Assembling Your Creative Council: Demons, Muses, and Guides
In the first article in this brief series on revision (“Many Minds”), I introduced the concept of the “receptive stance”—the state of humility, openness, and trust required to attune to your ideas and follow them wherever they lead. As I wrote at the conclusion of “Many Minds:”
In the receptive stance, you are the conduit for creative ideas, not the originator. You’re not trying to control the outcome of your work; you’re surrendering to the material and following it wherever it leads. You trust that the writing process (or creative process) is smarter than you are. The work isn’t made, it’s revealed—to our surprise and delight.
Much of what happens in the creative problem-solving process is determined by the attitudes and beliefs we bring to our creative work—what’s commonly referred to as our “mindset.” Unfortunately, we tend to focus on adding tidbits to our bag of creativity-related tips and tricks, when in truth, our ability to apply our know-how is often limited by our beliefs about our talent, capability, and the place we’ve been assigned to by others because of the color of our skin, our gender identity, our economic status, our education, our nationality, our age, and all the other labels used to define us. But our attitudes about creativity don’t just come from others. Too often, we ourselves believe our creative impulses are suspect. In his recent New York Times article “We Have a Creativity Problem,” the reporter and author Matt Richtel writes:
“... the emerging science of implicit bias has revealed that what people say about creativity isn’t necessarily how they feel about it. Research has found that we actually harbor an aversion to creators and creativity; subconsciously, we see creativity as noxious and disruptive, and as a recent study demonstrated, this bias can potentially discourage us from undertaking an innovative project or hiring a creative employee.”
—“We Have a Creativity Problem,” Matt Richtel. The New York Times, April 16, 2022.
Overcoming our limiting beliefs about creativity itself and our own creative capacity is hard. We all know profoundly creative people who haven’t been able to overcome these challenges, who’ve never produced the work they are capable of. Too often, these people believed they had to do it all alone—that their doubts and fears were signs of weakness. Working alone, they were unable to outmaneuver their demons… When we work alone, we’re inclined to react to the self-limiting beliefs that are on autoplay in our head, instead of the reality of doing any kind of creative work: Not even the most accomplished creatives conquer their fears.
I write in terror. I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes every syllable.
—Cynthia Ozick, award-winning short story writer, novelist, and essayist
In his book The Courage To Write, Ralph Keyes makes an important distinction between courage and fearlessness. He writes:
Finding the courage to write does not involve erasing or ‘conquering’ one’s fears. Working writers aren’t those who have eliminated their anxiety. They are the ones who keep scribbling while their heart races and their stomach churns, and who mail manuscripts with trembling fingers. The key difference between writers who are paralyzed by fear and those who are merely terrified is that [...] the later come to terms with their anxieties. They learn how to keep writing even as fear tries to yank their hand from the page. They find the courage to write.
They also find the courage to revise—to both write and rewrite. The word revision means “to see again.” When we do deep revision (as opposed to lighter forms of revision like line editing), we re-immerse in the work and see it again, through the eyes of others: the intended audience, creators whose work we admire, and the eyes of the mentors we rely on to guide us through the creative problem-solving process. Deep revision is more than editing, it’s a form of writing that’s every bit as demanding (and anxiety inducing) as writing a first draft.
The antidote to working alone, to the endless reruns in your head of your greatest fears and failures, is the conscious development of a council of many minds. But like any truly useful advisory council, your personal council of many minds must be diverse. It must include the voices of your inner critics (aka your Demons), your inspirations (aka your Muses), and your mentors (aka your Guides).
Name Your Demons
Our demons have many names: our inner critics, judges, saboteurs, and dementors—to name just a few. Whatever you call them, your demons are the doubts, fears, and feelings that hold you back, that block your work and growth. The Perfectionist is the demon that’s most familiar to creatives—the inner voice that whispers that your work is never good enough, that you’re never good enough.* But The Perfectionist isn’t the only inner critic who can stymie you. Other critics, such as The Destroyer, The Inner Controller, and The Conformist can also undermine your ability to express and revise your ideas.**
Your inner critics want to keep you in a fixed mindset—one that reinforces the value of your established view of yourself, your creative work, and the world around you. In a fixed mindset you are the sum of your basic abilities, intelligence, and talents—growth isn’t a matter of further developing your abilities and intelligence, it’s about sharpening your command of your given talents, the pursuit of perfection.
Successfully revising your work requires a growth mindset—the ability to move beyond the assumptions and limitations of your point of view and explore the perspectives of others.*** Deep revision is a byproduct of empathetically adopting the perspectives of many minds and receptivity to the insights and directions that come from those acts of transformation. At its best, in deep revision the creator enters the process in one state of mind and exits in another—a process that mirrors the experience of those who engage with the work of art.
The first step in moving beyond your self-imposed limitations and beliefs is to identify your inner critics. This short quiz will help you identify and understand the inner critics that are most active in the conversation you’re having with yourself about your creative capacity, skills, and work.
Gather Your Muses
What inspires you? Whose work do you admire? What are the aesthetic attributes that you’re drawn toward? The answers to these questions are the path to identifying your muses—the attending angels that draw you out of the clutches of your demons.
A muse can be an artist or other person who inspires you, a particular work of art, an aesthetic quality, a value, or an idea. The ancient Greeks celebrated nine muses who were the protectors of their most prized cultural values including the arts (music, dance, poetry, and theater), the sciences (astronomy, geometry, architecture, agriculture, grammar, rhetoric), the major genres (tragedy, comedy, heroic acts (history)). The muses also represented their most highly valued emotions (love, serenity) and social values (justice, education). While the ancient Greeks depicted the muses as goddesses, other cultures depict them as animals, spirits, angels, and more recently, movie-stars.
