Creativity is a Weird and Wonderful Thing

I’ve been lucky enough to attend a lot of fun and interesting events in my life, but recently my husband and I spent the day at THE coolest place we’ve ever been, The CT Renaissance Fair. Now, I’ve never been one to dress up in costumes or get into role playing, but after walking around this place for about an hour it was all I could do not to run over to one of the dress shop and get myself completely outfitted in medieval garb.

The entertainment-jugglers, magicians, comedians, contortionists, geeks (the pre-Bill Gates definition of the word), hypnotists, singers, dancers and musicians-were all professional quality and completely interactive with their audiences. The food was great, the shopping was excellent and probably the coolest thing, about 60% of the fair-goers were also dressed in costumes, mostly of their own design. I saw everything from witches, pirates, wenches, executioners, lords and ladies, knights, hunchbacks, monks, Chinese merchants, undertakers and beggars to fantastical creatures who never existed but were gorgeous and interesting anyway.

It got me thinking about the different forms creativity can take and how these people were doing in real life and time what we writers do on the page, bring our secret personas to life. Who would you be if you had to wear your writing persona? I don’t necessarily mean dressing like one of your characters, but going deeper than that, putting a tangible form to who or what you perceive yourself to be as a writer. What would you look like? Are you a fairy princess flourishing your wand and concocting wonderful, frothy stories out of thin air with your magical powers? Or are you a damaged and deranged hunchback, curled over your manuscript, scribbling furiously as an editor (internal or external) lashes your back? Are you a swashbuckling, confident pirate firing your work across the bow and boarding the publisher’s ship with an offer they can’t refuse? Or are you a mercenary warrior battling on alone, one fight, one joust, one war (or manuscript) at a time, always for a price? How do you see yourself? And how about others in your critique group? At the risk of sounding like a CSI trailer, who are you?