Magical Writers and Inner Creativity

I’ve loved reading books since I was young. My parent’s cabin is four hours away from the house in which I grew up, and most trips to the cabin I spent almost the entire time reading. I read Redwall books, the Chronicles of Narnia, Where the Red Fern Grows (the first book that ever made me cry), The Island of the Blue Dolphins, Troubling a Star, the Little House on the Prairie books, the Adventures of the Northwoods series, the Christy Miller series (yikes!), and many, many more. My life revolved around books. I lived and breathed their stories, and wanted them so badly to happen to me, too.

I also had a very strong respect for writers. I believed that writers were more than human. I felt like as soon as a writer walked into a room, I’d be able to tell. Something would set him or her apart from all the other people around. Writers were keepers of sacred secrets, expert weavers of words, and creators of beautiful and lovely worlds that kept my imagination active for hours. Not only did I want to live in the worlds imagined by these writers, I wanted to create worlds that were just as magical as theirs. I held writers in the highest esteem.

Now, as an adult, I know a handful of writers personally. This is such a great honor for me, which might sound really strange to some people, but it is nevertheless true. And you know what? I don’t think I’d peg any of them as writers if I happened to meet them in a restaurant or at a basketball game. They don’t necessarily exude magic and mystery, although they are all wonderful people that I’m thankful I get to call friends. They’re also people who work really hard on their craft. Writing may come naturally to them, but I can tell that they’ve cultivated their gifts over years of practice.

Thinking about these writers that I know makes me wonder something. None of the writers that I know wear their writing abilities as badges on their shirts or scrawled across their foreheads in giant letters. Nor do they have some sort of writer’s aura that floats around them like a mist. So, how do their creative lives interact with the parts of them that the world sees? From where does creativity come?

I like to imagine that people have layers. (Stick with me. I promise this isn’t going to turn into a Shrek reference.) First is the layer the world sees. People who don’t know me well would typically say that I’m happy all the time and as carefree as a robin on the first day of spring. If you didn’t look too closely at my attitude, you’d think it was positive all the time. I’m nice and smooth on the outside–like a freshly-laid egg.

Next is the layer that only the people who know someone well see. It often coexists with the first layer, but can’t be distinguished unless you know how to look for it. My demeanor doesn’t change when I get upset, but I get sarcastic. You wouldn’t even know unless you paid attention to my words instead of my voice inflection. This second layer of myself is almost like an under-current. All of my emotions come from this layer; they rarely break the surface, but I can feel them swirling beneath me like molten lava under the earth’s crust. I’ve gotten better over the last few years at letting those emotions gently rise to the surface. I’m not a volcano anymore. I’m more like a fault line under the ocean offering up a small amount of lava in short, controlled bursts.

The third layer is a person’s thought life. I’m often not even aware of this layer. Writing helps me organize my thoughts and keeps them from overflowing too much. I like to keep my mind filled with Bible verses, song lyrics, music, and funny stories. I catch myself daydreaming on a fairly regular basis (Anne Shirley would be proud) and thinking about conversations I had with people. If you’re a living, breathing human person, I already like you and want to talk to you. (I guess this rules out zombies. Oh well.) This paragraph is a good example of how my mind wanders. We all struggle to tame our thoughts, as Jesus exhorts us to do. Paul says in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The layers continue onward, deeper, more intertwined with each other and harder to distinguish, until you reach the center of your experiences, emotions, and thoughts. At their core, I think most people are just trying to make sense of the world. They’re taking their previous ideas about things and then comparing them to what actually happened. They’re observing, recording, synthesizing, and remembering, reaching feelers out into the other layers to try to figure them out. You might say a person’s core is their soul, their very being, their imago Dei.

Creative endeavors originate here, in a person’s core, the very deepest part of themselves. Often I don’t fully understand or appreciate a writer’s work until I hear his or her life story, like connecting the dots in order to form a whole picture. Creative works are not the opposite of what the world sees of a person, but rather they are the truest representation of someone’s perceptions of themselves, their emotions, and their experiences. “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). Creative works radiate outward from a person’s core like an electrical current, pulling bits and pieces of all the other layers along for the ride.

This explains why writers don’t wear their creativity like a cloak for all the world to see plainly. Creative works don’t come from the outside, they come from the inside. We can’t always predict the kind of work an artist will produce because we don’t know him or her to the very core. God does, and that is such a blessing, especially for Christian artists. We can learn about God, and his work in the lives of his people, from other writers’ creative expressions. God gives to us so that we can give to others and bring glory to his great name.

I’m eternally grateful for my writer friends, and all the other writers who put so much thought and love and goodness and humor into their stories. I hope you all keep writing until God calls you home.

Photo: Ian Schneider on Unsplash