Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.
~ Stephen DeStaebler
Blocks produce in the artist an attitude of pessimism and defeat. He loses that necessary touch of arrogance; the drive to produce new things fades; the mind is blunted.
~ Lawrence Hatterer
A creative block is the wall we erect to ward off the anxiety we suppose we'll experience if we sit down to work. A creative block is a fear about the future, a guess about the dangers dwelling in the dark computer and the locked studio. A block is a sudden, disheartening doubt about our right to create, about our ability, about our very being. And the cure? A melting surrender, a little love, a little self-love, a little optimism, and a series of baby steps toward the work.
~ Eric Maisel
David Bayles and Ted Orland wrote a small chapbook in 1993 called "Art & Fear: Observations of The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking." This little book is a refreshingly honest and insightful exploration of the creative process, the workplace experience, and the bridges between. In their introduction the authors write, Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort. The difficulties artmakers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar... This book is about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing Free Will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work.
In a section called "Art & Fear," the authors observe - Those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue - or more precisely, have learned how not to quit. That is a powerful statement in support of tenacity in the creative life. Quitting, they argue, is fundamentally different than stopping. Stopping happens all the time - an idea runs dry, an attempt is scrubbed at the point of diminishing returns - but quitting happens just once. It marks the last thing an artist does. The authors identify pitfalls for blocks, defeat, stalemates, that seem to fall into two specific moments - when artists convince themselves their next effort is already doomed to fail, and, when they lose sight of the destination for their work - for the place their work belongs. Losing the sense of the destination for one's work can ironically mark the moment a driving goal is achieved. Success. Success frequently and easily transmutes into depression. Continuing on means leaving some loose thread, some unresolved creative idea or issue to carry forward and explore in one's next piece.
Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. It gives substance to that sense of self - and the corresponding fear that one is not up to the task, not real, or good, that we have nothing to say. "Making art precipitates self-doubt," write Bayles and Orland. "Stirring deep waters between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might me." Doubt can be enough to stop the artist before he or she even begins, and often appears again and again throughout the cycle of making, and then releasing work to critical review in the world. The key, according to the authors, is to learn to challenge that fear every step of the creative process - from initial vision and execution, imagination, struggles with materials, through uncertainty. To continue anyway.
Uncertainty is particularly difficult, coming unannounced as it does at critical junctures in creative work. What did I start out to say? Were the materials right, the length of the piece, the way I've done this right? Tolstoy rewrote, by hand, "War & Peace" eight times and was still revising galley proofs at press. Tolerance for uncertainty is a prerequisite for working in the arts, according to the authors of "Art & Fear." Creativity is not about control, it is unpredictable. As most fiction writers discover, there is futility in overly-detailed outlines. Art happens between the artist and something - a subject, idea, or technique. The working artist learns to respond authentically challenge to challenge, each step of the way.
Which brings me back to creative blocks, those ever-so-frustrating mental tar pits. I have been dealing with an unexpected block myself for the last two years (yes, years). Bayles and Orland are accurate in identifying endpoints, or shifts in destination or goals, as creative tripping points. My unexpected and paralyzing mindset centers on a pragmatic mental narrative on the requirements of successful re-entry, i.e. succeeding again (and better) in the publishing marketplace. Experience transmuting into awareness and thus apprehension. If those of us struggling with blocks take Eric Maisel's advice, we address our fears and anxiety over works in progress by taking baby steps toward engagement. Write two pages a day. Put one brush stroke of color dead center on the white canvas - mar that empty perfection and free your fear. It has taken me awhile to find a continuing creative thread forward, as my last work, a memoir, was a very singular project and in an emotional way, a completion. In short, I've had to reinvent myself artistically these past two years. And now, working plan in hand, it is indeed frightening to begin again; to put myself back out there, new.
This next month I will explore process steps that are working for me, and what I tried that didn't. And I'll share with you the rejection experience of subsequent drafts of new work that muddied the process and left me wondering about ever succeeding in a constantly changing market. Today's artists must also confront the paradox of producing creatively from the same inner well that online social media self-promotion draws from. Can an artist both create and market simultaneously? Cycling between producing work followed by promotion, can the artist find a way through a now almost perpetual uncertainty? What does it take to begin creatively again?
