About Creativity, Honestly
Creativity is a strange thing. I am taking this life of mine, my heartaches, secrets, victories, and changes and sculpting it into this thing—this beautiful, monstruous thing—not much unlike Victor Frankenstein and his creature—we all want to create something unique and glorious, but in the end we grant life to a facet of ourselves, whether we loathe it or adore it. Frankenstein gave life to some innate part of himself he long tried to bury, perhaps a childlike, misunderstood, ugly part. Many of us share similar iterations of secrets about ourselves which we want to keep, which manifest themselves without warning through creating art, be it painting, writing, sculpting, or music, it happens to us all.
This thing I have been working on, the title still both a secret and a work in progress, all 15,000 words of it so far, has become my monster. I have embraced it fully as a beloved part of myself—it is my past, after all. There is a childlike sense of wonder to it, an innocence, a vulnerability. Then there is also the hardened part of my I have yet to smooth out—I think it must remain the way it is, misshapen and vicious, for it to serve its purpose in my story, another part of myself, fully beloved—it is my present, after all. I am not exactly bitter, but I do rage against the softer side of myself, and call it bravery, when in reality, the destruction of emotion is the destruction of self, and while I try so hard to compartmentalize, in order for my writing to bear weight, I must give myself over to it entirely, body and soul. My fellow creatives will know that you can’t withhold from yourself when writing or painting or whatever else, lest you be left with a shell or an imitation of something that could have been great, but lacks the depth—lacks the being.
I cannot escape the rhythms of change in my life right now, beating in my heart like ecstatic drumroll and following me everywhere—around every corner that I look, I see that my life is changing, some for the better, and some for the worst. I am advancing in my career, I am writing, giving myself over fully, but I go to bed early because of some intangible stress that eats at me, instead of going out, where I find inspiration. There is a balance I am missing. I fear I might become a recluse, for reasons I do not want to talk much about. I fear with so much of my being my own emotions, hopes and dreams—I have become self-confident in a delusionally ambitious way, which is not a bad thing—I have embraced rejection, fully—but I am suspicious of this joy, this motor that spurs me forward. I stay in, part compulsion, and part necessity. I sleep as much as I can, part compulsion, part necessity. It is hard to explain for those who don’t understand. While I can write about certain parts of myself in my book, I can withhold them now from those who seek to do me harm. I can create a safety net for myself.
I am grappling with the fact that there are many people close to me who will hate this book, this project of mine which will be published before I can blink my eyes. It is coming together that quickly. I write openly about struggles, victories, and romance. I write in Spanish and about Spanish in a way I don’t think people close to me are prepared for or will appreciate—a romantic, sensuous way. I don’t shy away from things that the Southern Texas culture I live in deems taboo. This book is not written for them. I care very little about their opinions. I think it is fitting that I am writing this project now, now that I have reconciled with my past and the people of my past, and no longer give a rat’s ass if the hate me, love me, or are confused by me. There were many years when that was not the case.
Creativity is so strange. Every evening, I jot down notes, usually a surprising hundred words or more, into my notes app on my phone, as I have just gotten a shot of inspiration from a movie I was watching, or a book I was reading, or from the silence of my balcony. I write until the feeling leaves me, or the words fail. Then in the morning, I arrive at work an hour early and spend one hour writing it all out, adding color to it, turning it into at least 1,000 words of a chapter. Sometimes, there is more. Then I work, however busy or busy I am at my day job, jotting down notes on a legal pad whenever I think of more. Back home, I rest, turn on the TV, make some dinner, and wait for the next cosmic information download. I surprise myself all the time. I often wonder, who will read this? Am I relevant? But then I am finding books like mine, but different iterations, that have been published. I bought one of them to read when I am done with my draft, to get a sense for not exactly my competition, but my complement.
However, this book, however quickly I may be writing it now, is not complete until after I return to Guatemala this year. I am planning the trip and have secured time off from work. I am also going to Bogotá, Colombia in the Spring, just for a weekend, to dig more into the Spanish language and into Latin American culture. I write about Peru in my book, all these places that shaped me. But at the end of the day, it is about a redemption, a reconciliation with Guatemala, the place where I fell in love with Spanish. It is a story much, much bigger than myself, one I don’t feel entirely equipped to tell. As a gringa, I cannot speak to the Latin American experience outside my own experience with it. I cannot speak to the history or culture of Guatemala outside of what I have seen with my own eyes. That is okay—that is what I want to do, introduce my audience to something beautiful, something that changed my life. When I went to Guatemala with this juvenile assumption that I would change the world, I returned home as the world changed me. I still don’t know how to make sense of it, and maybe sense isn’t the point. I’m not sure I know the point of my book yet. I think in one way it is about finding home.
What is home, for me, after all these years?
I guess you will have to read my book. 😊