True Creation
I have written in the past that compassion might be a writer’s most important personal quality. Your characters will always be more believable, more alive, if you have compassion for their struggles rather than have judgment on their struggles. A story is no place to even a score; save that for the court. What’s more, this compassion will find its way to your readers. As they follow the characters you present without judgment, they may attune themselves to this vibration of compassion and grant it to themselves and others. All in all, a good thing. Yet right behind compassion is humility. For instance, anything I have ever written that had any real crackle to it always arrived through discovery. That is, I didn’t make it, I merely perceived it and then translated what I had perceived. What I wrote wasn’t mine in the purest sense, it was simply my attempt to share what I had seen or heard and which existed long before I ever saw or heard it.
Except the only way to perceive what is worth sharing is to forget my ego, that part of myself that believes it is responsible for making everything but actually creates nothing. The ego blocks true creation because it is so busy occupying all my energy as it tries and fails to do it all itself. Then I forget the ego, perceive true creation, and I am writing again.
And when this happens, when I forget my ego and perceive true creation, when I write it down and share it, inevitably someone will want to tell me—or you, or anyone who has done this—what a wonderful thing it is to have shared this perception. And it is wonderful to share what we have perceived. And now is when you must be humble, because the only way to ever see what you wish to see is to forget the part of yourself buoyed by praise or crushed by criticism. The moment you take full credit you deny the existence of the very thing you were so happy to share.
If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group conferencing.
