³ÉÈË´óƬ

The pursuit of creativity is something I’ve written about before. It’s something that’s on my mind a lot, perhaps because I can’t seem to integrate creative practices into my life as easily as I’d like. 

Growing up, I loved to write. From maybe the age of 10, it was a favourite activity of mine. I’d fold together pages of A4 paper and staple them together to create a spine; the template for a real novel that was mine to fill. 

By the time I was 16, writing was something I did regularly and with fervour. In English, we spent a whole term writing stories and poetry, things which followed me out of the classroom and all the way home, where I would sit, hunched over my laptop, typing furiously as my bedroom grew dark, until I heard my parents call me for dinner. 

In year 12, English was different: we weren’t writing poetry and stories so much as we were critiquing them. I loved that, too, maybe even more than the creative stuff, which I guess is why, when I started my arts degree, I chose an English major. Nonetheless, I used the sea of available electives as an opportunity to continue creative writing at a university level, where the people around me were similarly eager to pour their hearts into their words. 

Suddenly, though, writing—which I had always found so instinctive, so reciprocal—was something to be studied and analysed in the pages of an academic workbook. In my naiveté, I suspected that writing was either a skill you had or you didn’t have, and so was shocked to hear a tutor describe our creative brains as muscles; things which needed regular engagement to function effectively.

As time passed, my dedication to creative writing waned. The ‘novel’ (which was really just a collection of reflections bound by a very loose storyline) of some 10,000 words that I’d been working on inconsistently for years slowed to a halt. It’s not that I ran out of words, more so that I froze, afraid that I wasn’t exercising my creative muscle enough. I was losing it through fear of losing it, and I’m not even sure I know what ‘it’ is.

Today, I often find myself noticing things in passing—people, places, tiny indiscriminate details—which send urgent signals to my brain, compelling me to get the words out. It’s a distinct impulse that I once heard a teacher compare to working in a crop field on a hot, still day; you’re calm and focused on your work when, suddenly, a dust storm appears in the distance and you must tear across the field, back into your house, and shut the door. Creativity flickers like that, with a purpose to be mined. And almost as soon as it appears, it’s gone again.

I don’t want to squander those moments, those indiscriminate details which, for reasons unknown, seem so important at the time. So often do I reach out to grab at them only to retreat, intimidated by – what? Myself? My fear of some deep-rooted lacking? What a waste to let those moments slip away when they could be born into permanency. After all, the point is in the pursuit, isn’t it? It’s in the passion and urgency that first compelled you to begin. The joy isn’t when you close the door on the dust storm, it’s when you first spy it in the distance, and you hit the ground running.