It is hard to be a creative. You must face your insecurities daily. It is a never ending cycle of ups and downs. One day you feel really great about yourself and the art you make. Then the next day you think you are a fraud. Here is Elisabeth Gilbert’s take of this problem:
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… ancient Greece and ancient Rome … People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity “daemons.” Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar.
The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius. … They believed that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist’s studio, … and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.
… the tricky bit comes the next morning, for the dancer himself, when he wakes up and discovers that it’s Tuesday at 11 a.m., and he’s no longer a glimpse of God. He’s just an aging mortal with really bad knees, and maybe he’s never going to ascend to that height again. This is one of the most painful reconciliations to make in a creative life.
… don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then “Olé!” And if not, do your dance anyhow. And “Olé!” to you, … just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.
