Grab your swords, dearest rebels of the light.
Most believe fear to be the primary enemy of progress. However, I would argue progress has many foes to face. Fear is most definitely one of them, but it is closely allied with the Kingdom of Control, the Peninsula of Perfectionism, and the Empire of Obligation. In the Great War on Creativity, these forces stand against all that is playful, authentic, and most importantly, fun.
Writers — like artists, actors, filmmakers and so on — are born enlisted on the side of Imaginative Freedom. Our words are bullets. Our pens are swords. Sadly, even with bottomless arsenals at our disposal, the opposing side has a secret and powerful weapon. They use an inception-esque method of brainwashing, a technique that divides us from each other and from ourselves so that we may be conquered.
The brainwashing takes place in three central phases:
Phase One: Make Them Grow Up
Phase Two: Make Them Perfectionists
Phase Three: Make Them Worship At The Altar of Revenue
Like with most wars, the goal of the enemy is to absorb us and take our land for their own. They wish to convert us to the Church of Capitalism and use us as assets in their hostile takeover of every remaining corner of the world. Through them, every passion shall become an industry, every art form a business venture. All things done for the purpose of soul exploration and nourishment will be replaced by only what serves The Empire.
Today, Soldiers of the Sacred Imagination, I seek to free you from any semblance of the doubt and fear programmed into you. I hope to replenish your word bullets and sharpen your pen swords. In this age and at this stage, it is imperative that we return to the battlefield and fight for what matters most.
Undoing Phase One: Embrace Play
As children, we are intrinsically connected to chaos, loosely organized into play. Enraptured with the expansiveness of the world behind and beyond our eyes, we spend timeless days in the sandbox of life. We exist to build something from nothing, to fill every void with vibrant color, and to pack the empty highways in our brains with fresh, new neural networks.
There is a reason books are also called novels. They are novel. They are a product of humanity’s innate thirst for original experiences. They are new, unusual, interesting adventures into uncharted imaginal realms, and like most beautiful things, they originate before we are tainted by the rigidity of society. We read, watch, and tell stories to recoup the spark of play enjoyed in early youth.
This is why youth is the first thing attacked in the War on Creativity. Think of how many times you have been hassled by phrases like: “You need to grow up.” “Act like an adult.” “Be more realistic.” “Stop behaving like a child.” It seems most of the world has settled on a philosophy in which a structured, rational, and perpetually-bored existence (adulthood) is superior to one of wonder, freedom, and boundless belief in possibility (childhood). If adulthood truly triumphs, why do so many people mourn their lives prior to it? If it is the next and most natural phase of human cultivation, why is it often described like a gradually-intensifying death sentence?
Dear rebels, I ask you… Might we change our collective perspective? Might we embrace an eternal state of play, and grow, not from children to adults, but from growing children to grown children.
As a creative, I regard my childhood as a period of data collection. Exposed to a myriad of pathways to different imaginal spaces, I took this time to become acquainted with myself, with this world, and with my individual likes, dislikes, and biases. In short, I made sense of my own pocket of chaos, identifying which games I prefer to play, which games I prefer to watch, and which I’d rather avoid.
As a grown-up child, I am still devoted to play. However, I have an understanding of my personal preferences, so I am able to better mitigate my attention.
There’s no need to bury yourself under the rubble of adulthood. It’s an illusionary requirement invented by whatever strange, possessive force that seeks to arrange our world into rigid lines and cement structures. You can resist. Better yet, you can exist. You can dwell in an eternal state of childlike play, use every writing session to return to the sandbox, and incarnate your adventures into words instead of sandcastles. When you invite this carefree energy back to Earth, you’ll inspire others — creatives and enjoyers of creativity alike— to embrace and expand it.
Undoing Phase Two: Embrace Disarray
To put it simply, be messy. Love and celebrate the beautiful, sprawling disaster that is your first draft. By training us to fear the art of mistake-making, the enemy regime has stunted growth on a global scale. We learn through contrast, not perfection. Every mistake is a sacred lesson, every failure an opportunity to become more aligned with success.
The mind of a perfectionist is a horrid, unnatural thing. It is a landscape of timidity and terror. In the throes of my perfectionism era, I had three central beliefs that kept me from my writing desk:
One: All mistakes are proof of fundamental inadequacy, therefore, if I avoid making them, I avoid coming to terms with the reality of never being enough.
