I am due at the page.

The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.

As we lose our vagueness about ourself, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression .

Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move forward. It is a loop-an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.

Creativity is God's will for us and should be practiced like any other spiritual practice -a day at a time.

If we have plain old ordinary fear then we are within reach of a solution. Fear has been with humankind for millennia and we do know what to do about it-pray about it, talk about it, feel the fear, and do it anyway. Artistic fear, on the other hand, sounds somehow nastier and more virulent, like it just might not yield to ordinary solutions-and yet it does, the moment we become humble enough to try ordinary solutions.

It is all too easy as an artist to allow the shape of our career to be dictated to us by others. We can so easily wait to be chosen. Such passivity invites despair. To remain healthy and vital, artists must stay proactive in their own behalf.