“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
I think so many times we don’t allow ourselves the mistakes. And that is a problem because we can get too complacent and our writing and/or or art can suffer. Are we safe writers who write for an audience? or are we writing the stories that we really want to tell? Sometimes that can be scary. What if we wrote those stories and they didn’t work? You will know.
Today, push yourself as a writer write some experimental poetry or freewrite for 30 minutes about what you have learned from your mistakes. Take a walk around your neighborhood for twenty minutes and then write for twenty minutes about the first thing that comes to your head. Now get back to work!
Lovingly,
The Writing Nag
I know what you mean. I still vividly remember – and talk about – the time in a life drawing class when a classmate was stressing because she’d lost her drawing pencil. I offered her a felt-tip pen (which I loved to draw with) and she was horrified. “What if I make a mistake?!?!”
I wanted to say – but didn’t – “So what? Learn from it!”
Same thing goes for taking a different route while driving, whether from getting lost or avoiding traffic. If you always go the same, safe way, how do you know what else is out there? How do you learn?