“What’s the point?” is how I was feeling this morning, still shell-shocked from news of two mass shootings this week. What’s the point of any of it? It seems a natural response to become quiet and still. Then, to want to retreat from a world that feels scary and chaotic. To just wait it out.

Then I thought: We’re the lucky ones. Not only because we lived, but because we are the artists. We have our paint, our words, our lyrics, our leaps, our scripts, our instruments, our voices. And they are not petty things.

Nothing stopped us from making art. Not back then and not now. We had the spark and because of our birth or despite it or by chance or struggle we were lucky enough to make art and keep making it. In some cases, it saved some lives, including our own.

So, what do we do on the dawning of this next day? We may need to be quiet and still. But when that time comes to an end, may we pick up those brushes, that pen, open the laptop, turn the lights on in the rehearsal space, take that step. Because we are the lucky ones. We need to make art and the world needs to be saved by it.

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A couple of months ago, I was looking through a file of old writing when I discovered a forgotten short story I’d written years ago and never sent out.

I read the story, standing at the open file drawer, and when I was done, I thought: “This is good.” My second thought was: “I should send it to my writing group and see if they think it’s good. They could do another round of critiques on it and make it really, really good.”

Then, in a bold moment, I thought: “No. This story is good enough. If I tinker longer, I risk shoving it back in the drawer again for another hundred years.” I sent it out, defying the advice I often give about always enlisting help with your art-making and marketing.

That story, Say His Name, won an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Short Story competition and will be published in Issue 12, the next issue, of the literary magazine PoemMemoirStory.

Sometimes the best advice is best ignored. Sometimes your own opinion is all that matters. Sometimes taking action to send your work into the world is more important than years of tinkering something to a possible perfection which can also result in the death or slow smothering of a work.

What action can you take today in the direction of your artistic ambition without consulting anyone but your own knowing self?

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Author JJ Lee spoke at the Surrey Int'l Writers Conference in British Columbia in October 2012.

“I inoculated myself against my literary ambition,” said author JJ Lee during a keynote at a writer’s conference I attended recently where he told the story of how he spent years avoiding the memoir he was both afraid of and destined to write. When he finally lost his job and had nothing else to do but write, he realized his ambition and wrote the acclaimed memoir The Measure of a Man.

His statement stuck with me for days. It made me wonder – how do artists and writers inoculate themselves against their own ambition when their ambitious projects scare them?

The word “inoculate” is so apt. It’s a word associated with protection from a disease. Perhaps this is one vaccine that hurts more than it helps. What would allow your ambition to wake up and write the book, paint the series, stage the performance that you are destined to create? Maybe what others consider a disease is for you the call to fulfill your ambition.

I think many artists inoculate themselves to some extent – after all, even successful artists tell me how scary a new project can be. Who wouldn’t be tempted to put ambition to sleep? What action can you take today to wake up your ambition and move your next project forward? I’d like to hear about it.

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Some days I find it excruciating to stay at my writing desk. I’m tempted to check e-mail, write a Facebook update, schedule a haircut, play fetch with the dog, anything but sit in uninterrupted silence and write – the activity I claim I never have enough time for.

So, I re-instituted the “uninterrupted first hour,” a practice I’ve used before. Perhaps I need it now as I go deeper into a new creative writing project – always scary.

I committed to devoting the first hour of my day to my creative writing wiithout checking email first. I unplug the internet and my phone. When I’m done, I email a colleague to tell her I did it. During that hour, I’m forbidden from doing anyting but writing. Because someone I admire is expecting me to keep my commitment, I do what I said I’d do. (I’ll write more throughout the day but not without interruptions that are part of my normal work day.)

I just finished my hour and I feel like I did an hour of yoga: focused, relaxed and ready to embrace the day, already accomplished and delightfully guilt-free. And amazingly, much less “distractible” from hard or scary work.

What would help you carve out uninterrupted time? Especially on those days when everything else seems more urgent than making art? In truth, making art is the most urgent, followed only by marketing art.

If you try that first interrupted hour (without checking email or Facebook first!), what will you discover? Write and let me know.

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Waiting to cross the street yesterday with my dachshund, I tried to make eye contact with the driver to make sure he saw me. But he wouldn’t look at me. So, I didn’t move. When I leaned in to find his eyes, he stared straight ahead, stone face. I sensed a big anger in him so I didn’t move but continued to watch him. Then, still refusing to look at me, he raised his hand in an impatient gesture that said to me “Come on, already, cross the street.” So I did, feeling the punch of his anger even though we hadn’t spoken and he never looked at me. Then as soon as my dog and I had cleared his path, he gunned his SUV and roared past. I was surprised that it took me half an hour to recover from his hostility. Then I thought: we, each of us, have so much power that we can use for good or bad. I thought of times when a stranger’s kind words had lifted my spirits for a day. I thought of the superpower we use every minute, every day, sometimes against ourselves and each other, sometimes for ourselves (and our art) and for each other.

An old friend who I hadn’t seen in a 30 years wrote me recently after we had gotten together to say: “you used your superpowers for good.” I wasn’t even sure what he meant. But I appreciated this idea that we all have superpowers.

How can you use your superpower for good today? How can you harness it and make it work for your art rather than against it? How can you interact with just one other person today where your use your superpowers for good?

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