Everybody has excuses for why they don't write, including me. What most of us fail to see is how the very act of making excuses is an act of creativity.
Except that it's wasted creativity.
Think about it. Nobody wants to sound like a loser, and nothing screams "loser" more than a person who makes lame and pathetic excuses for not doing things. Therefore, if you're going to have an excuse for not doing something, it has to sound... credible.
So we apply more creativity to our excuses so they sound less pathetic and more believable. And the most creative excuses, the really good ones, sound almost like real reasons. We make them up, we think they're true, and we fail to notice the irony that their seeming truth is just another aspect of their creativity.
You literally make up something that's not real, and yet it seems so real that you believe it. And now you believe your own excuse.
Now that's creative.
The thing is, writing (or exercising, painting, dancing, or any other productive endeavor you could be doing) requires a great deal of creativity and effort too. Isn't it an insane waste of creativity to make up reasons for not doing these things?
Let me tell you what you are really doing. You are wasting perfectly good acts of creativity on nothing. You're pouring creativity into something that prevents you from taking action, prevents you from building your skills, and prevents you from doing something positive. You are using creativity to limit yourself.
But hey, your excuses sound really convincing. You almost had me believing you for a moment there.
Posts
