Do You Secretly Think You Don’t Deserve To Be Called A Creative?
Earlier this week, my boss made a comment to my designer and me during a recent meeting.
“Okay, this is the messaging I would like to convey in this image. Visually, it looks a bit rough now, but you guys are our creative team so I’ll trust you can build on this”.
Something about that comment made me stop short and ponder again.
“Did he just call me a member of the creative team?”
A member of the creative team?
As a marketer in a startup, I represent our company’s brand through the art of the written word.
I make words sing and coax people to perform certain actions. But it never crossed my mind to associate my work with ‘being creative’.
This is why.
I always thought creatives are people who showcase their art at museums, sell multi-platinum albums or create multiple best selling novels. Or people who paint a simple black square and alter the face of the art world forever.
These are people who pour their life and soul into their work. They have a message deeply burning inside them and NEED to share it with the world.
Not for people who write for work.
Or common folk like me.
But what does it mean to be creative?
Jeff Goins has a great definition of what a creative does.
“A creative creates art. Not to make a buck, but to make a difference. She writes to write, not to be noticed or to sell books. She sings to sing, for the pure joy of making music. And she paints to paint. (And so on…)”
Am I ‘good enough’ to be called a creative?
Before writing on Medium, I journaled in school. My journal (and reading books) was my happy place. It was the place I could fully express myself.
No one could see it.
I could be as embarrassing, snarky, emotional and as angry as I wanted to be. In private your words are for you and for you alone. I found comfort in and security in baring my heart and soul to the private page.
It was a safe refuge.
But start writing in public and it becomes nerve-wracking.
Questions race through your head when you start writing in public:
- God forbid, what if people I knew read it?
- Is my work good enough to be out there in public?
- How do I compare with the greats out there?
- Why can’t I write or create like the greats out there?
I thought I needed to attain a certain level of proficiency at my craft or archieve a level of fame before I could call myself a creative, or even a writer.
I kept thinking my work wasn’t good enough to be classified as ‘creative’ work.
The gap between expectations and reality in creative work.
I chanced upon this quote by host and producer Ira Glass. He explains the gap between what you expect to produce and what you can produce at that time which resonated with me:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Can I call myself a creative?
I don’t have a published book, or bestsellers to my name.
But I sure do know, I love the act of writing. The act of putting your soul on the pages is therapy.
And maybe, this is why we need to keep creating.
Maybe we need to choose ourselves as a person who needs to create to keep our sanity.
Maybe we need to create and publish in public for the simple fact that it brings us pleasure (well, most of the time).
And if, by practicing in public and putting work out there you get someone who resonates with what you created, or if they are able to see the world a little bit differently after reading what I wrote — that is one of the biggest compliments anyone can ever give me.
I still wonder if I ‘deserve’ the tag creative.
But maybe I should just get to work and stop beating myself up.
