Writing as Art

Today I have three hours between the class I taught and my five hours at the Writing Center. I'm spending it working on the business book I'm ghostwriting.

As I jot down notes about this fictional medical products company, I find myself writing in ways I've never written before. Thinking about questions my characters ask, I suddenly write that two of them exchange glances with each other. This has nothing to do with the art of writing, and everything to do with the idea that the characters are locking eyes in order to remind the reader of a previous conversation.

It doesn't feel like art.

Last week, when I wrote my real-quick blog post about random hours, I was on the verge of a discovery. On Saturday, the discovery came full force: I do not feel creative.

Creative. For the longest time, whenever I had to describe myself, I gave myself the label of creative. Generally, this has been true. I have an imagination. I will paint my high-school wooden shoes and put them on the back steps of my new house as decoration. I dream of dragons. I used to begin yoga classes with poetry. I used to read poetry. I used to have a notepad of a furry-animal artist who put his paint everywhere but the easel: "I'm not messy," he said. "I'm creative." That was me.

Where did that go? I used to steal moments of time at work or school to jot down a line of a poem that was coming to me or something. Poetry is currently lost to me.

What gives? Creativity, where art thou?

For someone who just wrote a sermon about caring for the Inner Self, this realization is shocking and humbling. I want creativity to be my closest friend again. I miss poetry. I miss fiction. I miss dragons.

I want to see writing as art again.