I compare it to sending your 5-year-old to kindergarten for their first day at school. In the classroom, they will quite naturally be compared and compare themselves and their skills with others. As parents worry and pace, bite their nails at home, the children size each other up, find out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and determine where they will need work to become better students and to excel.
Such are our feelings when we put our creative work out into the larger world, whether we are entering a contest, submitting for publication, entering a show, or simply standing to deliver our work to an audience for the first time. It's a nail-biting, floor-pacing experience. This is the jumping off place. Believe me, the water can look a long way down from the cliff's edge far from the comparative safety and privacy of our computer, palette, studio. Out in the world, our very personal work (our babies) will be subject to comparison and criticism. It will be, in some way, judged--a scary word. We know if we never go to the open mic, never enter the show or contest, never submit for publication, we are safe in our own little world. There we can believe it's all good and we need no one's input.
The only drawback of confining ourselves and our work to the security of our creative caves is that we never get to share what we've accomplished. The people who need to read or hear our poems and prose, see our pastels, touch our carvings, and hold our pots in their hands cannot be inspired or encouraged in their own creativity. If we don't take the risk of putting our work out into the world, we not only isolate ourselves, we leave others who would create—if they thought they could—without inspiration.
Such are our feelings when we put our creative work out into the larger world, whether we are entering a contest, submitting for publication, entering a show, or simply standing to deliver our work to an audience for the first time. It's a nail-biting, floor-pacing experience. This is the jumping off place. Believe me, the water can look a long way down from the cliff's edge far from the comparative safety and privacy of our computer, palette, studio. Out in the world, our very personal work (our babies) will be subject to comparison and criticism. It will be, in some way, judged--a scary word. We know if we never go to the open mic, never enter the show or contest, never submit for publication, we are safe in our own little world. There we can believe it's all good and we need no one's input.
The only drawback of confining ourselves and our work to the security of our creative caves is that we never get to share what we've accomplished. The people who need to read or hear our poems and prose, see our pastels, touch our carvings, and hold our pots in their hands cannot be inspired or encouraged in their own creativity. If we don't take the risk of putting our work out into the world, we not only isolate ourselves, we leave others who would create—if they thought they could—without inspiration.
—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the poetry collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here. Or, if cookbooks are more your style, get a copy of Mendy's family cookbook Across the Arklatex at www.twopoets.us.
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1 comment:
I needed to hear this, Mendy. Thank you for your example! My first thought was to share this with my art students. My second thought was for myself. I get stuck with working so much that I don't leave room for writing or painting. I am not a good example for my students. I feel my creative juices are in a stagnant pond in a dark cave beneath the earth's crust. How to stir the waters so that I make time to create every day?
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