Creativity

On an email list I am a part of, someone had brought up the story of the Handless Maiden. I am a big student of allegory, metaphor, and stories that speak to your soul through tales. The Story of the Handless Maiden is about a maiden who loses her hands and she meets and marries a king who fashions her silver hands; the king goes to war and she gives birth while he is gone. They send word to the king but the messenger falls asleep carrying it to the king and the devil comes and changes the message to "The queen has given birth to something ugly" the king reads it and sends word back with the messenger to take "good care of the baby and the queen during this difficult time." The messenger falls asleep again and the devil comes and changes the message to say "kill the queen and the baby" ...the mother in law hides the baby and queen and sends them away to an inn where they live for seven years, very happy...the maidens hands grow back...meanwhile the king comes back and is confornted by an angry mother in law who claims she killed the queen and baby, but then tells the truth when she sees the king never sent that message. The king then vows to search for the maiden and child and does so for seven years...eventually he ends up at the inn where the queen, king, and child reunite, remarry and all is well...now...this is just a very short version of the story and this comes in many different versions but this one I like is from Clarissa Pinkoles Estes "Women Who Run With The Wolves" I think this is about creativity. My hardest part of being creative, especially in writing is having someone tell me my writing is ugly, my creation is ugly. But isn't that our baby? DOes it need to be killed? The devil here is the inner critic...maybe I need to realize that my creations are beautiful, they deserve life...so today I will focus on beauty...in my writing, in my creations...