…for me – writing is less a business than a vocation, a calling. Not so much something you choose as Something that chooses you, not so unlike a drug, really, in that it’s hard to imagine quitting. Whether you’ll actually make money is almost beside the point. Viewing writing as a vocation doesn’t make you special, just different.

Richard Russo in his essay “Getting Good” from his book The Destiny Thief.

I’m John Fanning and this is the Create with John Fanning podcast. How’s it goin. Howy’re yis all doing out there? Hope yis are all doing well.

This is Episode 8 of my series of episodes on creativity and Imagination, based around my book Create.

Last time I talked about Lexical Prisons. Today I want to talk about other Walls, black sheep and difference and how they moves us away from creativity and Imagination.

When you walk out of Plato’s cave (your home, your country, your job, your social group) you become a black sheep. You leave the orthodox, conventional way of living. You’re no longer respectable because you’ve left the standardization of the workplace, education and culture you grew up in be by wasting “valuable” time by “playing”. Grow up, the world says. Who do you think you are leaving?

“A retreat? You’re going on a holiday, to work?”“There are no shops? What are you going to do there all day? It’s so isolated.”

These are common reactions parents, lovers, spouses, friends, work colleagues have when they find out someone is going to La Muse to create. Why? Because everyone who goes there is a black sheep. When I say how wonderful it is that their family supports their getting away, they nearly all look back at me and laugh, or grow serious. Why? Because villains don’t think a holiday is a holiday when you’re choosing to work, unless you’re getting paid to do your creative work.When I ask them why they think this is, they nearly all respond the same way.

“They’re jealous because they’re not getting away.”“Me going away to create makes them think about the things they want to create. They don’t like that at all.”“They don’t have the courage to create themselves. Otherwise, why would they criticize my needing to do it?”

When was the last time you came across a creator you admire who was conventional, orthodox, “respectable”? This is why the phrase black sheep exists. It’s what the parable of the lost sheep really means in the “Bible”. The shepherd leaves his flock of ninety-nine sheep to find the one that’s “lost”. The parable’s not just about redemption, about bringing a “sinner” back into the fold. It’s about the shepherd, God as Jesus, leaving the ninety-nine behind to search for the sheep who is like Him, free, outside the norm.

Jesus was a black sheep. That’s why He rejoices when He finds the black sheep. The black sheep was lost when she was with the other ninety-nine. The black sheep’s only “found” when she returns, a new creative being. She repents conformity, sameness, group-think, unlike the other, quote, “ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.” The black sheep is different. When you’re the black sheep, you’re not white, literally. You’re the sheep that gets away, doesn’t do what your family and friends want you to do, jumps out of the the enclosure.

In Ireland,