Je ne sais quoi
'... the plague of loving things more than their creators...'
(no, not really what this post was about but I can never resist an excuse for a Mumford and Sons moment, and this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3aaTaDIvOo&feature=related has the fabulous lines 'I'm not whole when you're not here' and 'this world means less and less to me without you breathing through its trees', both of which reduce me to rubble in combination with the above userpic)
I think I know what it is I'm looking for in all my creative endeavours now - the factor that sets truly creative people (the boys above being a case in point) apart from merely technically competent ones - and it's very simple.
An original voice.
MY original voice.
The whatever-it-is that would set my work (in whatever medium) apart from everyone else's; that would make you look at it and go 'ideserveyou wrote that' (or made it, painted it, constructed it...)
I'm working on it.
In one sense I guess we each have an individual voice that is unique. But in another... there are a lot of competent people out there and they are making well-made and beautiful things, don't get me wrong. But they are making the same sorts of things to the same rules and there is nothing to set them apart. Bit like, oh, I don't know, maybe a step beyond join-the-dots or painting by numbers, more like following a tutorial or assembling a kit... there isn't an underlying originality. A really truly creative person will also maybe start by following a tutorial but will then go 'but what if...?' and head off at a tangent; or will take the kit and assemble it in an unconventional way or add components of their own or mix up all the colours...
Does that make any kind of sense?
I want to be a real writer. I do. But I'm still finding my voice, and still deeply irritated that my default writing voice is that of my annoying teenage self.
Oh, grow up...