Creative Bulletin n.278
In the past few weeks, I’ve been waking up feeling very happy, because I’ve started writing a new book on creativity—and I’ve decided to share a bit of that joy with you 😊
It won’t exactly be a sequel to The Creative Ambush, but rather a next step.
As I say in the disclaimer at the beginning of the book:
This book is meant to help you nurture your creativity. It’s not here to destabilize you, not here to shake you up—it’s here to help you grow. Once we’ve discovered our little flame, it needs to be fed; once we’ve heroically recovered the seed, the sprouting plant needs to be tended to—it needs water and light.
Anyone who’s read The Ambush will know exactly what I mean.
A Small Manifesto on Creativity
While trying to write a short summary in the introduction about what creativity means to me, I ended up drafting a small manifesto. I’m happy to share it with you here:
To me, creativity is creating something new—it’s a kind of magic. It means that something wasn’t there before, and now—poof—here it is. It means having the power to glimpse an idea and bring it into this reality.
Creativity has a broad spectrum: the writer crafting a new story is creative, so is the manager who comes up with a new product idea. But so is the baker on the corner who decides to try a different focaccia recipe, the florist who renames her shop, the psychoanalyst who introduces a new practice into his work, the office worker who quits her job to move abroad and start a new life. Creativity is a new strategy, a shift in habit, a new way of seeing the world. It’s anything that breaks a fixed pattern.
Creativity isn’t about talent or genius. A kid with a gift for drawing won’t necessarily be more creative than one who doesn’t know how to hold a pencil. And genius is a far too romanticized concept. The big risk with “genius” and “talent” is that they tend to become limiting beliefs. We end up thinking we can’t express ourselves unless we have them.
“Can I be a writer even if I’m not a literary genius?”
“Can I be an illustrator even if I’m not as talented as my classmates?”
These are useless questions—and they hold us back terribly.
Creativity is self-expression, and the answer is yes: we can express ourselves, all of us, always. The only limit is us.
That doesn’t mean everyone is creative. People can be creative—but not everyone wants to be. Because creativity requires us to open up, to show ourselves, to take risks, to make ourselves vulnerable. Some people are willing to do that. Others decide they’d rather not.
That’s exactly why creativity can’t really be taught. First, because it requires deep personal commitment—something we can’t control. And second, because it isn’t a mathematical process, not something repeatable, made up of functions and equations. But creativity can be inspired—by showing, again and again, that yes, yes, yes! It is possible to live a creative life.
That’s why it matters to recognize the impact of your choices. When you pick up your novel again, launch your project, change jobs, sign up for a cooking class—in short, when you express yourself—the people around you will feel tempted to do the same. You’ll inspire them. You’ll become an example.
This is the graceful path.
The other path—the heavy and fruitless one—is trying to convince others to express themselves. Don’t do it. Creative people aren’t better than those who choose not to be. And if someone doesn’t want to, they’ll have their reasons—reasons we can’t possibly imagine.
Creativity carries responsibility: we choose whether or not to express ourselves, whether or not to set limits. We are co-creators of our reality. If we say we want to be artists but live as waiters and never paint, we’re creating a reality where we’re waiters. But if we start painting every morning, reality begins to shift—and, little by little, we’ll start living a painter’s life.
Let’s steer clear of complaining: it’s a deeply uncreative habit. If something doesn’t suit us, let’s change it—and if we can’t change it, let’s accept it or walk away. Complaining never adds anything. It only drains our energy.
Excuses don’t hold up. I don’t have time. But I can’t. But I... But still... Only you can know whether a thought is a real obstacle or just an excuse you’re using to sabotage yourself. If you can’t quit your job because you need the money to pay the bills, be grateful for the job you have and make peace with it. And anyway—no one’s stopping you from sending out your resume.
No one’s going to waste their energy dismantling your excuses or limiting beliefs. That’s up to you. And yes, that too is part of the responsibility of creativity.
Creativity is a wonderful—and sometimes painful—adventure. It demands that we accept uncertainty and constantly step outside what we usually call our comfort zone.
To live a creative life is to have faith without certainty. It means trusting that you’ll end up somewhere, without knowing exactly where or how. It means not just facing your fears, but loving and honoring them.
With love,
Matteo
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