10 Myths About Being a Creative Person

Like most self respecting grown ups, I am barely able to do anything without googling first. So some time ago, I googled what it meant to be a creative person. 

Perhaps I should have anticipated that I wouldn’t like what I would find! There seemed to be very little that I actually agreed with. What I saw was the sad effect of hustle culture, and the idea of proving our worth through what we do, and how much. There was nothing at all about how creativity is part of who we are and runs through us like a golden thread.

I don’t believe that being creative involves following a lot of rules. And also don’t believe that failing to live up to somebody else’s ideas of the essence of being a creative person means we have failed.

Myth 1: You Have to Have a Designated Space in Order to be Creative.

Having your own space can be useful. Years ago, when I was sewing a lot, I managed to take over a dead spot in our front room. I’d moved things around to get the Christmas tree in, and once Christmas was over, I popped an old computer desk in that space. I installed my sewing machine and boxes of craft bits, and I kept it like that for several years.

This made a real difference to how much sewing I did. It meant that I no longer had to factor in getting everything out, then putting it away again, because I could leave the sewing machine out. Even if I only had 10 minutes, I could still do some sewing, whereas before it would have taken that long to get the sewing machine out and then put it away again.  

If you are able to have your own space, it’s great. Being able to leave your sewing machine out, or your painting stuff, or a project you’re working on, means that you can work on it whenever you have a few minutes. It also really helps if you have the kind of brain where you tend to forget about things if you can’t see them!

But even when I didn’t have a designated space, I still made stuff! Having a permanent spot made it easier, but this was not the thing that decided whether I was a creative person or not. 

Plenty of creative people use the kitchen table, or one end of the dining room table, or even the ironing board! Having a craft room or even a corner is not what makes somebody creative. 

Myth 2: You Have to Set Aside Time Every Day for Your Creative Thing.

Of course it’s a good thing to set aside time for enjoyable things. But that’s because they are important to us, we know they are good for us, and making time for them will make us nicer to be around! But the implication here is that you have to, and that if you don’t, you have failed. 

Life gets busy, and sometimes we can’t. Other things have to take priority, or there might be stuff going on in our lives that makes being creative harder, like stress or illness. Beating ourselves up because we have failed to make time to be creative isn’t the way to go. We haven’t failed. We can get back to it when we can.

Another point here is that although being creative often involves some sort of creative hobby, but it’s more than that. I am a creative person all the time, not just when I’m making stuff.

A third thing is that if something feels like a requirement, it can suddenly seem a whole lot less appealing! It can reduce something that’s supposed to be fun to the same kind of status as cleaning the toilet.

Trying to make sure that there is time in the day to do something creative that you enjoy is one thing. But turning it into a requirement or a chore isn’t helpful, and if you can’t get to it every day it doesn’t matter. It will still be there for you when you can.

Myth 3: We Have to Hold Ourselves Accountable.

For some people, accountability works very well. It usually involves texting a friend, or being part of a group, or using videos as a way of getting tedious tasks done, like filling in forms or buying kids’ school uniforms.

But holding ourselves accountable over our creativity seems like a very odd idea.

First of all, making stuff is fun! So why do we need to hold ourselves accountable in the same way as we might for boring tasks? Why do we need accountability in order to do something we enjoy? As with Myth 2, it can end up feeling like a requirement, and then we won’t enjoy it.

Being creative is not all about what we do, or how much we produce, or how much time we devote to it. It’s about who we are.

Myth 4: You Have to Set Goals.

I’ve talked about goal setting before. There’s nothing wrong with having an idea of what you want to do, or where you might want to go with it. Wanting to learn to knit so that you can knit little things for a new grandchild, or wanting to learn hand lettering because it looks like fun, could be considered goals.

One thing that is a problem is how closely goal setting is linked to hustle culture. It’s the idea of having to prove ourselves through our productivity, through ticking things off a list, as though that’s the only thing that counts.

If we decide that we want to learn to knit, or embroider flowers, paint watercolours or play the banjo, it’s because we want to! It’s supposed to be enjoyable, not a requirement!

Another thing is that although goal setting can be useful, if we fail to achieve them, they end up becoming a reason to bash ourselves over the head. And that seems like an odd thing to do over something that’s supposed to be fun.

A third issue I have with goal setting is that it implies that creativity is what we do, rather than who we are. We are creative people, regardless of whether we set goals or not.

Myth 5: You Have to Do Something for 10,000 Hours to Get Good at It.

This in itself might not actually be a myth! 

If you want to get really good at something, you have to practise.

For example, if you wanted to be the best knitter in the world, and compete in the knitting Olympics, then you would need to spend quite a few hours knitting so that you could prove that you were better at knitting than everyone else.

But is this what creativity is about? To be better at something than other people? It’s a shame that so many other bits of life have been reduced to a competition without it creeping into creativity as well. 

There’s nothing wrong with practising, and it can give a sense of satisfaction when we realise that we are better at something than we previously were. But we’re not in a competition! Neither do we necessarily want to become brilliant at what we’re doing. 

It’s about having a skill that is sufficiently developed in order for it to be used as an expression of our creative selves. If something is enjoyable, like sewing or painting, we will want to spend time doing that thing, and we will get better as a result. And being good enough at something to derive enjoyment from it is going to take a lot less than 10,000 hours.

