AND SO WILL MY CREATIVE PROCESS SURVIVE?

If you are reading this piece, I am going to, as usual, spiral and just dance around the page, and the fact that I have to give this disclaimer before I write always marvels me, because who says my brain is supposed to operate chronologically? Is it a crime to just share my thoughts as is? Why do I feel like someone will judge my distortion? Is the world even moving in a successive, progressive way? Is there one right way of doing anything?

I have come to accept that normal may be good, but it’s not entirely my reality. My brain is an ebb and flow of memories, to-do lists, mistakes, hurt, joy, and language. It is the blessing and curse of being a creative, of having a gift to steward. There is a burden, a guilt that comes with not creating when and how you desire to create. It feels like something is eating at you, like you are drowning, like you are failing. I know this because I have been there for many weeks, in this slump of not doing or doing but not in the way I think to be enough.

I consider my ability to write a gift, but a strange, demanding type of gift, if I can call it that. A gift stricto sensu is a present given to someone without asking for anything in return, but my craft is asking everything of me, everything. So on some days, it does not feel like this blessed offering that should ideally liberate me; it feels like a hostage situation. I told someone once that if I don’t write, then I die, and they said, God forbid. I want to forbid it too. To say that I can go on into the world without maybe journaling or scribbling or telling stories or stewarding language and rendering it on the page, but the truth is that a life that doesn’t involve any of the above is exactly the kind of life I do not want. And I mean also the process, I want the process, like the whole pain of staring at a wall for hours to mine a sentence, the reading through tons of books to help you frame a complete thought. I promise I am not a fan of torture, but there is something innately powerful and alluring about the writing and creative process that I deeply respect. And it is only for this reason that I sometimes worry about Artificial Intelligence, this new age of writing, and writing fast with AI.

This post is not about that AI or all its nuances, but I was once in a room full of creatives arguing for and against the use of AI in the creative process, and I was wide-eyed. The lines have blurred, and everyone has all sorts of justifications for outsourcing their thinking to a machine, and oh, this is not a self-righteous post. She who is with sin cannot be the first to cast a stone. Please read the sin very loosely. The point is, I create my best work when I go through the process, and I allow it to go through me. That’s how I approach refinement, that’s how I honor the stories and the life I want to render on the page, but the cares of life are fighting for my process. Capitalism is too, and maybe I should start a series on being a creative navigating corporate and how my dreams as an artist have been tested in both good and difficult ways. I think I am writing in an attempt to find people like me going through it and to say, make una help me, or really, you are not alone. You need to protect your process, and as spontaneous as I pride myself to be, I have realized, having been working a serious corporate job for a while, that I need structure and I need a plan. My creative process must survive. You have to be almost militant about it. Like literally, it’s a fight in today’s day and age, and we have to win.

I am also struggling with reading. I buy books when I can. I am the first to register to attend a lunch or reading, even though I may not attend. I know about the authors and maybe to an extent the premise of their work, so if you put me in a room full of book lovers, I will hold my own. But I also feel like a fraud, like I only have surface knowledge of things, and deep calleth unto deep. But I am not finishing the books. I wonder if it’s my attention span or the fact that I am trying to read everything and anything. From poetry to books on development to fiction. I can go from reading a short story about travel to a review of How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, and from reading a poem about birds to listening to Edible Economics by Ha-Joon Chang on Audible. I have recently decided that, to help my thought process, I’ll go back to reading jurisprudence, logic and philosophical thought from my days studying law in university. My heart is asking me to slow down and gather myself, my brain is asking me to keep going, and I’ll find my rhythm. My time is telling me that whatever I need to do, I need to do it fast, I need to decide.

I have not found a solution to my quagmire yet, but I know literature, writing and creativity are important because one of the reasons I am writing this and will most likely publish it, as disjointed as it is, is because I have come to believe truly that the only way out is through. Not under or above, not by running or waiting fir perfection, but through. As per whatever I am going through, I should be going through it because that’s how I get out. So I am going through it by writing and deciding to publish this, by discovering new music, and by reading still, even as my attention span disappears before my eyes.

This is an incomplete piece, matter of fact, three budding essays in one, and I can spend my days leaving this in the drafts, but I say, how about I share my contemplation and struggle? What do you have to say about it?

Ps: All typos and grammatical errors belong to my alter ego Black Rose, that girl be doing all sorts!