creative lessons: what I’m learning along the way

Some days the work comes so hard. You’re insecure and self-doubtful and you hate whatever you make. What’s the point? you ask yourself. Why bother? Then you let the thoughts and emotions pass through and get back to work. 

My personal challenge right now is this: don’t think about how you feel, and don’t feel what you think. I know, that’s confusing. Really, this is what it means: don’t take yourself (or your thoughts or your feelings) too seriously. If you do the work, however you feel and whatever you’re thinking, however high or low you are on a certain day, it’s a victory. Everything else is irrelevant.

I am, like many other creative people (I assume), far too concerned with the response and invested in outcomes. If I don’t get the reaction I hope for, I feel like a failure. It affects my whole damn mood and might even ruin my day or week. But that’s following the wrong thread to the wrong definition of success. Success is measured in how consistently you show up and do the work—and do it well—and share it when it’s ready, not in the outcome or how it’s received.

You just hope for a few people to get something they need from what you give, even if they’re silent about it. (All the while you’re screaming inside: “Just give me some feedback! I’m dying over here!”)

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about how all creative people, especially writers, suffer from at least one mental illness. Of course it’s hyperbole, but it underscores the emotional distress that sometimes accompanies creative work.

You love it and you hate it and, to paraphrase David Brooks, you don’t like to do it but you have to do it.

It’s nearly a nonnegotiable for me to find some physical outlet every single day that sweats out the restlessness and settles the disquieting thoughts. It’s usually a hike or a bike ride or a few hours on snow—or just a walk on the neighborhood streets. It reminds me that there’s a world that exists outside of my own creative one (and in that world the walls close in quickly); the creative world feels so big and daunting—or, depending on the day, small and suffocating—when you’re in it but reverts to its proper proportions when you pull yourself out of it. Take a walk, why don’t you?

Remembering the following might save you. You are not the work and the work is not you. Your worth is not relative to responses or outcomes, a success or a failure, silence or indifference. You are not the work and the work is not you. I find this detachment quite difficult—and essential.

Then there is the dread of imposter syndrome. One of the artist’s greatest fears may be of the possibility that they are, in reality, no good at all at what they most care about and want and love to do, and in this nightmare everyone with whom their work is shared either laughs behind the artist’s back or calls their bluff in front of the entire world. The sheer terror of it. It’s enough to stop anyone in their tracks—from creating ever again.

Here is one of the more difficult realizations that comes to me: If I am honest and truthful in my work I may very well distance more people at the beginning than I reach, before I find my real audience on the other side as I continue to create. Be willing to lose all of the time before winning any of the time.

One of the more embarrassing lessons I keep having to learn (or at least remind myself of) is that you’re never quite as profound as you think you are. So, when I write something to share (I can write whatever profound nonsense I want in private), I tell myself to stop trying to be profound or meaningful or deep for its own sake. Be real (meaning true), honest (meaning vulnerable), practical (meaning simple), and down to earth (meaning relatable). That’s what really matters to people—not your creative delusions of grandeur. I am no Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robinson, Wendell Berry, or Mary Oliver (all of whom you must read if you know what’s good for you). I never will be. And, thank God, that’s perfectly okay. (Well, it is just so long as I stop trying to be.) 

These are a few things I learn along the way as I stumble through the creative life. Folks, there’s no right or wrong way to do this. It can be helpful to learn how others do it, but be careful about copying. Find your own rhythm and routine and stick to it and don’t worry if it’s a little bit different from your heroes. For instance, a lot of writers I admire speak mostly of starting their work in the morning. I can do this sometimes if I have to, but find it more helpful to first spend some time outside to settle down my body and my mind before I get to work (or at least in the middle of the workday, depending on the season and conditions). I hardly ever wait until the end of the day to work out the wiggles. This is just an example of what works for me. Go out and find what works for you.

However you do it, the most important thing, the only nonnegotiable or hard rule or universal absolute or whatever you want to call it, is to create a schedule and find a routine that works then follow through and commit to it and persevere like hell. This empowers you to do the work every single day, or however many days or much time you promise yourself (or the work) to set aside. Nothing else much matters except that you show up and do the work and do your best while being a lifelong servant to improvement. At the end of every session leave nothing left on the table or inside yourself. Finish empty, every time.

Here are my final admonitions (and what I mention is what I often struggle with the most). Don’t be self-conscious and be willing to make a fool of yourself. Beware the perfectionism that demands the opposite and is never satisfied; if you give it an inch it will happily kick the door wide open like an uninvited and unwelcome guest. If you let it in and let it stick around it will take over your entire house, trashing your creativity and possibly even suffocating your own person (or at least your heart and mental health). The solution is simple: don’t let the bastard in.

So, now what? Go forth and create.