Create like a kid
The power and possibility of not caring so much
Multiple plays, several books, a radio show, a recording of readings of poetry, many drawings of houses by the sea, dances to the Beatles, dances to the Spice Girls, a doll’s house made out of a cardboard box and cut off carpet squares, puppet shows, a cookbook, garden festivals, charity fundraising performances, poems, an info pamphlet about the pagan origins of Halloween and many improvise songs about fairies.
This is a list of some of the things I remember creating when I was a kid. I'm sure there were many more. As you can see, there's quite a range and diversity of genre and creative mediums. This diversity didn't matter, because I was a kid. As I got older, I followed some of my strongest childhood passions into the theatre. And at some point I created dream goals; first of becoming a famous actress, until that evolved into wanting to be a highly respected, well known, maybe even famous, writer and director.
As we get older, pressure is added to our creative practice. It becomes about pursuing creative goals and ambitions, achievement, skill - and the development of it.
As I've written about before, some amount of pressure can be helpful - and necessary - for our creative practice; in small doses and at certain times. But what can happen is that our creative practice becomes an arena within which to beat ourselves up. Especially if we lean towards perfectionism, people pleasing, over achieving and overworking - even more so if we add to that self doubt that often manifests as an inner critic with the core belief of “I'm not good enough”. The achievement and the skill level of that achievement becomes everything; and it is never good enough.
We can find ourselves never having done enough, always feeling like we've not done our practice right and - when we do get to the end result - always finding it’s not up to the standard we want it to be.
What also happens is that we confine ourselves. We focus on playwriting because that's what we felt drawn to at one point and, therefore, we need to keep honing our skills to become the best playwright we can possibly ever be. So our practice becomes focused all on one thing and we become fixated on having the next project the next project the next project. So if we don't have a new novel/play/series of artworks/insert your thing here we're working on, we feel like we're doing it wrong or that we’re a failure.
So, I wonder what would happen if we developed a curiosity about letting our creative practice feel more like it did when we were kids. When we did something because we were curious about it, and it seemed like fun. When we maybe flitted between art forms, subject matter and ideas. When a project was born out of creative play and curiosity, rather than thinking about what our next project was going to be. When it was okay to just mess around, to let ourselves flow with our curiosity and our needs.
It's important to remember that we're creative beings. We're not defined by the art form we've worked most within. Creativity is a way of living in the world, a way of seeing the world, a way of questioning and being curious about it. You can't lose that if you follow a different route for a while, if you stop creating the thing that you've created for most of your creative career (whether that's professional or not).
Inevitably, what we always find is when we allow ourselves to do this, to have this freedom, it inspires and fuels the next thing we will create so much more than if we made ourselves sit at the desk/stand in the studio/stare at the blank page/screen/canvas.
So - how will you create like a kid this summer?
Ps. I’m running a Summer Sale on my Alchemy single session coaching package. If you’ve been thinking about getting some coaching on something you really want to change, an issue that keeps cropping up - now is an excellent time. All the details can be found on my website here.