No more shoulds

Nothing kills the creative impulse quicker than worrying about what I should be writing. Unless it’s people talking loudly and endlessly in the next room. Or a sunny day after weeks of rain. Or thinking about how old I am. Or my neck hurting like hell.

But I digress. It’s the “shoulds” that really jam the gears and shut things down. I should be writing about serious and important matters, demonstrating my maturity and intelligence, showing how compassionate and well-informed and insightful I am. Or, to take a different tack, how light-footed, clever, sharp, observant I am. How likeable, in short. I should be making a good impression, so that people will like me. Deadly, deadly stuff.

What comes naturally? What tone? What subject? What voice? What voice is truly mine?

Follow the spark. There’s a live-wire connection when you’re on the path, a faint glow that gets brighter. It’s worlds apart from the heaviness of should. It’s life and death.

So easily snuffed! So prey to distraction (and judgment)! But if you can get into that zone, that cone of silence, it can be remarkably strong, too. Words come with alacrity—the right words. Not yours, exactly. Not owned. It doesn’t last long, but you can find it again—given faith, commitment, refusal to be squashed. And when you find it, you are shown what has to come next, which way to go. You don’t generate it, with effort; you hear it. It’s out there.

But you can’t care what people think. Most of all, you can’t listen to that person inside you—the frightened, needy, self-hating one. The one who says you aren’t good enough. He’s speaking right now, in fact, calling this whole post banal, juvenile, obvious. But, like old Croce said, that’s not the way it feels.

You don’t have to be flamboyant. You don’t have to be good. You don’t have to be anything, in fact, except true.