Creative License

I have just conferred upon myself an official "Creative License," which I designed on my computer, printed out and hung on the wall over my desk. If you need or desire a creative license, let me know and I'll print one out for you, too.



It reads:

"Creative License
Permission and authorization to exercise all creative impulses
conferred upon

Cheryl Kinrade Acton

with all the rights, privileges, and honors thereunto appertaining.
Dated the twenty-fourth day of September in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven."

I'm doing this because when I was in the fifth grade, Mr. Phillips, an outstanding teacher who would disappear two years later under mysterious circumstances mid-schoolyear, called my parents in to a conference about test scores my brother and I had received. Mr. Phillips told them that, according to the tests, I was 'gifted,' but that my sixth grade brother was *SHOCK* a genius. This came as a real surprise to me, his little sister. My brother had never done well in school and was very badly behaved.

Anyway, the warning Mr. Phillips had about me and my future was that I was the type of student who needed PERMISSION to do everything. When given an assignment, I needed to understand all of the parameters of it before I could go on.

My older brother, aka the genius, was exactly the opposite. He would either abandon the assignment altogether (his usual reaction), or do his own thing. He never gave a moment's thought to what the teacher wanted, while all I wanted to do was please.

So in conferring upon myself this 'creative license,' I hope to be able to create written works that are uniquely my own, no permission required.

I don't have a teacher to please anymore, or even an editor. I quit my job at the local newspaper this week, so, for better or worse, I am officially "free-lance."

PS Hanging next to the new license on the wall is one of Bjorn Wiinblad's 12 month porcelain pieces. He died in 2006, but he is one of my favorite artists. Most of his pieces are black and white ceramics depicting couples in love. They're all very whimsical. He was a Danish artist. I first became aware of him when I lived in Denmark in the early '80s.