Creative Courage Series: Minor Preambles

Creative
Courage
Series

I‘m planning to talk about four fear/courage issues that can affect creative people:

• The courage to be open.
• The courage to focus.
• The courage to confront expectations and be judged.
  
• The courage to deal with the world.

I don‘t think all the issues I‘ll be talking about are equally important for all creators; it‘s almost trite to say this, but each of us is likely to be more fearful in some areas than others. For example, in my own writing and illustration work, the courage to be emotionally open (the first item in the series) is not usually a problem — my personality tends to make this a non-issue. (Actually, people occasionally advise me to be less open!) Obviously, you‘ll have to figure out for yourself which items in the list are issues for you.

By the way, the word “creative” has been so overused and devalued that it has come to mean approximately... nothing. We have CEOs, accountants, and shoe salesmen describing the way they work as “creative.” (If you happen to be a CEO, accountant, or shoe salesman, why, ah… [cough] you‘re welcome to read this, but it‘s not really aimed at you.) I use creative in the traditional, narrow sense — referring to the work of artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and similar creators.

I turned off reader comments in this blog for now because I only check in here occasionally. Feel free to contact me by regular email if you like.

Enough with the preambles. Stay tuned for the first creative courage item, which I‘ll talk about soon: the courage to be open.