The emphasis on a “simple impulse” pushes against the common belief that creativity begins with mastery, planning, or confidence. Instead, Dickinson implies that the initiating force is often modest—an urge to sketch a line, write a sentence, hum a melody—before you know what it will become.
This matters because perfectionism frequently smothers art at the starting gate. By trusting impulse first, you trade the question “Will it be good?” for “Will it be alive?” and that shift, in practice, is often what allows anything genuine to appear on the page, canvas, or workbench. [...]
