There’s a question I’ve been sitting with for a while now.

It keeps me up at night when I want nothing but sleep.

It lingers in the back of my mind when I work.

And it slaps me across the face when bored.

It’s not a comfortable question. It doesn’t have a clean answer. And it’s not easy to answer.

I don’t even think I have an answer for it in this letter, but we’ll see.

The more I explore it, the more I realise that most people, including myself, have been approaching it completely wrong.

The question is this:

What is creativity?

Not in the textbook sense. Not the definition you’d get if you Googled it.

But really — what is it?

What does it mean to be creative? And what does it mean to be a creative?

I’ve been asking myself this question more and more since I started creating and writing online. Since I started walking down a path that is, by nature, a creative one.

And it surprised me how much I didn’t know. How much I had assumed. How much I had let those assumptions shrink the space I wanted to occupy. How much my assumptions limited something limitless.

So I dared myself to explore it.

These are my reflections.

Most of us grow up believing creativity belongs to a certain kind of person.

The painter. The musician. The dancer. The poet. The actor.

The one who wears all black and stares longingly out of windows.

The one who wears bright colours and takes pictures of everything.

The one who wears ‘normal’ clothes, but you can’t ignore the creative flair in the way they put their outfit together.

The one who doesn't care about their clothes because their art speaks for them.

But the rest of us?

We’re the analytical ones. The practical ones. The intellectual ones.

The ones who are good at school, good at logic, good at getting things done, but not particularly ‘creative’.

I believed this about myself for a long time. I’ve always loved music, writing, cinema, and photography. I explored drawing, painting, poetry and singing at different points in my life. But did I think of myself as creative?

No. Not really. Not deeply. Creativity felt like something other people had. Something I could admire from the outside but never truly claim for myself, as my own.

And then I started writing.

Really writing.

Not just notes for myself but work that went out into the world. And I was confronted with this question in an urgent — and haunting — way.

Because when you step into your creativity, you realise that the old story, the one that says creativity is a rare gift bestowed on the chosen ones, is not just limiting.

It’s wrong.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand:

Creativity isn’t a talent you’re born with or without.

It’s not a personality type.

It’s not reserved for the artist, the visionary or the person who does it for fun but could go full-time with it.

Creativity is something far more fundamental than that.

It is, in its truest form, a way of seeing the world.

A way of making sense of the world

A way of connecting.

A way of existing.

A way of being.

Quentin Tarantino once said,

When most people hear that, they feel the pressure of it.

The expectation that their work needs to be bold, radical, and groundbreaking.

That they need a genius idea before they can begin.

That originality is the bar.

But here’s what I think he means and what most people miss:

The world has never seen it before because you have not made it yet. Not because the idea itself is unique or revolutionary. But because no one else could have made it the way you will make it.

No one else has your exact constellation of experiences, perspectives, wounds, obsessions and questions.

Greta Gerwig doesn’t make films like Celine Song. Celine Song doesn’t make films like Ryan Coogler. Ryan Coogler doesn’t make films like Martin Scorsese. They are all filmmakers. They work in the same medium. All drawing from the same well, that is, the human experience. But their works are undeniably theirs.

Because creativity is not about the idea. It’s about the interpretation.

It’s about the feeling underneath the work — and how that feeling, filtered through a particular human being, becomes something new.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Picasso were both painters. Both were visionaries. Their work looks nothing alike. Even if one inspired the other. Their work looked nothing alike, not because one was more talented than the other. They looked nothing alike because they were different people, shaped by different experiences, and asking different questions about the world.

“You don't need a genius, once-in-a-lifetime idea. You need to tune into what already exists inside you and express it in a way only you could.”

That’s the thing about creativity. It doesn’t ask you to be someone else. It asks you to be more yourself.

Our world is incredibly results-obsessed.

Especially for those of us building something online. Something that will be seen and judged. We are so results and outcome-obsessed that we often miss what’s actually happening in the act of creating.

Creating is an experience. It is one of the most human experiences available to us.

When you create, you are not just producing a thing. You are discovering something. About the topic or subject, yes — but also about yourself. What you think. What you feel. What you’re drawn to. What confuses you. What lights you up.

The process of creation is equally a process of bringing something into existence and one of self-discovery. You often don’t know what you think about something until you’ve tried to make something out of it. The act of making is itself a form of inquiry.

There’s something almost sacred about it. The record producer Rick Rubin talks about artists as people who are attuned to the world in a particular way — people who notice what others walk past. Who feel things that others numb. Who ask questions that others have stopped asking.

In that sense, to create is to connect. To connect to yourself, to your world, and, if your work finds an audience, to others.

Twyla Tharp, the legendary choreographer, asks a simple but profound question when evaluating the success of a performance: Did the audience leave in a better state than when they arrived? Did the work transform something in them?

That’s what art is, at its best. A vessel for transformation. A portal to something larger. And when you engage in the creative process with that kind of intention — not just what can I make, but what can this awaken — everything shifts.

If you’re a creator, you realise you’re not just building a personal brand or filling a content calendar.

You are participating in something ancient.

Something deeply human.

There is an anxiety that comes with starting. Every time.

The blank page. The blinking cursor. The empty canvas. The moment before the first mark is made, when everything is still possible, and nothing has been committed to.

That feeling is not a sign that you don’t belong here. It’s not evidence that you’re not a real creative or that you don’t have what it takes.

It’s a signal that you are standing at the edge of the unknown.

And the unknown is exactly where creativity lives.

You can’t force what doesn’t exist yet.

