I saw this question posed to a creative influencer I follow on Instagram. There was a poll attached which showed that a large majority – bordering on 90% of voters – said no.
This really surprised me and got me thinking.
It always irks me when people ask ‘is it nice to be creative?’ because in my head, being creative is a state of mind (an unintentional army recruiting reference). So it offends me when someone puts that question to me as I’ve been mistaken for lowering my standard as a known creative person. Which is silly but it’s one of those times where being stubborn about knowing who you are is entirely allowed. It’s that toxic assumption of thinking someone is not a certain way because they are failing your expectations or definition of creative.
Once in secondary school, there was an instance where we had to get references from our form tutors about our general character to pass onto universities (I think) to show we were good human beings. I had received my personal reference back from a particular member of staff, my form tutor at the time, and in it was the word ‘quiet’.
To this, I took great offence. I never used to be a confrontational person but through the latter half of secondary school, I was crossing the really bizarre (but unsuspecting at the time) bridge between introverted and a place between that and selectively extroverted. I bartered like a red-faced butcher with this tutor down a corridor that day, telling her the connotations of ‘quiet’ and how I didn’t adhere to them. I actually told her my better-suited preference of introverted which refers to having choice in how I act, if I am quieter than other students it is not because I am a quiet person. It’s because I choose to not talk if I feel it’s unnecessary.
That was a super act, on my part, of self-awareness and pride in wanting to be presented as what I actually am.
Back to creativity, I am always creative – as said – it’s a state of mind rather than a product of things that I do or can be seen doing. Whatever my eyes see, no matter where, I will always see people, places, a building or a really lovely window (I bloody love a good window) or a snippet of conversation or a feeling mustered by a combination of these things as something to be turned into fiction.
If I was to big myself up, my greatest achievement and also weakness is the fact I have likely nearing 100 ideas for fictional stories thought up over the years, written down in notebooks. I go through phases of writing them down and when I don’t, I still see what I experience on a daily basis as something perfect for a type of story or a genre or a creative project. The weakness is that none of these ideas have culminated in my writing of an actual, completed book.
I’ve got the detailed planning stages of a few, to the point of writing opening chapters and entire backstories for my cast of main characters and knowing how 2 more books in the series would go. But I’ve never managed to sit down and commit to writing the entire story.
However, that doesn’t deter my being a creative with every breath of the day. And this doesn’t make me anything spectacular (yet. I don’t know, the world is strange) because I imagine a lot of people feel the same.
It’s always worth defending your corner – especially if it means a rousing, moderately passive-aggressive conversation with a tutor or someone who thinks they know you. They are just making assumptions and usually don’t know they are being silly. It’s a sadly reoccurring occurrence for people who lean more towards being introverted, but it is definitely worth getting a bit red-faced to tell someone off, for lack of a better way of putting it.
‘Is it nice to be creative?’
‘I always am.'
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