The Need to Write

I need to write. I have many great ideas pop into my head from time to time but when i try to put them down on paper (or computer screen) it is often a torturous struggle to get them out. And, once expressed, they never say exactly what i had intended to say. Sometimes i think that i can improve this creative deficiency by thinking harder and more coherently, by studying the subject more thoroughly, or by increasing my vocabulary. But now i recognize that i just need to write more. I need to practice self-expression. With the help of The Artist’s Way, i have realized that i am out of touch with my own creativity. We are all creative people – one might say that creativity is what makes us spiritual beings – but we need to practice and train our creativity.

I have always felt like a deeply creative person but the artistic side of myself has been stifled in the last several years. In my search for truth i have tended to focus excessively on analyzing and understanding objective truth, which has caused the subjective nature of my self to become distant and passive. My creative faculties have been ignored and have atrophied due to lack of use. Also, having engaged in lengthy periods of meditation, solitude, and deconstructive analysis, i think i have simply forgotten how to be creative. The creative impulse is certainly vibrating in my soul but i have lost the ability to share it with the world.

I am going through a period of transition from silent observer to active creator. I need to take all the things i saw and learned in retreat and put them to work. I need to transform the things that i know into things that i am. I am reminded of a Chinese proverb that Ralph Nader quoted when i saw him speak last month: “To know and not to act is not to know.”

I need to write. I need to write not only to share what i know but as a practice of creative action.