The creative act as diary entry

Every creative expression is in essence a rough draft–an honest attempt to portray what is never finished.

Perfectionism is the biggest barrier to creativity. Almost any creative act is messy and imperfect by its very nature. It can always be improved upon–it’s a static portrayal or fleeting perspective on something in a dynamic and dizzying world. Our creative works are tableaus frozen in time brought back to life again and again by their ensuing interpretations–and those evolving understandings can happen privately or publicly.

Creativity is bold (and sometimes erratic) experimentation in our continual quest for coherence. It’s capturing an object, moment or scene in the indifferent flow of time and arresting it for deeper exploration. We relentlessly seek meaning, and the creative process is our often clumsy attempt to extract understanding from an episode and place it within a larger shared narrative. 

On a podcast episode entitled “Protocols to Access Creative Energy and Process,” renowned music producer Rick Rubin offers advice on overcoming creative blocks and silencing the inner critic that tries to suppress our creative energies. He said in effect that we should approach any creative act as a diary entry–and if we succeed in that reframing, we will value the honesty and authenticity of the work over its reception.

Art is subjective–and I for one have buried many ideas and projects because I anticipated a negative reaction or no response at all. Social media has exacerbated this anxiety–if a post doesn’t score highly in vanity metrics, was the effort and time devoted to it a waste? Over the past year or so, it has become starkly apparent that algorithms serve up what we like (or what we are conditioned to like) rather than what we need. I have since deleted social media apps from my phone after becoming irritated with the heaps of junky, uninspiring content that were being dumped all over my feed.

As a society, we are over-curated and under-nourished when it comes to meaning. Rubin’s notion of creative expression as diary entry is liberating. We can scrub off the varnish. Our work will evolve with us. Sometimes I look over a past piece of my writing and begin nitpicking–“I should have used that word over this one,” “Wow, I could have explained that concept better,” “That sentence just runs on and on,” “My prose is too dense.” 

And if we are growing, of course we are going to identify a multitude of errors and weaknesses in our past work. But what’s amazing is that we had the courage to capture who we were at a particular point in time–the thoughts lingering in our head, the doubts that tried to deter us from the work, the message written on our hearts that we felt compelled to share. 

Our creative compositions and productions will never attain perfection, but we will progress through our fidelity to the process. I would say that 90% of life is how we live with the mistakes. Don’t be a prisoner to perfectionism–immerse yourself in the mess and be vulnerable. Creativity goes deeper than the substance of what you say or produce; every creative act is an invitation for intimate connection.