However you choose to represent them, your muses embody your core creative values. They are emblems of the aesthetic traits you’re most inspired by, the political and moral values that drive and inform your work, and the people whose lives help give meaning to your life. The muses in your circle are lights you’re moving toward, magnetic forces that draw you ever closer. But they are idealized representations. Mimicking the lives and/or work of your muses is dangerous because they are synthesized abstractions.
Miles Davis is one of my muses. His constant reinvention of his sound, of jazz, and music as genre; his endless exploration of fresh forms and settings; and his probing trumpet solos all inspire me. But Miles was a troubled and sometimes violent man who grappled with depression and addiction throughout his life. I’m inspired by his art. I have compassion for him as a human being. But I don’t want to emulate his life. For me, his work is an emblem of the importance of continuous exploration, of taking risks, and of not allowing your success to define you. Miles is a muse whose song is always evolving as it calls us to a life of creative innovation and reinvention.
Take a moment to list at least four of your most powerful sources of inspiration. Give each source a name. It can be a person (the painter “Henri Matisse”), an attribute (“beauty”), an idea (“social justice”), or one or more works of art that share something in common (such as “surprising juxtapositions”). If you’re unsure whether an inspiration belongs on your list, ask yourself if it pulls you in a direction you want to be heading in. There are things that inspire me that I don’t want to move toward in my work. They energize me, but don’t influence my path toward my goals****
Choose Your Guides
In this book Stoking the Creative Fires, author and filmmaker Phil Cousineau stresses the importance of having a mentor or guide to help you when the reverie of starting out on your creative journey has faded and you’re at the “crossroads of creativity”—the point where succumb to doubt, to the voices and circumstances that stand in the way, or move forward:
What will you do? Who will you listen to? How badly do you want to move on? Maybe the gods will overlook you, but the great teachers tell us we have to look out for ourselves. At this critical juncture in your creative journey, you must be ready and willing to ask for help to get you past the crossroads and keep you on the path. To do this, you need confidence, encouragement, and a model you trust enough to emulate.
— Phil Cousineau, Stoking the Creative Fires
You need a guide, a mentor, a wise elder, and the wisdom to listen to their advice. Mentors, Cousineau adds, “get you back on track, redirect your attention, ignite your imagination, and ensure you’ve lit the right fire.”
Who do you turn to when you’re stuck? It could be a teacher, a friend, a mentor in your community or workplace, or someone from the past you connect with through their art, writing, or life story. Anyone can be a guide, as long as they help you move forward. Here’s a list of seven types of mentors that will help you broaden your idea of who can serve as a guide.*****
A Traditional Mentor - An older, more experienced person in your life, field, or organization who has more experience than you do in a certain area. (Also known as a Craft Mentor.)
A Reverse Mentor - A younger, less experienced person in your life, field, or organization who has relevant experience in the area you want to learn more about. (Note that a reverse mentor doesn’t have to be younger than you in age, the key to picking a reverse mentor is stepping out of the traditional mentor/mentee model that’s focused on asking for guidance from someone with more seniority than you.)
A Peer Mentor - Someone in your life, field, or organization who is grappling with the same issues you are, but who has different perspectives and skills.
An Aspirational Mentor - A person you admire for their qualities and feel comfortable learning from—and even emulating.
A Practical Mentor - Someone who can give you real-world practical advice on how to approach a problem or situation. Unlike an aspirational mentor who you look to for inspiration, your practical mentors are your go-to resources for getting things done.
A Coping Mentor - A resource who can help you find ways to cope with tough issues or situations, and relieve your stress.
An Identity Mentor - Someone you look to because you fall into a specific group (such as moms or female leaders) or you want to learn more about a certain identity group (such as LGBTQ or veterans).
Think broadly about the role of guides in your life and work. Remember that your goal is to learn from and integrate the wisdom of others. The more unlike you your mentors are, the more likely they are to present you with perspectives and ideas you wouldn’t have discovered on your own.
Make a list of at least four people who guide your life and creative work, and what kind of guidance you go to each of them for.
Begin Assembling Your Creative Council
Assembling your creative council is an essential part of choosing who you want to become on the page, on the canvas, on your instrument, or in your field. Your work is an amplification of your voice, so choose your inspirations and mentors carefully.
In the final article in this series, we will use the lists you’ve compiled of your Demons, Muses, and Guides as we finish assembling your creative council and explore ways of using your council to work through your creative blocks, guide your work in progress, and set your long-term creative ambitions.
Footnotes
* See my article “Perfection and the Persistent Process of Becoming” for more on the pervasiveness of perfectionism in our culture and how to reframe perfectionism.
** For more on identifying and working with your inner critics, read my article "The Inner Life of the Inner Critic."
*** Read Carol Dweck's influential book Mindset to learn more about the power of mindset and the importance of cultivating a growth mindset.
**** For more on discovering, documenting, and developing your aesthetic, see my article "Developing and Using Your Aesthetic."
***** Sources: "7 Types of Mentors," Frances, Laura. mentorCliq website, March 25, 2021. Also see author and entrepreneur Anthony Tjan's TEDx talk, "Why Leadership and Mentorship Does Not Need to Fail Us,” on the five types of mentors he suggests you look for.