You can only create the conditions for it to emerge. You have to be willing to begin without knowing where you’re going. You have to be willing to go through the void.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic, talks about ideas as entities that want to be born. That they move through the world looking for a willing vessel. That they’ll find someone else if you’re not available or not paying attention.

This beautifully describes a feeling I’ve had about ideas. That moment when something catches your attention, when a thread presents itself, when something whispers, ‘this — follow this.’

You have to be open enough, still enough, available enough to hear it.

And you have to be brave enough to follow it even when it doesn’t make sense yet. Even when you can’t yet see where it leads.

And when you start creating, the anxiety doesn’t go away entirely. The deeper you go into the creative process, the more you understand that it’s part of the process.

The key is to move toward it rather than away from it. To create anyway. Not despite the uncertainty and anxiety, but through it.

When you study the greats, you come to understand something:

Inspiration is not a prerequisite. It is a guest.

It comes and goes.

And if you only work when it shows up, you will not create very much.

Twyla Tharp is blunt about this:

Maya Angelou had a strict writing routine — a hotel room, a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room, and a start time she regularly stuck to.

Haruki Murakami wakes at 4:00 AM, writes for five to six hours, then runs or swims in the afternoon. He does this particularly when he’s writing a novel. His creative output is not a function of inspiration. It is a function of structure.

This is the paradox of creativity that most rarely accept: it requires both freedom and form. Both spontaneity and structure. Both the wild, unruly energy of inspiration and the boring, unglamorous discipline of showing up again and again.

You cannot wait to feel ready. You cannot wait for the muse to arrive. You build the conditions in which the muse is likely to show up. Then you sit down and do the work, whether the muse comes or not.

The creative process is, at its core, a practice. Which means it is something you return to again and again. Something you build over time. Something that compounds.

This is a question that burdens creators more than any other.

The two extremes.

On one end: total disregard for the audience. Pure self-expression, with no thought for how the work lands.

On the other end: total orientation toward the audience. Creating only what you think they want, hollowing out your own voice in the process.

Neither extreme tends to produce work that lasts. Or work that feels good to make.

What I’ve come to believe is this: the most powerful creative work lives in the tension between the two. It starts from something true and personal — a genuine question, a real feeling, an honest observation — and then asks: how do I translate this in a way that reaches someone else?

You are not creating in a vacuum.

You exist in community, and something in us — something ancient and deep — wants to share what we make. Wants to be seen. Wants to know that what we’ve made has moved something in another person. Has connected us to them.

But you also cannot create honestly if you are performing only for the approval of others. If you are outsourcing your artistic decisions to an imagined audience, you will produce work that is technically competent and emotionally hollow.

(This might be why recent movies feel the same. Created for commercial success, but void of emotion and something genuine).

The sweet spot, I think, is this:

Create from the inside. Communicate to the outside. Connect in the middle.

Start with what is true for you.

Then ask: who else might need to hear/see/read this?

How do I make it land?

How can I share it?

Creators, at every level, deal with self-doubt.

The myth is that confidence grows as skill grows — that as you get better, the voice quietens. Sometimes that’s true. But it’s as common for the opposite to happen: the better you get, the higher the bar you hold yourself to, and the louder the inner critic becomes.

Self-doubt is not something to be eliminated. It’s something to be worked with.

At its best, it’s a calibrating force — a check on complacency, a signal to look more closely, to ask if this is really the best you can do.

What you don’t want is for it to stop you from making anything at all.

The goal is not the absence of doubt.

The goal is to create anyway.

To hold both the confidence to begin and the humility to question, and to let that productive tension push the work forward.

Rick Rubin writes about the danger of assuming that the way you’ve always worked is the best way, simply because it worked before. That kind of attachment, dressed up as experience, is one of the subtler ways self-doubt and ego both betray you.

You have to be willing to let go. To try something new. To fail, learn, and begin again.

You don’t need a fully formed vision. You don’t need to know where it’s going.

You just need to begin.

Here’s how:

One hour. That’s it.

Not a career. Not a catalogue. Not a portfolio.

One hour, today, of creative attention.

Write something. Sketch something. Record yourself speaking about an idea. Make a voice memo.

Start anywhere. The practice begins with the act of beginning.

That’s how I started writing these newsletters. Just one hour a day.

Your creative practice needs an anchor — a time, a place, a set of conditions you can rely on.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate.

Make it simple enough to repeat.

The ritual signals to your brain: this is what we do now.

Over time, showing up becomes easier than not showing up.

Keep a notebook. A Notes app. A voice recorder. Whatever works for you.

When an idea shows up — however half-formed, however strange — capture it.

Don’t evaluate it yet.

Don't ask if it’s good enough.

Just catch it.

The building comes later. The editing comes later.

And the ideas that survive the editing process are the ones worth making.

Finishing is an act of courage.

Because once something is finished, it can be seen. It can be judged.

It can fall short of what you imagined.

But it can also surprise you.

It can land. It can matter to someone.

You will never know until you let it be done.

And in finishing one thing, you can move on to creating the next thing.

Creativity is not a fixed quality you either possess or lack. It is a practice you choose to engage in. It is a willingness to explore, to express, to fail, to question, and to begin again.

It is one of the few truly human things left to us, in a world of automation and the artificial. It is the thing that still requires a person to fully commit to it.

You don’t have to be original. You don’t have to be bold. You don’t have to have it all figured out before you start.

You have to be willing to make the thing that only you could make. Even if you don’t know what that is yet. Even if the first attempts are clumsy. Even if no one sees it for a while.

Dare yourself to make something.

Because the making of it — the act itself — is already worth something.

Creating is an experience. And it’s yours to own.

So go make something.

Thank you for reading.

I hope it moved something in you to create.

See you in the next one.

— Shana