Stop performing—let your real voice make the art

The turning point came when I wrote a story specifically to impress my college professor instead of to understand something true. I crafted each sentence with his preferences in mind, chose metaphors I thought would seem clever, constructed a narrative designed to demonstrate my literary sophistication rather than explore my actual experience.

He praised it. I felt empty.

That’s when I understood: the moment we create for approval rather than expression, we kill the thing that makes art alive.

I used to write with abandon, pouring thoughts onto paper without considering whether they were good enough, smart enough, or worthy of someone else’s attention. The writing served an internal need—to process confusion, capture beauty, make sense of experience. It was messy, honest, essential.

Then I started caring about being seen as a writer. I began editing my thoughts before they reached the page, filtering my authentic voice through imagined critics. Would this metaphor seem forced? Was this emotion too raw? Would readers judge my intelligence, my depth, my worthiness of their time?

The creativity didn’t die all at once—it suffocated slowly under the weight of anticipated judgment. Each decision became a calculation: not “What do I need to express?” but “What will others want to read?” The art transformed from exploration to exhibition, from authentic expression to curated performance.

I watch Arash draw without self-consciousness, completely absorbed in the act of creation rather than concerned with the outcome. His pictures aren’t good by technical standards, but they’re alive in ways my careful adult creations often aren’t. He draws what interests him, experimenting freely, delighting in colors and shapes that please him rather than others.

When did we learn to murder our creative impulses with other people’s opinions? When did the voice of potential critics become louder than the voice of authentic expression?

The opinions we fear aren’t even real—they’re projections, assumptions about what others might think based on our own insecurities. We edit ourselves according to imaginary standards held by phantom audiences who may not even exist. We sacrifice authentic expression to avoid rejection that might never come.

Happy reads my writing now with genuine interest, not critical evaluation. She doesn’t analyze my technique or compare my work to published authors—she simply receives what I’ve offered, finding value in the sharing itself. This is how art should be received: as gift rather than performance, as communication rather than competition.

The tragedy isn’t that we care about others’ opinions—connection through art is beautiful. The tragedy is that we care more about the opinions than the art itself, more about the reception than the expression, more about being impressive than being honest.

Creativity requires a kind of internal permission that external validation can never provide. It needs space to be awkward, experimental, personally meaningful even when universally irrelevant. The moment we subordinate that internal permission to external approval, we stop creating and start performing.

Sometimes now I write with my imagined critics silenced, returning to the original impulse that made expression necessary rather than strategic. The work may not impress anyone, but it serves its true purpose: helping me understand something I couldn’t understand any other way.

The choice is constant: create for the audience in your head or for the truth in your heart. One leads to art; the other leads to artifice. And in that choice, creativity either lives or dies.