How to Be Creative

I have not chosen a particularly auspicious place to work here in the library. I could have joined the studious masses in the main table area, surrounded by the novels of the greats, hearing the soft conversation of the patrons and the librarian discussing books just finished and books about to be embarked on. Instead, I found a corner desk with no natural light and a chipped formica top, facing a shelf of English language learning books. As if my uninspired career has come to taunt me, showing me the only way forward through a comfortable life is through the rules and structures of grammar, that prosperity comes from my knowledge of TOEFL and IELTS and that purpose is found in teaching students to be good test takers. I stare at the shelf, which is surprisingly less scary than the blank page, and my creative soul is sucked out through “The Dummy’s Guide to English Grammar.”

The irony of feeling creatively stymied in my career of English teaching is that I am quite a liberal language teacher, and whenever a student asks, “Is this the right way to say it?” I have to stifle the urge to shrug with a smile and say “Well you just said it.” Students don’t seem to appreciate that, but I love the natural creativity of language learners, when their gaps result in new expressions and words. “Imaginate” has become part of my own vernacular. But now that I’m staring down the spine of “504 Absolutely Essential Words,” I find that I myself have very few I feel compelled to write.

I should move to a different desk, one without such a creative buzzkill.

Instead, I look up the definition of creativity. (I know that looking up a definition is, in it of itself, a singularly uncreative move. But as I’m not writing a wedding speech, I think I’m allowed.)

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of creativity is “1. The ability to create. 2. The quality of being creative.” This seems to me to lack the vision of the word itself, in addition to just being poor craftsmanship in definition making. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines creativity as “the use of skill and imagination to produce something new or to produce art.” I appreciate the use of other references to define the word but also find that all the new nouns just throw us into murky waters. Skill? Imagination? Art?? How deep down the definition rabbit hole am I willing to go?

In truth, I’m procrastinating, which is what I’ve been doing for months. There have been many failed attempts to create since I came back to the US. Or rather — I should take more ownership than is indicated by that sentence — I have been rather uninterested in creating since coming back to the States. Or to take even more responsibility: I have not created. Even a flowery Instagram caption is beyond my skills. What did I post with our wedding photos? Oh yes — “Just the greatest day ever. 🤍” Five words to celebrate my husband and our undying love. With a heart emoji thrown in for real gravitas.

I trace my creative life backwards, trying to find where it evaporated. I did try while living in Cambodia. My creative outlet for the past several years has been making fun (for me) little YouTube videos, and in Cambodia I filmed several. I filmed and filmed, and the footage sits on a hard drive in my closet. I never even threw it into the editing software.

I wonder why I even bothered filming there. There was a half-hearted attempt to edit a “I moved to Cambodia” video, but after that I filmed enough content for five or six videos. By month seven in Cambodia, I was trying to interest myself in the bare minimum of video content, making reels.

Don’t bother checking Instagram for those.

The last time I really enjoyed creating was in Ukraine. After living there for several years, I felt like I finally had something to say and I enjoyed the play of showing off the country to others, the 353 people who eventually subscribed to my channel. But being creative takes a certain boldness, and in Ukraine I got that boldness from the fact that I did know the country. I was happy to take my camera and my laptop along with me, faithful companions at the pink lake of Henichesk, the cocktail bars of Odesa, the nuclear command center of Pervomaisk. I had a reason to make videos about Ukraine. I was genuinely excited about the country and showing it to others. Outside of Ukraine, I lacked authority the ground my creativity in. I lacked a purpose in my content. I didn’t know what I wanted to do or how to go about it. It made me insecure, anxious, and eroded my confidence.

When I came back to the US, I wanted to restart my creative life. I thought of numerous combinations — reels, blog posts, travel, language teaching — like trying to solve a rubric’s cube. But even when I found an idea that was interesting, an angle that I thought had longevity, I couldn’t even make a start. I felt clunky, in the same way I had when making small talk at immigration all those years ago. I was rusty. Too much time had passed since my momentum in Ukraine. I was no longer knowledgeable in anything and doubted any readers would trust me.

Does creativity have to have a purpose? Do I need to be an authority to command an audience’s attention? Is that what has been missing since my days in Ukraine?

And then one day I thought of the only thing I felt I knew anything about, living abroad, and how I no longer ‘did’ that. And I sat down and opened this document, and started writing “How to be An American.”

Naturally, I left off after about three paragraphs and didn’t come back to finish the first post for another month. But in the meantime, I wrote a list of titles:

• How to Change Your Name
• How to Be a Good Daughter
• How to Host a Dinner Party
• How to Day Drink, Classy
• How to Start a Family
• How to Get the Wine Store People to Remember Your Name (After You Change It)
• How to Live in the Woods
• How to Contribute to the Workforce

None of these will be useful posts. They will not be edifying or educational, except in a purely and happily incidental way. They may not even be entertaining! They most certainly are not guaranteed to be written. I’m still clunky and rusty and insecure.

But by starting “How to Be American,” by making the list, I had managed to achieve something I hadn’t had in nearly a year.

Permission to be creative, for no reason, for no purpose, and definitely with no standard of quality or quantity to hit. And where does my brazen authority come from?

Me.

“I wonder why I even bothered filming there…”

It’s been a good ten minutes since I wrote that line, and I’m still staring at “Ultimate Phrasal Verbs.” I close my laptop. I have started this post and poked around at the source of my creative blockage, but there, in the library, the middle of this post is missing. I have not yet realized the permission I gave myself. I console myself with the fact that I was able to be a good sport about my lack of creativity and pounded out a page anyway, even though I have backed away from the cliff of any kind of self-realization. There’s only so much self-reflection a woman with a full-time job can do.

I turn around, getting ready to leave the library, and there are the magazines. I loved magazines as a kid. They are focus, distilled. I loved the deep dive into writing and film and Star Wars. I love them now too, though just like with creativity, I lack the discipline to focus long enough to get the most out of them. But what adorns the cover of a cooking magazine right in front of me now — Chicken Kyiv. I don’t believe in signs, but I believe in noticing. Noticing is the spark of creativity, as the first thought that you see something overlooked or misunderstood and the joy in noticing it. That’s what gave me passion in Ukraine, the noticing, the delighting, the retelling.

It’s the very least I can do if I want to be creative. And the very best.

The middle of the post will come later.