Leaning Left

My creativity is dead.

That’s a grabbing opening, right? A hook. You know, those one-liners that are excellent marketing material on social media. Sad, but true. You read that and you think, “Oh crap, I like this author” (hopefully, you think that) “Her creativity is dead!? Why is she writing her newsletter instead of resuscitating the damn thing so she can publish her book that I’ve been waiting an eternity for!?”

Well. My creativity is not dead. Sorry for the cheap ploy, but now you’re here, aren’t you?

My creativity is alive, but it is dormant. Lulling, like a full-grown adult receding into a crib. Why? Well, I have never believed in the right-brain, left-brain theories. The type A, type B personalities. Mostly because a mother in psychology and a father in mathematics don’t breed a child who believes in outdated, disproven theories. But then again, my parents are right-brained, scientists with literary wisdom, and they somehow created a child who leans left. A little girl who nursed visions of fantastical battlefields and unsung heroes to the tune of not-yet-produced classical scores while her cousins played with sticks across the field. So where has that little girl’s creativity gone?

Perhaps creativity, imagination— whatever name you give the creature that feeds your soul— is more alive in childhood because you haven’t yet learned to sedate it. My mentor said something to me over the phone that stuck. Reminiscing on his recent 33-hour drive up to Canada (sounds like Hell, I know, but he likes that sort of thing), he said that the place where inspiration is born is in the embrace of boredom and distraction. What are we as children but bored little animals without inhibition seeking distraction in stick fights and bedtime stories?

He was right. Because creativity becomes a more submissive beast in adulthood. It gets beaten by the reality of our system. Sedated by common pleasures. And of course, like us, like artists, creativity is sensitive to critique. A single voice, one that we didn’t originally assign much authority, can spout one negative word. One insult. One critique. Even a half-hearted one. That’s all it takes for our creativity’s ears to pin, its eyes to droop, its tail to tuck. It becomes a dog in the back of a kennel that flinches at loud noises. Afraid to make so much as a mark on a blank page because what if we mess up? What if we can never measure up to the artist we used to be?

I am not the only author to have experienced this sense of dread— that I was simply more talented in childhood, that I’ve lost my spark, that I’m no longer the writer I once was (a privileged problem mind you, and one I was not expecting to have in my early twenties, but alas). My mentor, quick to humble me, laughed. It was a chuckle that came from the gut and shook through him, his Nigerian accent spread on every note like butter. He said to me, “Of course, you feel this way. Everyone feels this way. It’s not a common problem. It’s an inevitable one. Ask any parent. To care is to worry. You care about your art. You’re going to worry about it.”

Hm, I thought, looking over my shoulder, back at my creativity. It looked dead, but not convincingly so, more like a little kid pretending to have fallen asleep in the car so that you’ll carry them to bed. When my mentor said goodnight, I stood from my desk chair and sat on the couch with a sigh. I looked over at the empty spot next to me, imagining my creativity lying there. Then, I performed this little exercise that I used to do when I was younger. I call it method writing. And it’s not as obnoxious as method acting because the only person who has to witness me do it is myself (and sometimes my dog).

I start talking. In the empty room. I fill the silence. I talk to my creativity as if it were a real person. Because anthropomorphizing something intangible gives it breath and life and a chance to talk back.

“You know I didn’t realize when you said you needed a break, it meant you’d go into hibernation,” I said. Outloud. Like a crazy person.

“I’m tired,” My creativity— the left part of my brain— whatever it is, said back.

“So am I. I’m still working.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not, but I’m trying. I’m doing what I gotta do.”

“What you gotta do: emails, content, bureaucratic nonsense, not writing.”

“Yes. Exactly that.”

“Bureaucracy is a cold front,” my creativity said. “Freezing my bark, starving my roots, spreading light too thin across my wilting leaves and crackling branches.”

“We live in Florida. I’d shave my head for a cold front.”

“Oh, would you have some imagination?”

“That’s what I need you for, you stupid tree.”

My creativity slumped and moaned and groaned.

“Alright, enough,” I said. “We’re mixing metaphors like a kitchen aid. Over the span of this dialogue alone, you’ve been a grown man in a crib, a dog in a cage, and an icy sycamore. Could you just be what I need you to be? Can you wake up, shape up, and work your magic the way you did when I was seventeen? When I wrote I Fell in Love with Hope? When I wrote for eight hours a day? Where did that version of my creativity go? Where did you go!?”

I didn’t even realize I’d started yelling until I was staring at the empty space in the corner of the couch. The place I was imagining my own imagination arguing with me. God, I felt so stupid. So childish. So stuck. This exercise used to be a tool for escapism. Something innocent. I used to talk out loud to create dialogues between characters, to learn English when I first moved to the States.

It’d never been an act of desperation. Not until now.

“I’m nothing without you,” I said, rubbing my face. “God, what if I’m nothing without you?”

“I’ll always be here, Lou,” it said, somewhere in the back of my mind. No longer a man, a dog, or a tree.

I peered between my fingers, at the empty space, the corner of the couch I spend my mornings on like an elderly woman in a nursing home with nothing better to do than drink tea and read.

“Stop looking outside yourself,” my creativity said. “Start looking in. The rest of the world: the emails, the content, the bureaucracy— it’s just noise. What’s real is the stick fights and the bedtime stories,” it said. “We’re both tired. But we’re both alive. We’re both still full of adventures we’ve yet to write.”

“Okay,” I said. I sniffled, tied my hair back, crossed my legs, and sat my keyboard on my lap.

And I started writing this.

“Keep on leaning left, Lou,” The voice in my head sang. “Lean on me.”

This isn’t a common outline for my usual newsletters. I have no news to deliver, is the thing. I’ve read some gorgeous books this week. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which left me a bit disappointed, and Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, who was kind enough to answer my embarrassingly fangirlish message. Martyr! is one of those books that sticks with you. Poetic, full, raw, and just so fricken good. Not exactly a NYT review, but as Akbar taught me, sometimes you gotta say it like it is, and sometimes it’s just fricken good. Perhaps I’ll have a more proper review of it for you all next week. I apologize for not getting a YouTube video to you, but as you saw above, my creativity is just getting off holiday. I’ll get on that.

Blue’s Shadow and Listen Before I Go do not yet have publication dates, but the moment they do, you’ll be the first to hear about them.

My love goes out to my readers, my writers, my artists, my people, and of course, my bitch of an imagination.

Till next week.