You know the types I mean. The ones who always know the “right way” to do things. The ones who believe there is only one “right way” to do things.

They not only know how to do things the “right way” but they insist that you do things the “right way” (code for “their” way), too.

Those types made me miserable for a large part of my life. Now they just make me crazy. I tend to walk in the opposite direction to escape their certitude – emphasis on “their.”

I love problem-solving. I expect that comes from my long line of ancestors that includes machinists and engineers and shoemakers for whom exactitude was imperative to their work.

Of course, I firmly believe that in order to break the rules, one must first learn what they are. I think about many creative professions – painters, musicians, and writers, for example. They all must know the basics of their craft before they become impresarios. Those basics are usually hard-won by mindless hours of practice and perfecting techniques.

In the writing game, or more specifically, the journalistic writing game, this is known as “paying your dues.” Flights of fancy and artful turns-of-phrase usually only emerge after hours spent hunched over countless blank pages that must be turned into something digestible for an audience.

Musicians are much the same. Not one of those fancy guitar pickers can launch into mind-blowing solos until they have learned musical scales.

Creatives transform into artists if, and when, they have mastered the basic techniques of their craft. Becoming an artist is not a given. Unless you cleave to the theory that artistry is god-given.

The truth is that fear confounds the heart and soul of many creatives who might have or could become great artists. To become great means to take risks. Many people, including creatives, are not risk-takers.

I think back to the craftspeople of my Canadian home province. In New Brunswick, there are numerous brilliant craftspeople. What sets the artists in their field apart from the journeymen of the trade is risk-taking.

Many solid potters produce and make a decent living by producing vast numbers of essentially the same patterns with the same glazes that the same people come back and buy year after year.

One can certainly respect their output and work ethic but it would be a stretch to call them artists in their field. The Canadian arts community recognizes outstanding craftsmanship with the annual Saidye Bronfman Awards. The artist who produce stupefying pieces of breathtaking beauty are honored with a title and a cash award.

Most of these artists no longer do their art “the right way.” Far from it. They have transcended and pushed the boundaries of their craft into formerly unknown creations. They gently thumb their noses at the rules they were taught as apprentices and, while still honoring the basics of their craft, push on to create something that had formerly not been conceived of.

We tend to forget (or more likely never knew unless we were art students) how ground-breaking and genre-defying the artworks of Picasso, Jackson Pollock or Paul Klee or even Andy Warhol were before they brought their creative visions into being.

So take pity on those who are bound by the conventions of doing everything the “right way.” By doing so, you will likely walk a straight and narrow path for the rest of your life. And that is all you will do.

To make waves, change hearts and minds, influence social movements, and address injustice, art must sometimes be done “the wrong way.” That means by saying or showing or even singing about wrongs that need righting, humanity moves forward. Counter-intuitive as that may sound.