Creativity is a fire

During my sophomore year, my writing professor sat at a cheap table in our new classroom. Since it was the first day of class, I sat at the opposite side of the room. But that didn’t say much since everyone sat in a circle, facing each other. I took out an earbud to listen in on the conversation around me.

The professor nodded off at a student with his hands moving around in circles. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the first telling sign that he was ranting with no positive words.

“It’s not possible,” he said in a louder voice than was needed. “I should tell you that right now. Getting into the writing field and making a living from it is impossible. Give up now.”

My heart slammed against my chest. I took out the other earbud to hear him better. He can’t be crushing my dreams before our first class, right? At least wait the four minutes until class starts.

“There’s no way. You have to be one of a billion to get it. It’s impossible. I’ve known plenty of writers who tried and failed. It’s not something achievable. Sure, you can publish, but don’t publish for the money. You’ll get nowhere.”

What if we told everyone that?

Oh, you want to be a doctor? That’s cool, but it’s unrealistic. You’ll have too much debt from those classes you’d have to take. How can you keep your focus through all of that? You won’t. It was a good dream though.

No. We don’t say that to doctors, do we? You know who we save our negativity for? Creative people.

Writers. Artists. Musicians. Video game developers. Movie directors. They will get told to give up from people throughout their lives. If you’re one of them, I want to tell you something: don’t give up.

If we all give up as they tell us to, there’ll be no creativity left. We can’t leave each other in the dust. We’re all creative in our unique ways. We can’t let the fire die inside of us.