Creativity and Imperfection

I don’t know if you guys know this, but sometimes I write a bunch of blogs in advance and schedule them all to come out over time. I like to work on things in real time, but there are just some months of the year when life piles up around me and it’s easier to have one less thing to worry about in between the school breaks and book projects and orthodontist appointments.

I’ve just finished one of those months. There were a lot of planned projects as well as unplanned surprises (leaking sink! broken toilet! pet illness!). But here, at the end of it, it’s a relief to be able to sit down at my table with nothing more pressing to do than write. It’s funny, writing. In the right mood, at the right moment, I can produce thousands of words a day and they’re good. Maybe not great, but they make sense and have a point and are mostly grammatically correct.

In the wrong mood, when I’m stressed or being interrupted too much? There’s no point in even trying. I’m better off just taking a nap. Back when I used to write grants for a living, I always, always wrote first thing in the morning. After lunch, my brain was fried for that type of creative work and so I spent those hours doing budgets or research or even just filing and organizing. At the time, I felt so bad. I was only useful for half my day! They were paying me and I could only write for 4 hours at a time!

Now that I’m older, I’m astounded that I was able to write productively for even that long without a break. There is such a difference between production and analysis. Even when it comes to edits - I can do a full 8 hours of revision. But after about 2-3 of writing, my brain becomes total mush.

Part of aging, for me, has been accepting my limits. I am told that I was a pretty malleable child. That all changed at some point, but I can see how that would have been true. Even now, I want to be living up to the expectations that others hold for me. I want to be the person who can work for 10 hours a day and then be an amazing mom and also a good friend and also run marathons.

But my body and brain won’t let me. And it turns out that those expectations were never based in reality anyway. All the stories we hear of amazing people doing amazing things? They’re doing one, maybe two, amazing things. Don’t get me wrong, they are doing it with excellence. But they are not doing all of the things perfectly all of the time.

I have had the luxury of choosing what kind of life I want to live, and that looks like doing lots of things imperfectly. I get to be a mom, imperfectly. And a writer, imperfectly. And a community member, imperfectly. And a gardener, imperfectly. So, I spend a lot of time comparing myself to people who are doing these same things, but much better than I am. Their books come together faster or their kids are always wearing matching oufits or their gardens look like showpieces. I’m learning to accept that the person that I am? She writes when she’s not too busy doing all the other things and she does all the other things when she’s not too caught up in her writing.

Maybe I’m the only one, but I have a feeling that a lot of people feel the same. The complexity that they desire can’t be contained in a relentless drive for excellence. Maybe they don’t want to be chased by expectations anymore, but rather be drawn by curiosity and fascination. And yes, yes, dinner has to be cooked and mortgages paid…but in the other moments, in the quiet weeks, maybe there’s room for some creativity.