This is the second post in my artist development series…

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Creative process is a funny thing because you can never gauge just how long it will take for work to get done. Sometimes you cannot even judge what is work and what is not! I wrote a poem recently for my church. I committed two weeks before to actually write the poem. I spent a week trying to think of what I wanted to write but I was never able to figure out a good starting point. Finally, about ten days after I originally said I would write the piece, the worship pastor at my church emailed to see how my progress was coming. When I finished reading his email, I opened up a new document and in the course of about 20 minutes essentially wrote 95% of what I ended up reading in church a few days later. It is certainly possible that I wasn’t putting my full effort into the piece until the very end, but if someone asks how long it took me to write it, I can’t tell them if it took me 20 minutes or 10 days. Artists, and especially aspiring artists, cannot expect to sit down in an afternoon and write, paint, dance, or sing a great work into existence. Rather they must intentionally show up and put every reasonable effort into producing art.

Many books and speakers talk about “unlocking” your potential, or other similar phrases. I don’t believe in “unlocking” potential or calling. I don’t believe these things are hidden, secret or inaccessible to artists, they only suffer from lack of exercise. By taking our calling or creativity and putting it in a lock box we give ourselves permission to look for the key rather than focusing on doing our best work now. Writers like to hold this myth that owning the perfect notebook will make your writing better somehow. You will never buy a notebook that will make you a better writer. The hard work of writing makes you a better writer. Whitney Carpenter writes, “…as long as we focus on the romance of the supplies, we don’t have to write a damn thing until we find the perfect notebook. This strategy is effective; it shields you from the terrifying act of actually writing”.

Creative work is hard. It takes full investment on the part of the artist. Elizabeth Gilbert in her TED Talk “On Nurturing Creativity” speaks of the difficulties artists have in controlling creative inspiration. That is, we rarely have any power over when, where and how creative inspiration strikes. This is a problem because often we are not ready for it. Maybe we’re driving or in a movie or having dinner at a nice restaurant. Gilbert’s solution? Block time, be present, do your part, work hard and hope that inspiration shows up too. Surprisingly, many artists will find when they commit to this level of effort they are suddenly far more productive. There is a lot of “not writing” involved in being a writer, but if writers were to only write when inspiration strikes, precious little at all would ever get written. Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Draft” is another example of this. Lamott writes if she waits for the perfect words to come she never gets anything written. So instead of waiting for inspiration before starting, she sits down and she writes. Artists must show up and work hard. They have to do their part and trust that inspiration will eventually come along too.

Filed under: Art by Jonathan