Take the Leap
Or: How I overcame 25 years of paralyzing self-doubt and finally took an art class.
Between grades 5 and 9, every art teacher I had told me—whether gently or in a painfully blunt manner—that I was a terrible artist, and from my teenage years up, I subsequently carried around an unshakeable belief that I had absolutely zero artistic talent. It was just a fact about myself. Like my wildly curly hair, or my fair freckled skin. I was good at a number of things, but art clearly wasn’t one of them.
The thing was, I always wanted to be good at art. I wanted to be one of those elusive, magnificently talented people who carried around a sketch book and a set of short pencils. Who could dash off a pencil sketch, creating a horizon or a tree or a side profile with a few expertly placed lines. But I never tried, or if I did—quietly, on scraps of paper quickly recycled—I was immediately discouraged by my efforts. Then, during the midst of Covid and all the anxiety and isolation and fear that surrounded the summer and fall of 2020, something inside me gave way, and I thought, “What the hell?”
My spare hours have long been few and far between, and most of my “extra” time outside of being a full-time mom is taken up with work writing and then my own writing projects, but I bought myself a few sketch books and I’ve drawn a few mushrooms, a few trees. A bug or two. Mostly I save images from amazing artists on Instagram and try to replicate them, trying to reverse engineer the lines and perspectives to see how they’re put together. And then just a few weeks ago, I took the bravest step in my artistic life, and I attended a watercolour workshop at the McTavish Academy of Art. Where I had to draw and paint in front of other people.
As my six-year-old would say, oh my good golly gosh that was terrifying. My first attempts at sketching out a Spanish onion had me utterly lost in the braided stems. My fig got to the painting stage, but it was muddy and bland and I wasn’t happy with it. And then! The beets! They’re nowhere near the perfection of the botanical illustration I’d envisioned in my mind, but there was something about the shading in the beetroot that I loved. But more than that, creating something just for the sake of creating it felt so good.
With just about everything I write, there’s a part of me wondering where I could submit it to, who might want to publish it, how I can tailor it to fit a market. But these beets…these beets are just for me. And having something creative and colourful and artistic, that also has zero expectations attached to it, was a transformative experience. It felt freeing to be trying something so new, to make so many mistakes and to step back from that perfectionist tendency that so often stalls my writing.
Refilling the creative well can come from anything, as long as it sparks that feeling of inspiration and wonder and joy (and yes, a little touch of fear). Maybe you’ve always wanted to bake sourdough. Or learn to play the violin. I’ve also been teaching myself to knit in the round and play the ukulele, because why not? It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s for you. If you’ve always wanted to write, then sit yourself down for 15 minutes, stick your pen to a sheet of paper and just write what comes out of your head. As Natalie Goldberg writes in Writing Down the Bones (and I’m paraphrasing here), don’t be afraid to write crap.
Embrace the mistakes, the awkward attempts, the skewed perspectives. Embrace the dropped stitches, the gooey over-fermented dough starters. Embrace the off-key notes, the flat characters, embrace it all. Because you’re in the process of creating something that no-one has ever created before you. You’re making a mark in your life and in the world, and it’s beautiful and flawed and inspiring, and it only has to be for you, if you want it to. Take the leap, friends.
Upcoming Workshop:
My fall schedule of writing workshops is live on MAOA’s website, but next up is my World-Building Workshop, more info and registration here. It’s one of my favourites, so check it out!