I’ve been working with creative and performing artists as, first, a therapist, and then for the last thirty-five years as a creativity coach. I’ve learned from my clients just how hard they find completing their creative work. Many creatives have trouble getting started; many have trouble working regularly; but almost all have special problems near the end, when the finish line is in sight. In this series, I want to spell out twelve reasons why completing creative work is so darn hard.
I’m framing this series from the point of view of a painter’s challenges, but the points apply to someone working in any creative field, from writing novels to game designing, from filmmaking to app development. I’m sure you’ll be able to easily translate the points I’m making to the medium in which you work. If you’d like additional resources, let me recommend three of my recent books: Redesign Your Mind, The Power of Daily Practice, and The Great Book of Journaling. Together they can provide you with a clear picture of how to get your creative work done through right thinking, good daily habits, and the self-awareness that journaling provides.
Here is challenge number 4.
The appraising will have to begin.
While you’re working on a piece, you can keep saying to yourself, “Yes, maybe it isn’t wonderful yet, but by the end it will be!” You hold out the carrot that your further efforts will transform the work into something you really love. But once you say it is complete, then you actually have to appraise it and decide if it is or isn’t excellent, or even any good.
Because we want to put off that moment of reckoning, we are inclined to say, “Well, let me do just a little more.” Out of conscious awareness we may know that there isn’t really anything more to do and that maybe doing more will actually harm the work. But still we continue to tinker, because we don’t want to have to confront the question, “Okay, since I am calling it done, is it any good?”
The answer: accept that appraising is coming. That appraising isn’t the end of the world. You may be wonderfully surprised, you may be pleasantly surprised, and, yes, you may be disappointed and even demoralized, but whatever the outcome it isn’t the end of the world. You can chalk your effort up to process, part of your apprenticeship, and just the natural fact that only a percentage of our work will prove to be excellent, and move right on.
Try not to continue working on a project just because you fear the moment of appraisal. Fear that moment less and you will finish things much more easily, quickly, and regularly.
More to come!
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