For the Birds: 10 reasons to care about your creativity (that have nothing to do with chasing "success")

swift letters for busy people - #8

Thanks for being here! Tomorrow brings the new moon in Aries AND a solar eclipse—a big moment of change and possibility. Here’s a list to carry you forward with confidence and intention.

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INTERVIEWER:
In the writing world, particularly in and around M.F.A. programs, there’s a lot of discussion around things like “character” and “perspective,” the mechanics of narrative. Do you think about “craft” in these terms?

ANNE CARSON:
Never. I don’t think about it. I think people should just quit that stuff. Just think about something and follow it down to where it gets true.

10 incredible things your creativity allows you to do that aren’t dependent on success (publishing or otherwise)

1. Follow an idea “down to where it gets true.”

2. Stretch and build your creative muscles. (Yes: Creativity makes more of itself, and in this age of scarcity and climate destruction, it’s nothing short of miraculous that we carry this regenerative system inside of us.)

3. Develop and hone your intellect—i.e. literally get smarter. Isn’t it amazing that we can make ourselves smarter?! Writing and making art does this.

4. Deepen and broaden your attention.

5. Identify your immediate, real community.

   1. Look, whether you share your writing with one other person on occasion or with a precious list of a few hundred people every month, your real community is not the imaginary audience you assume you have to have in order to validate your work; it’s the individual human beings taking the time to like your latest post, or tell you they really enjoyed the poem you shared in group, or comment on how they felt seen after reading your last essay. Look for these real, small, intimate connections—it only takes one to refuel your momentum and keep going.

      1. And remember that for every one person who tells you that you’ve impacted them, there are approx. 5-10 more who are feeling it but not letting you know. Your impact is out there even when you don’t see it. I promise.

6. Claim your voice, your perspective, your preferences, your interests, and your opinions.

   1. For ND bodies & brains in particular, I think we often need the page—the slow pace of writing and its generative friction—in order to see these aspects of ourselves more clearly. We need the process of writing, and we also need the integrative experience of looking back over what we wrote. These little creative mirrors help us see who and what we are.

7. Practice perceiving yourself, not monitoring or policing yourself.

   1. Spend a few extra moments this weekend meditating on that distinction.

8. Cultivate your sense of purpose and authority outside capitalism.

9. Heal yr shit.

   1. I don’t know how to summarize this one, but I can tell you that every single writer / artist / ND human I’ve worked with has had some kind of therapeutic revelation on their creative journey; and that one of the commonalities between every single one of them, regardless of their diverse life experiences and needs, is this experience of healing their relationship to themselves through the power of creative awareness and effort. It is just the natural result of a certain combination of care, attunement, and work.

10. Just be an artist already. It isn’t silly or pretend. It’s yours. It’s already you.