Common sense is a good way to live your life. It keeps you away from dangerous people and dangerous situations when the stakes are high. It helps you to survive.

But common sense is a terrible thing to carry into your creative life. In fact, the best stuff runs completely counter to common sense. Common sense is sticking with what you already know works. Common sense is avoiding the unexpected.

Do you have a voice in your head, an authority figure of some kind, that tells you what to do to stay safe? Most of the time, that voice is useful, but when you enter into a situation where you’re trying to come up with something new it stop you in your tracks.

What you should do is thank the voice for being so helpful, but tell it you don’t need it right now. Then, wander into dark wilderness of your mind. There are wolves and terrible things there and you never know what you might find when you wander off the path. In fact, it’s completely unpredictable and new.

And isn’t that what you really want?