
The term “creative independence” often brings to mind using creative passion as a means of financial freedom. While I admit to secretly wishing I could indulge my passion on a daily basis and have it afford me a comfortable lifestyle, I will leave those flights of fancy for another day. Instead, I want discuss how creativity provides a more personal freedom.
“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” — Henry David Thoreau
Creativity has provided me a passport to visit countless extraordinary places. I’ve visited towering castles, ethereal forests, floating cities, and buried ruins. Through my characters I’ve experienced thrilling adventure, profound loss, and undeniable triumph. By using my imagination I have a fondness within my heart for people and places that have only existed in my mind and on paper. That is the true power of creative freedom. It’s the freedom to explore concepts and new worlds all within the relative safety of my own creative spirit.
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo
Every creative endeavor is a journey. Sometimes the ideas strike like lightning as fingers hurry across the keyboard to keep up. Other times the idea needs to be nurtured and coddled. Then there are the ideas that stealthily flit by, visible only in corner of the eye, elusive and taunting. Each one is worth the effort and the time. We need only to surrender ourselves to the idea. When that happens the creativity flows freely and a story is born.
In these moments we can create a full story, a hook, a bit of dialogue, a character or even just fragmented sentences. Whether or not anything becomes of these ideas doesn’t matter. It only matters that the creator give it the time it is demanding. Something inside of ourselves is trying to come out, so simply put, let it. We need to let our creativity do it’s magic and get out of our own way. Over-thinking will extinguish even the wildest firestorm.
“Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.” — Erich Fromm
Lastly, and most importantly creativity allows us the freedom to explore aspects of ourselves. My personal experience with this is that every character that I have created has reflected something inside of myself. My most heroic characters usually come when I am feeling the most afraid. My strongest characters usually come to me when I am feeling weakest. My most vulnerable characters usually come when I am feeling my most confident. Each character expresses something that I am somehow in need of. Sure, it sounds like metaphysical mumbo-jumbo but the muses work in mysterious ways. Who are we to question them?
