Fingerprints

The War of Art is a lovely little book about the struggle to give yourself permission to create.  There are entire shelves in the bookstore devoted to this subject. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way suggests that we all have creativity monsters. Amen, sister.  It’s amazing that we have to have books devoted to something as simple as the literary equivalent of your mother shooing you out the door and saying, “go play,” but we do.

I stopped writing for almost a year after reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. I concluded that I would never be able to write anything so beautiful or original, so why try? I didn’t write for probably six months after reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. It is the most beautiful, perfect, real writing ever. It’s the kind of writing that reaches down and heals parts of you that you didn’t know were broken.

I used to get paralyzed by amazing photography, too, and compare my work and think that I will never be as good. And I probably won’t.

But lately, I’ve been thinking.

So what?

Maybe there is no original idea left. Maybe it has all been done before and done so perfectly that everything else is just a repeat.

But it’s not a repeat for me.

It’s not a repeat for you either.

I’m the fingerprint, and so are you – the different variable that isn’t found anywhere else. And the round rings in my unique fingerprint are encoded with only my experiences. There may be others who could write it better or photograph it with the most amazing camera on the planet.

But I was there.

And I noticed.

So, no more excuses. Much love to Jhumpa and Joan and Tosca Radigonda and the thousands of artists I admire. But it’s time to quit comparing and just get to work.

Is there something you have been afraid to try?  What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about the eye-rollers?

{If you could use a creativity kick in the pants, I love everything in this store and they are having a sale today.}