Made the mistake today of attending a symposium about building creative communities. Promising keynote speaker, nice room, good food, three hundred and fifty people in attendance, from mayors to gallery owners, curators, writers, artists, librarians, economists, designers, musicians. Everyone keen and ready to listen and learn.

Unfortunately it was anything but creative because the creative types were forced to sit quietly while un-creative “presenters” flashed pie charts on power points and told us our part of the world, our town, was “doing just fine, creatively…see??”

Even the keynote speaker—someone we were told would ‘blow us away’ with his insights—took us instead on a long and uneventful journey through his childhood (and part of his father’s) to his omnipotent present. He then listed all the books he’d written, which, he pointed out, were for sale in the lobby.

More pie charts followed until I began muttering to myself. Finally decided to give it up and sneaked out before lunch. (They’re probably at this moment gnawing on rubber chicken, reflecting between bites—”See how creatively the chicken is rubberized…?”) 

On the way out I wondered about the idea of doing good work versus talking about doing good work, how only the latter is really encouraged because of all that dough to be made in the talking, the teaching, the writing of how-to books, running workshops (there are workshops now to teach you how to run workshops). We live in a culture that keeps society perpetually convinced its individuals are not yet equipped to take action, to think, to even know who they are, much less take the initiative and just do one bold and brilliant thing.

As I opened the doors of the convention centre, sucked in some sunshine and made my way to my car, I remembered something I’d once heard—how some professor was asked to speak a group of students on the subject of How to Become a Writer. 

He walked onto the stage of the auditorium and took the microphone.

“How many of you are serious, really serious, about becoming writers?” he asked.

Every hand shot up.

“Well, in that case,” he said. “What are you doing here? My advice to you is this: go home and write.”

And then he left the stage.