I often wonder why I will sometimes choose to not act upon a creative urge.  I will feel the inner lunges of the completeness that could be mine–the kind of peaceful feeling that you’ve said what you needed to say, you’ve done your work, you’ve done what you needed to do–In that way that only the creator can measure, it is ‘done’.  Yet, in spite of the lusciousness I know this feeling brings, I will still sometimes pass the creative urge on to find another creator and I wonder why?

I once read a story about a girl in college that was stumped on a writing assignment.  Her assignment was to write a 500-word essay on a historic Theatre on Main Street in the town where she lived.  After days of groveling, she could think of nothing that would be worthy of writing.  She was blocked.  Uninspired.  She went back to the professor for guidance and he suggested she start with the brick in the top left corner, describe that brick and see what happened.  The girl left in a quandary certain that she did not want to spend her essay writing about brick.  But at a loss for anything else to do, she followed the directive of her professor.  She wrote about the first brick and then for lack of anything else to write about, she wrote about the second brick and just as she was finishing her thoughts describing the second brick, however mundane they were, she felt something inside her open up and she was able to write, actually not stop writing.  She wrote a 5000-word essay on the intricate beauty of that old historic Theatre!

So as this is the nature of creativity.  Being blocked artistically, I think is really a clever disguise for choosing to be a victim of our own procrastination.  I have found this experience to be mine over and over.  So many times over, that it was too obvious for me to see. It was too obvious to see that the reason I will sometimes choose to block creativity in the interest of other ‘life’ things, is because subconsciously I know that once you respond to the drip, it quickly becomes a flood.  And thank God it does!  Otherwise, some of the greatest works in history would have never seen life.  The flood is hard to shut off.  And once I get into the flow of it, I don’t really want to shut it off.  It feels good to bathe in urges of creativity.

So I’ve learned that creative impulses are cunning.  They’re fantastically therapeutic and render great works and they are tricksters at the same time.  What it really comes down to at the moment of choice is this:  Am I willing to bathe in the floodwaters of creativity or am I just wanting to shut up this thing in my head?  If the latter, the solution is simple–just deny it life and it will go find another creator who is willing to bring it forth into being.  And I can rest assured that if I am the only artist suitable for the job, it will not cease.  Creativity that is frolicking in the wind riding its currents is content with any creator that catches her drift, but creativity that has already chosen her master is relentless!