Myth 6: Being Creative Means Having an Innate Talent, Obvious From the Outset, Without Needing to Practise.

It’s  going to sound like I’m disagreeing with myself now!

Although I don’t believe in measuring creativity in terms of productivity, goal seating, and the number of hours spent practising in order to beat off the competition, whether real or imagined, if we’re going to get better at something, it will involve practising at least a bit.

It can be disheartening to try something and find that the results are a disaster. We might compare our efforts with somebody else’s and want to give up.

But the other person’s results, especially if it’s something on social media, are probably the product of months, if not years of practise, and we’re comparing that to our first attempts!

It’s like equating a toddler jumping in puddles to a dancer like Darcey Bussell. Once upon a time, the best ballet Darcey Bussell could do would have been jumping in a puddle in a tiny pair of wellies!

If you try something, and you don’t like it, then there’s no reason to do it again. But if you’d like to get better at it, it might take a little while, and it will probably involve lots of mistakes. Sometimes it’s worth sticking with something for at least a bit.

As an aside, I thought for 30 years that I couldn’t draw. I liked art at school, and I did GCSE art. I suspected I wasn’t very good at it, especially when I looked at the work of the girl who sat next to me. I remember the teacher making a couple of suggestions (“Risk it!” was one. “Slap it on!” was another!). In the end I got a G. It was like a seal on what I had thought might be true all along, which was that I was hopeless and I couldn’t draw.

For my textiles course, I’ve had to do quite a lot of drawing. It worried me at the beginning, but since then, I have realised that all I needed was to find a medium I liked, a nudge in the right direction and some practise. And the amount of practise has been a lot less than 10.000 hours!

Myth 7: Being Creative Only Counts If You Can Make Money From It.

One of the things that makes me so sad about modern life is the idea that if you can’t make money from it, then it doesn’t matter. Don’t get me started on the implications of this for those of us who gave up jobs and careers to take care of our families!

This myth reduces creativity to a commodity. It implies that even something that is an essential part of being human doesn’t count, has no value at all, and is of no importance if you can’t sell it. 

People will happily buy all kinds of rubbish. I’ve done it myself. Just because money can be made from something doesn’t automatically mean it has value, or that it doesn’t have any value if you can’t. 

Surely there is more to life and being a human than making money, and things that have value that can’t always be given a price.

Myth 8: You Have to Focus on One Thing.

As somebody who enjoys a whole raft of creative things, my question is why?

I suspect it might be to do with productivity and hustle culture again. It’s much better for that factory style production line if you can churn out the same kind of thing one after another.

Plenty of creative people enjoy all sorts of different kinds of creativity. And even people who only do one or two probably find that their creativity shows up elsewhere in their lives.

I’ve found that in my own life, sometimes I’ll focus more on one thing, with others taking a back seat. It’s out of choice though, and not because somebody else says I have to. The other things will still be there when I’m ready to return to them.

Equally there is nothing wrong with having one main creative thing. The point is it is about who we are, and what works for us, not what somebody else says we should be doing.

Myth# 9: Every Creative Endeavour Has to Produce Finished Results.

There are so many reasons why this myth is wrong!

One problem I have with it is that it can trigger feelings of shame and guilt over unfinished projects. It makes us feel that we should have finished that project that’s lurking behind the bedroom door in a plastic bag, and we feel bad. 

There’s no reason to feel bad about unfinished projects. You just haven’t finished them yet! You might get to them this year, or next year, or in five years. They are works in progress, just as we are all works in progress and currently unfinished.

Another problem I have with this idea is that creativity is a thing in itself. 

Focusing on a finished piece denies the importance of experimentation in developing our creativity. Trying things out is fine. It doesn’t have to lead directly to a finished thing. It might inform a project at a later date, come in useful at some point in the future, or it might spark other ideas. It might also be a disaster, which is fine because not every idea we have will prove to be a good one. The only way to find out is to try, and sometimes it won’t work.

Focusing on the finished outcome also adds to perfectionism and the fear of getting it wrong. On social media we see beautiful finished things, with no clues at all of what it took for that person to get there. 

Those reels of people’s sketchbooks really bother me. Page after page of perfect, finished drawings, with no little sketches, colour schemes that didn’t work, notes or anything. 

I would rather see a book full of experiments and one finished drawing, than books full of perfect pictures with the rest hidden away.

So it’s fine to try things out and leave it there, whether you feel that it was a success or not. You probably learnt something, sparked some more ideas, or given yourself something you might return to at a later date.

Myth 10: All Creative People Are Messy 

Ages ago, I was listening to the Art Juice podcast, and somebody was getting upset because she was tidy, and she felt that it was implied that because she’s not messy she couldn’t be creative.

In all honesty, this is not something I can relate to. I am messy! Whenever I’m doing anything creative, my front room usually looks like someone has filled several pinatas with fabric, thread, paint and general detritus, then has rounded up a gang of cats to rip them up and spread the contents all over the place. I frequently marvel at the amount of mess I manage to make!

But apparently, some creative people are tidy. Some people can’t think in a mess. For some of us, they would no more think of leaving something out than I would think to put it away! 

When we see the results of somebody’s creativity, we don’t know whether they also made an almighty mess or not. In the end it doesn’t matter. Creative people make stuff. That might include messes, or it might not.

I’d love to know what you think! If you’d like to share your thoughts, please add them to the comments below!