We don’t just dare you to throw yourself over the creative edge, we double-dog dare you. Cuz, let’s face it, as a writer, that’s something you genuinely need to do:
by Carla Woolf
In my personal creative experiences, being creative meant surviving and vice versa. It meant going beyond the confines of creative ideas that have already been juggled or developed, and it initially meant cautiously considering unspoken stipulations to choose between feeling that permission and approval must be sought before deciding how to create something, or just having the audacity to do what’s needed. Creativity may be described as having its hands in fun pursuits, or feeling fulfilled, or standing on the pinnacle of a highly advanced and accomplished idea, but for a great deal of my own life’s time, creativity was plainly about having to be resourceful.
Practicing and applying the old adage “necessity is the mother of invention” became a rather regular occurrence. Later on in life however, it caused me to speculate whether unlimited creativity was really playing an active role in my determination to create ways into and out of my many limited circumstances. Creativity is, and had been a resourceful tool for getting out of tight spots, and it undoubtedly had a place in the lives of artists looking to produce their next masterpiece, but my senses told me that there had to be so much more to it than just that.
I knew that nailing it down concisely was never going to be part of my intent, especially because I’ve stood by the belief that creativity is the very essence of infinite knowledge. But I was to learn early on in life that audacity was to become the perfect partner in creativity, even more so than Bonnie and Clyde are perfect partners in crime. For example, when I was 12 years old I qualified to join a varsity basketball team. Initially, I was never put on the court because the money to purchase the standard uniform shorts was out of my reach and beyond my control. So, I tore apart pieces of some of the few clothes I’d possessed and sewed together a patch-up job that decently replicated the team bloomers. It helped that team members proudly applauded my “creation” and my little audacious endeavor put me on the court for every game thereafter. From a seamstress’s point of view, I had zero business whatsoever handling a needle and thread, but I did it anyway. What’s more, I boldly tackled a clothes-altering job at a local dry-cleaners for the next four years to pay tuition for the high school I chose to attend.
I continually discovered that in a world of assets, credentials, amenities, social status and all kinds of other associations, there is a sort of unwritten convention that unless you have permission as well as the correct tools or proper approval, then participating in certain circles and activities, or trying to share creative ideas with others that you are knowledgeably unworthy of sharing will be met with signals and snares of disapproval.