The Definition of a “Creative”
I’ve been hearing the term “Creative” bandied about a lot as a noun. As in, “she’s a creative.” Or, “This is the way creatives think.”
I love the idea that there’s recognition that what we do as writers—create stories with words—has enough value to earn its own collective noun. I also love that the term is all-encompassing. A musician, a visual artist—even a software designer—can all be a creative.
Yet it worries me. The term itself is not new, but like all language, it evolves, and I fear the evolution of “creatives” as a noun sets up new writers with the wrong idea. It sounds like there’s one way to be a “creative” or that you have to have certain characteristics or a lifestyle to be a “creative”. Working the gig economy to fund one’s creative works, or becoming a digital nomad, for example, like the 21st century of “penniless author in the attic”.
But the world of “creatives” is as wide and vast as the individuals who identify as such. If there are conventions necessary to belong to a community, they are minimal: one must create.
So if you are a suburban soccer mom with a mini-van, 2.5 kids and a civil-servant day job that may scream anything butcreative, yet you choose to write when you can? You are a creative.
Labels can be important to feel like we belong. Just be careful you don’t exclude yourself from where you do belong.