When I think about trying to dive back into fiction, I feel a soft pulsing fear shoot through me. I’m not talking about envisioning a novel, writing an outline, and executing the plan. I mean sitting down to surrender to an idea and wandering with it, finding my way to a throughline. We all have our ideas of what it means to be creative—and those ideas are often not helpful. They tend to validate some types of expression over others.

For myself, I miss the days of what I call my “raw creativity.” This is a time where I was compulsively writing and painting all the time. I wasn’t afraid to jump into an idea and work it through. Humans grow in such contradictory ways. I am so much stronger now. I’m not afraid to structure and plan a novel. in other ways, I’m so much more fragile. I couldn’t find the arc in the last freestyle story I wrote. It never flew, and I haven’t returned to the well to try again.

I’ve got big projects planned, waiting on my notes for my current novel and working on some nonfiction books. In the meantime, there’s a part of me that’s crying out for unplanned, exploratory writing. This is going to require me to surrender to whatever outcome emerges from my efforts. I can’t force every piece to reach completion. I can’t look at my writing time as wasted if I produce things that aren’t publishable. I have go give myself space to explore without a destination. Sounds easy, but as you know from your own efforts, it’s easier said than done.

I was having drinks with a friend who is a playwright. It’s been many years since she’s made space for writing in her life, but she said that she was working her way toward welcoming writing into her life again. A few minutes later, I had a thought that frightened me. I said to her: I’m going to say this, even though it scares me. I told her about a writing group my friend had started. She and a group of coworkers do freewriting activities at lunch time. We could do the same, I said hesitantly.

I was hesitant because I knew this would be a free time of exploring—it’s not enough time for me to work on my projects, but it’s enough time to release the structure and outcomes and commit to some raw creativity. I’m actually excited about pushing myself in this direction. I know that there is plenty in me that wants to bubble up, I just need to find the right safe space to welcome it to come through.

And I think that’s what our job is as artists anyway. We focus on the creativity, on the art that we produce, on the work—but no work gets done if we don’t define, create, and protect the conditions that let the work happen. As I age as an artist, I discover that I need a variety of spaces and a variety of approaches to getting work done. Different work thrives under different conditions—and as the adult in this relationship, it’s my job to explore those conditions.

So starting this week, I’m committing a lunch session to literary explorations. During these sessions, I’ll be giving my art a chance to wander and slither, jump and skitter in whatever direction it wants to. Yes, I’m still afraid of starting a story I can’t finish, of playing with words brilliantly but having nothing I’m committed to saying, of creating a bunch of fragments that come to nothing. But I know that the play offers a mountain of rewards in and of itself. Because writers write and creators create, I will feel the fear and do it anyway.

What creative fears are you facing today?

Onward,

—K.