To the Unquiet Mind

"True creativity never leads to despair. Creativity leads out of despair."

-Dan Wakefield

In the past few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about creativity. (Obviously, with being at school.) And I've spoken with a few people about being bi polar. It's really made me connect the two ideas as they fit in my life. It's long been known that creativity and madness are often linked. (Kay Redfield Jamison has a book about it, Touched With Fire. I haven't read it yet, but I read An Unquiet Mind and it was fantastic.) What does that mean for me? Listening to music often has the ability to trigger a mood swing. I can listen to an upbeat piece and feel absolutely great about life, then the next song that comes on will be sad and slow and I'll find myself depressed. I know that's true for a lot of people. It's not the mood swings that surprise me, but their extreme range. Very high to very low. Music can do that to me.

But here's where Dan's quote rings true to me. Whenever I create something, whether by writing a story or playing the piano, I am "lead out of despair." Even if it's a sad story or melancholy song, by the end I still feel uplifted. I created something. Something now exists where nothing existed before, by my hand. Despair cannot exist simultaneously with accomplishment, even if that sense of accomplishment does not linger as long as it should.

Like all writers, I've dreamt about the different facets of being published, if one day I do get published. One of the things is book dedications. I don't know why, it's just been my recent focus. I've toyed with a few ideas, but one has stuck so far. I like the idea of every book (if I get so lucky to have more than one book published!) having the same dedication. If not, I want to dedicate all of my work here.

To the Unquiet Mind,

As a reminder of the things you can accomplish

"True creativity never leads to despair. Creativity leads out of despair." -Dan Wakefield