Martha Graham on Creativity
Apr. 10th, 2011 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlA friend posted this, and I wanted to put it in my writing journal. This is for those days when everything Just Sucks and you think you have no talent at all. (And by 'you' I also mean myself.)
"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.
"It is not your business to determine how good it is: nor how valuable it is: nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
"No artist is ever pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine satisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
-- Martha Graham
I might have said "more alive than you otherwise would have been" at the end there, but anyway.
I have seen people concerned with Quality in Fanfiction say that this idea shouldn't be promulgated because what many people have to say is just banal, but I have always disagreed with them. I think that the cure for bad writing is improvement, and that I'd rather have to sift through bad writing to find good than to lose good writing to self-doubts fed by overly harsh criticism.
"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.
"It is not your business to determine how good it is: nor how valuable it is: nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
"No artist is ever pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine satisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
-- Martha Graham
I might have said "more alive than you otherwise would have been" at the end there, but anyway.
I have seen people concerned with Quality in Fanfiction say that this idea shouldn't be promulgated because what many people have to say is just banal, but I have always disagreed with them. I think that the cure for bad writing is improvement, and that I'd rather have to sift through bad writing to find good than to lose good writing to self-doubts fed by overly harsh criticism.
