Creativity Equals Fearlessness?

Once when I was talking about my novel Sister India at a book club, one of the members made a comment about days when she feels creative.

I thought to myself: Feel creative? What's that like?

I take a rather workaday approach to writing: come into office, sit down at computer, write. There's no special feeling involved.

But today, I have to say, I think I felt what she was talking about. Maybe. What I realized was that I had no sense of dread or hesitation about taking on anything. I felt fairly confident I could do it well enough, whatever it was. (We're not talking about curing cancer, instead about writing paragraphs.)

Many days I start in again on a project in spite of a nettlesome grain of doubt, a feel of driving with the brake on. Once I'm working that goes away. Today it wasn't there at all, don't know why. But the absence of it, I have to say, felt creative. I'd like to work that way every day.

What's your experience? Is this kind of hesitation familiar? Do you simply force yourself past it, as I so often do? Or do you sail into your most challenging work with full glee?



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