Writing Prompts
Sometimes I feel like a cheater in the creative process.
When I use writing prompts, I often feel like somebody else did the imaginative legwork for me while I do the easy part, which is the writing. With this thinking, I often tell myself that what I wrote is unimportant and not really my own piece. However, I learned through a discussion over a beer with my sister and her boyfriend that we all excel in different areas of the creative process. For example, my sister is a very talented interior designer and stylist and knows which pieces would fit where to make a space as welcoming and as beautiful as it could possibly be. (I personally panic when tasked with simply rearranging a single room.) She does really well in the inception of the creative idea and flow. Her boyfriend enjoys the middle part of the process, which is the part where he is actually doing the creative thing and creating something. He is a crazy good photographer who specializes in interior design. So, interior designer + photographer of said interior design = match made in heaven. For me, my favorite part is near the end of the process when I have a clear idea of what needs to be created or someone has literally told me what to write (writing prompt or professor), and I’m either just tweaking somebody else’s work to make it the best that it could possibly be or writing something of my own after all ideas and flow of the piece have been figured out. That’s why I enjoy editing so much. Someone else has already sprouted a new idea, jotted down their ideas, an outline, or a chapter or two, and I go in and edit it. It’s not that any part of the process is worth less or more than the other; they’re all of equal importance and all needed to have the final piece come to being. Different people just excel at different parts of the process.
The reason I bring up writing prompts is because my sister and her boyfriend got me a box of Rupi Kaur’s writing prompts for Christmas. As a person who panics when tasked with imagining up a new idea for a book or blog post, this was a perfect gift for me. Hence the reason why some of my blog posts have been about “What I’m listening to now!” or “What I’m reading lately!” I’ve decided that for my next few blog posts (or every blog post from here on out, who knows), I will take a card from the stack and write about whatever it’s prompting me to write about. Today’s card says:
Becoming more self-aware has shown me _____.
My first thought when I read this is that it is very evident when someone is not self-aware, but it can be sometimes hard to tell when someone is. There’s a particular girl on one of the most recent seasons of Love Is Blind — yes, I’m a reality show kind of girl — and she simply embodies what it’s like to not be self-aware. She has said things such as how intelligent she is, how mature she is, and how self-aware she is, just to name a few. Part of the definition of being self-aware is that you understand how your actions and words have an impact on those around you. Throughout the entire process of meeting her fiance, living as an engaged couple, and then in the end when she decides not to marry him, she clearly does not understand this concept. Anytime she interacted with her fiance, she belittled him, insulted him and his intelligence, and was just completely mean to him. He had the patience of a saint in order to deal with her for as long as he did, and they broke it off the day that she was supposed to try on wedding dresses for their upcoming nuptials. Watching her on the screen made me wonder how/why she got to this point. Hasn’t anyone told her how mean she is? She tries to mask her meanness by calling herself a blunt person, but I think that there’s a fine line between being blunt and being mean. She was just plain mean.
I believe that there are external hints that someone is self-aware, such as them being kind, a good listener to others, in touch with their own emotions, and it seems that they know themselves. I remember hearing from some podcast that it’s not about knowing yourself but instead learning more about yourself along the way. I’m not sure that there’s ever one moment when it clicks for someone after journaling a bunch that they have officially found themselves. I don’t believe that it’s a finish line to cross but an ever-evolving discovery of yourself and improving yourself. It’s all about looking inward and making space for all emotions that come up. I strive to be a self-aware person, which is something I think a lot of people strive to be as well. I think that I’m a good listener and can sense when my actions or words have a negative effect on people, but when it comes to allowing space for all emotions, negative and positive, I have a difficult time. I have trouble receiving criticism because I take it personally (which I’m working on), and I often don’t believe positive things that others tell me (i.e., I feel incredibly awkward receiving compliments and have the kind of self-talk that needs to be worked on with my therapist). For years, I believed that any negative emotion was something to repel, not something that you allow and inspect such as, “Why am I feeling this way?” When thinking about the prompt of “Becoming more self-aware has shown me (blank),” I think that my continual journey of becoming more self-aware has shown me that it’s not all about me. Yes, I deal with difficult things and am faced with a lot of challenges, but so is everyone else. (This has an equal calming and depressing effect for me.) We’re all unique people, equipped with our own skills and doubts and fears. Connecting with others allows us to realize just how similar yet different we are from one another. Because we all bring something different to the table and all provide different points of view and skillsets, each of us is necessary for the creative process.
Reagan Fleming
