Juana wrote from inside a cell. I wrote from inside a court that was, in its own way, equally confining. We both produced work that outlasted the institutions that tried to contain us. I think about this often.
The examined creative life is not the life that waits for freedom before it creates. It is the life that finds the particular truth available in this specific constraint, this specific position, this specific limitation of access and mobility and permission. The constraint is not the enemy of the work. It is frequently its condition.
What the examined creative life requires is honesty about what you are actually making and why. Not the official version — the one that sounds appropriately motivated by beauty or justice or craft. The honest version: what is the specific thing you are trying to say that has not been said by anyone else in exactly this way, from exactly this position, with exactly this set of experiences?
Genji was not a portrait of an idealized man. He was an honest observation of a particular kind of man, drawn from life, without sentimentality. The craft was in the honesty. The honesty was in the willingness to notice without flattering either the subject or myself.
What are you actually making? Not what it is supposed to be. What is it?