For many long years, I struggled with expressing my creativity. Part of it was because of my intense struggle with some deep creative wounds. But part of it was also because I just couldn’t seem to work like other people.
I felt like I just couldn’t work in a step-by-step, 1-2-3 fashion. My mind seemed all jumbled up. It started from one point and then found a hundred different routes. It kept dropping down rabbit holes. If I were to start writing a book, how would I ever manage? Wouldn’t I just get lost in a maze?
So, for many years, I felt paralyzed, feeling as if there was something wrong with me, something wrong with the way my brain worked. It was a dark, despairing time in my life.
But when I look back today, I can see how it wasn’t my brain that was at fault but the fact that, as an INFP personality type, I had literally been schooled in accomplishing tasks in a way that works for many people but just doesn’t work for INFPs. And because I wasn’t familiar with the way my own mind worked, it felt like this foreign object when I tried to be creative.
My mind felt like a wild horse that would trample everything in its way.
I think our education systems really fail INFPs (and other intuitive types). They don’t value creativity, originality or unconventional ways of working. And they leave INFPs feeling as if there is something wrong with them when they can’t fit the round pegs of their selves into a square hole. They leave us feeling like misfits, as if we are broken, as if there is something wrong with us.
But I want to say to you, if you are an INFP who wants to write and create, there’s nothing wrong with you. Inside you, there’s a deep current of feeling and imagination that actually makes beautiful art possible.
In the past seven years, I have understood that INFP writers follow a process that’s more like gardening or mining than creating a blueprint for a house. We start with the seed of an idea. We plant it in fertile soil.
We do have a plan because cultivating a garden or going down a mine does require a plan. But it’s not the kind of plan that an architect has. It’s a more fluid plan that helps us take advantage of synchronicities and new ideas that pop up into our minds. As INFP and INFJ writers, we are constantly discovering as we write. And that’s actually where the fun of the process is for us.
A strict plan kills the need for discovery that is in the DNA of INFP writers.
So, if you are an INFP writer who feels themselves getting tangled up in the thousand directions your mind takes, know that you might be mining right now. The first step of your writing process is not the actual writing of the first draft. It’s thinking. It’s excavating. It’s freewriting and discovering. It’s going down enough nooks and crannies to have enough material to spark off your imagination. And then, you can begin.
As an INFP writer, you are unique, and you can create the unique writing process that works for you. And then, your book will take flight because it will have your authentic energy behind it and not feel like a lifeless body you are dragging through in a step-by-step fashion.
If you have any questions, feelings or thoughts about this, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to email me at creativecoachingsf@gmail.com.
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the memoir The Empath’s Journey, which combines personal stories from Ritu’s life as a highly sensitive person with practical tools that can help empaths channel their gifts. You will enjoy The Empath’s Journey if you are looking for ways to tune into your intuition, cut through the overwhelm caused by noticing too many details, and channel intense emotions through creativity.
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