Don't Expect Perfection Right Away

This week TLU is holding a symposium on innovation where speakers come and tell us their take on this topic.  Last night, I went to hear Naomi Shihab Nye, a celebrated poet, and the speaker I was most excited to hear from.  My favorite part of the talk was when she gave insight into the things that stop us from being innovative: doubt, negativity, criticism, or more importantly making mistakes!  The piece of advise that really stuck with me was, if you're having trouble writing, lower your expectations.  One of Nye's examples, was a man who diminished the pressure he felt as a writer by scribbling down his poems on the back of junk mail envelopes.  I love this example!  For me, and I think many others, the biggest challenge of writing is getting past self-doubt and our own high expectations.  If I wrote on the back of junk mail, I think I'd have much lower expectations for myself.  That doesn't mean that it won't be good though.  It just means you don't put pressure on yourself to produce something perfect right away.  It's OK to make mistakes the first time.  Maybe that is yet another thing you can't learn until you experience for yourself, but if you begin your writing process with the expectation of imperfection right away, what is there to loose?

Nye also pointed out, however, that doubt is a critical part of the creative process.  She begins one of her poems with a quote by Rudolf Staffel, a ceramic artist she once knew who said that, "Procrastination is the most creative act there is."  At first, I was like, "Huh?"  I didn't understand how this was true.  Then I connected it to the famous quote, "Life is a journey, not a destination" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I realized that what you create is not as important as the "delay time," the time where you were immersed in the process.  Procrastination can be a time to let the creative juices flow, when you don't feel the pressure to create something meaningful, you just enjoy the act of creating.  This time where you step back from what you're doing and don't take yourself too seriously, where you give yourself freedom to make mistakes.  I think what Nye wanted to convey is that this is more important and essential to creativity than the resulting product.  Both of these lessons, to not expect to create something perfect right away, and to give yourself time and space to be creative and make mistakes are ones I'm still learning myself, but have been very helpful to me whether I am being artistic just for fun or doing serious homework.