Have you ever experienced a period of creative vomiting–a time when you open your mouth or put pad to pen and the magic just flows? I have. In those periods of creativity upchucking, I wasn’t necessarily writing pure gold, but there wasn’t a struggle to create. It just happened. There was an innate desire to produce and an ability to perform. It was almost involuntary. I spewed.

About 5 years ago I unwillingly went on a creativity sabbatical. Perhaps that’s what a full time job and grad school slapping you around like a rag doll will do to you. That’s what I kept telling myself until I had a realization–I have been imprisoning my creativity with unreasonable expectations.

This summer has afforded me the opportunity to hear from some great speakers at a couple of different conferences. Through the talks I heard I came to realize that I was putting undo pressure on myself. Every time I would sit down to write I wanted to yield a glorious outcome but the pursuit of perfection kept me from getting started at all.

But I drop-kicked perfectionism to the curb.

I can write again.

My freshman English teacher, Rob Conway, is the greatest English teacher in the world, sans pareil. One day he had the entire class write for 10 minutes non-stop. We had to get out a plain piece of paper and go to town. Write about what? It didn’t matter. Just write. Sure, none of us wrote the world’s next great novel but we wrote. What’s the point? Just do it. Write. The more you write the better chance you have of producing a gem.

Ever notice that great photographers never seem to take terrible photographs? Yeah, that’s crap. They do. They just don’t post their less than stellar images to Flickr or Instagram. One of my professional photo buddies will post roughly 1 out of every 100 photos he takes. The point is he shoots. Want to be great at something? Do it. Feel free to fail. Eventually you’ll be a darling.

While reflecting on this little journey, I wrote a poem about it. It’s called Write. Here ’tis, both in copy and audio form:

–

Write

No more fight to get it right before you try, just try
Get messy
Let’s see lead stained hands for lefties
Achy wrists by the plenty
Scribble
It’ll tickle a little, then coast
Roast, boast, like rappers do
Reflect, inspect, find the truth
Aim for worth it, not perfect
Write
Use weapons
No holds bard, No. 2
A house of pads, Mr. Pen
Thou art released magic marker
Let your voodoo drip and soak
Colored pencils
Color me crazy, color me cool
As long as you color
Fingers
Rounded and ready, sweaty and grubby
Press keys, stamp ink to sheet
Write
Through umpteen re-writes
We write so we might
Move, heart to head and all places in between open to woo
See, a mirror birthed from fingertips, Windexed to transparency
Hear, inner longings in resounding chorus loud and clear
Touch, a new thing, a new place in being yet a remix of us
But first we must trust
We must, we must, we must
Write

May you find the courage to dive in.