One of the things I've come to believe most firmly, after a long time making things and watching other people make things, is this: creation is not a special gift distributed to a lucky few. It is a capacity. It is in reach of everyone, at any age, and the conditions under which it flourishes or fails are largely practical, not mystical.
I've had the privileged spot to observe this from two directions — as a collaborator sitting inside other composers' creative processes, and as a teacher watching students discover, sometimes for the first time, that they can make something that didn't exist before they made it. Both experiences have shaped how I think about what creation actually is.
A few working thoughts:
Creation is good for your health. Not metaphorically. There is real evidence that engaging in creative practice has measurable benefits for wellbeing, cognitive function, and resilience. Watching art has benefits too, but making it is better. Participating is better than consuming. This connects, in ways I want to develop, to the work being done in music therapy — an area I've been thinking about seriously and which sits closer to composition practice than most composers would expect.
The creative act requires a certain tolerance for not-knowing. You have to be willing to begin before you can see the end. This is, for many people, the hardest part: not the making, but the starting before the destination is clear. Teaching taught me that this tolerance can be developed. It is not fixed. And creating conditions where students feel safe enough to not-know is most of what good pedagogy actually is.
Creation and collaboration are not opposites. Some of the most genuinely creative work I've been part of happened in rooms with more than one person in them. The solitary composer is a useful myth but it is mostly a myth. Even the most apparently solo work is in conversation... with influences, with performers, with the accumulated tradition you're either working within or working against.
Age is not a barrier. I've watched people discover creative practice in their sixties and seventies and make remarkable things. The idea that creativity is a young person's game is a cultural bias, not a biological fact.
There is a longer essay here about what we mean when we say someone is "creative", about the relationship between constraints and freedom in creative work, and about what thirty years of sitting beside composers while they work has taught me about how creation actually happens... as opposed to how it is mythologised.
For now: if you are not making something, you should be. Whatever it is.