That pretty little beast, a poem, has a mind of its own. Sometimes I want it to crave apples but it wants red meat. Sometimes I want to walk peacefully on the shore and it wants to take off all its clothes and dive in.

From Mary Oliver’s, “That Little Beast“

Though Oliver is speaking about a poem as a pretty little beast, I believe all creativity is like that. It has a mind of its own. I am not convinced you even have to describe yourself as creative to understand being wide-awake, being carried away, being in the flow, being captured by the-idea-that-won’t-go-away, being driven by entrepreneurial zeal.

Oliver reminds me of Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on creativity. Gilbert discussed the classical notion of daemons visiting people and inspiring profound moments of soul shaking clarity – the idea being that creativity is not the burden of the individual soul as asserted by Renaissance thinkers, but rather the product of daemons that visit all of us. As a writer, I have experienced moments when my words are not my own. I know what it feels like to be a vessel for something outside of myself. It does not happen often, but when it does I know it.

Creativity boils down to this for me. I believe each of us has daemons that guide us on our creative path. They live around us and inside us. They beg us to pay attention with ferocious intensity to our world. They ask us to live each day in reverence and gratitude. They teach us and require us to listen. They speak in powerful words telling us we must write, build, and create.