Two: Every draft is the world’s last canvas. It is completely unchanging. Every word is a stroke of black paint, ever-threatening to ruin the piece in totality with one… fatal… slip…
Three: If it’s not perfect, it’s not worthy of existence. Every brainchild must emerge a fully-functioning adult, complete with perfect health, strapping muscles, and several forms of combat training. If not, these stories do not deserve to emerge from the womb. How dare they seek to develop beyond it? How dare they desire to exist outside their incubation pods?
This is the second phase of the War for a reason. After being told to “grow up”, most of us wonder what such a thing even means. This is precisely what it means. “Grown-ups” do not make mistakes. “Grown-ups” are made of straight spines, white smiles, and perfect manners. Therefore, “grown up writers” produce only the most majestic manuscripts, cleansed by the waters of marketability.
To stand up against this, I implore you to dissolve the limiting beliefs that have infected your brain matter. Every draft of every story is worth your time, if it yields the most important result of all: fun. Every draft is malleable and changeable; it can and will grow with you. Be messy, be chaotic, be careless. Throw sand about the sandbox without a worry for where it lands. Perfectionism does not breed perfection. It breeds fear. If you fear your writing desk, you’ll never sit at it. If you fear your manuscript, you’ll never commit to it. If you fear the mere act of writing, I regret to inform, you’ll never write.
Make the space safe again. Understand that the only thing you must honor is the sacred and beautiful chaos that exists in your heart. It compels you to break form, not obey it. It drives you to be fearless, not habitually terrified.
Your first draft is meant to be a senseless amalgamation of experience, a playful retelling of your adventures out of space and time. Mistakes made here lead to growth; they do not define you. In truth, nothing really can. You — in nature — are undefinable. Divinely unknowable.
When it comes to the refinement of a work of art, for the purposes of self-satisfaction of course, I like to refer to a perfectionism-dissolving saying learned from filmmaking. In filmmaking, there is a saying: “We can fix it in post.” This implies that any and all “errors” made in pre-production and production can somehow, magically, be alchemized into art in the post-production (i.e. editing) phase. It honors happy coincidences, breakthroughs disguised as setbacks.
When in doubt, adopt this mindset. All that you write, in all of its perceived imperfection, is a gateway toward creative growth and — eventually — success. Failure is not a factor because failure does not exist. Everything is progress, a step in the right direction in a world where no direction is wrong.
Undoing Phase Three: Embrace Being God
When you create, you are the supreme and sovereign ruler of the worlds beneath your reign. You are the holiest and most sacred being, the great puller of puppet strings and designer of destiny. Nothing and no one can steal this power away. It is impossible, illogical, without your consent.
The enemy forces pry for your consent, because once they have it, they’ll seek to convert you to the aforementioned Church of Capitalism. Our beloved Earth has become a world built on numbers. People have become ones and zeroes, money bags made from flesh with golden dollar signs glinting in their eyes. The Altar of Revenue has so many candles on it, each commemorating a different sacrifice. One-by-one, every industry, hobby and craft has become assimilated into this strict belief system, arranged into castes allotted varying levels of regard.
Creativity seems to be the next conquest.
They tried to sway us with promises of material success, claims to fame, and checks eager to price our priceless gems. In the face of our resistance, they threatened us with AI-generated content, claiming audiences care oh-so-little for the spark of magic behind real art.
Against all odds, I’m proud to say the creative factions of society have stood strong. I believe this is because we are acutely aware that the only god worth serving is the one that exists in our truest and most authentic hearts. I serve fun and freedom, exploration and experience. My works are offerings to The Goddess Brittany and all of her boundless desires for pleasure, play, beauty and love.
When you reject the Church of Capitalism, you omit yourself from their oppression. You quite literally decline participation in it. In the space left open, you place your personal sovereignty, and begin living in pursuit of your own fulfillment. I simply cannot imagine living or writing in a way more beautiful.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope this piece added a bit of extra sunshine to your day. As you can probably tell, I very much enjoyed exploring the war analogy here. Truly, all of this is to say that I’ve found so much joy in writing for my own joy instead of for the world’s approval. I’ve been trying to step back into the indigo Mary Jane shoes I wore in third grade, creating for the sake of fun, play, and freedom again. When I drop the expectation that a work must be perfect and profitable, I often end up writing something that is — ironically — just that. So, I encourage you to indulge in some shameless, artistic fun. You might accidentally craft something you, and others, will truly love. ♡
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