I’ve been meditating quite a bit recently, and this past week I started using a guided meditation that promised to enhance creativity. It’s perfectly good in itself, but it’s not really working for me, and this morning I realised why: I don’t identify with the word “creativity”.

I’m sure that sounds very odd – I’m a writer, which surely means I’m a creative being! Plus I do kind of adhere to the idea that we are ALL creative: we just have to find our creativity and let it flourish in whichever way works for us.

On the other hand, I am not someone who goes out with guns blazing and CREATES. I don’t come up with innovative solutions – in fact, I like to follow others’ rules until I’ve established that they don’t work for me. If that happens, sure, I’ll break rules, do things differently, but it’s not my natural instinct. I am not one of nature’s entrepreneurs. I don’t like drawing attention to myself. And to be honest, telling myself I am going to be creative is the quickest route to writer’s block, for me.

So if I’m not creative, what am I?

I’m a thinker and a feeler. I like to think hard about things before offering up my ideas. I feel things very strongly – so strongly that I need to put them into words, sometimes over and over again as themes in stories. I write because my heart gets so full, my mind so jumbled, that the only solution I know is to create (oops, there’s that word!) stories, to make sense of things in ways that I hope resonate with readers.

That’s where I’m coming from as a writer. I wonder if others feel differently?