Stay tuned.
Read More
~ Stephen DeStaebler
Blocks produce in the artist an attitude of pessimism and defeat. He loses that necessary touch of arrogance; the drive to produce new things fades; the mind is blunted.
~ Lawrence Hatterer
A creative block is the wall we erect to ward off the anxiety we suppose we'll experience if we sit down to work. A creative block is a fear about the future, a guess about the dangers dwelling in the dark computer and the locked studio. A block is a sudden, disheartening doubt about our right to create, about our ability, about our very being. And the cure? A melting surrender, a little love, a little self-love, a little optimism, and a series of baby steps toward the work.
~ Eric Maisel
David Bayles and Ted Orland wrote a small chapbook in 1993 called "Art & Fear: Observations of The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking." This little book is a refreshingly honest and insightful exploration of the creative process, the workplace experience, and the bridges between. In their introduction the authors write, Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort. The difficulties artmakers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar... This book is about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing Free Will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work.
In a section called "Art & Fear," the authors observe - Those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue - or more precisely, have learned how not to quit. That is a powerful statement in support of tenacity in the creative life. Quitting, they argue, is fundamentally different than stopping. Stopping happens all the time - an idea runs dry, an attempt is scrubbed at the point of diminishing returns - but quitting happens just once. It marks the last thing an artist does. The authors identify pitfalls for blocks, defeat, stalemates, that seem to fall into two specific moments - when artists convince themselves their next effort is already doomed to fail, and, when they lose sight of the destination for their work - for the place their work belongs. Losing the sense of the destination for one's work can ironically mark the moment a driving goal is achieved. Success. Success frequently and easily transmutes into depression. Continuing on means leaving some loose thread, some unresolved creative idea or issue to carry forward and explore in one's next piece.
Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. It gives substance to that sense of self - and the corresponding fear that one is not up to the task, not real, or good, that we have nothing to say. "Making art precipitates self-doubt," write Bayles and Orland. "Stirring deep waters between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might me." Doubt can be enough to stop the artist before he or she even begins, and often appears again and again throughout the cycle of making, and then releasing work to critical review in the world. The key, according to the authors, is to learn to challenge that fear every step of the creative process - from initial vision and execution, imagination, struggles with materials, through uncertainty. To continue anyway.
Uncertainty is particularly difficult, coming unannounced as it does at critical junctures in creative work. What did I start out to say? Were the materials right, the length of the piece, the way I've done this right? Tolstoy rewrote, by hand, "War & Peace" eight times and was still revising galley proofs at press. Tolerance for uncertainty is a prerequisite for working in the arts, according to the authors of "Art & Fear." Creativity is not about control, it is unpredictable. As most fiction writers discover, there is futility in overly-detailed outlines. Art happens between the artist and something - a subject, idea, or technique. The working artist learns to respond authentically challenge to challenge, each step of the way.
Which brings me back to creative blocks, those ever-so-frustrating mental tar pits. I have been dealing with an unexpected block myself for the last two years (yes, years). Bayles and Orland are accurate in identifying endpoints, or shifts in destination or goals, as creative tripping points. My unexpected and paralyzing mindset centers on a pragmatic mental narrative on the requirements of successful re-entry, i.e. succeeding again (and better) in the publishing marketplace. Experience transmuting into awareness and thus apprehension. If those of us struggling with blocks take Eric Maisel's advice, we address our fears and anxiety over works in progress by taking baby steps toward engagement. Write two pages a day. Put one brush stroke of color dead center on the white canvas - mar that empty perfection and free your fear. It has taken me awhile to find a continuing creative thread forward, as my last work, a memoir, was a very singular project and in an emotional way, a completion. In short, I've had to reinvent myself artistically these past two years. And now, working plan in hand, it is indeed frightening to begin again; to put myself back out there, new.
This next month I will explore process steps that are working for me, and what I tried that didn't. And I'll share with you the rejection experience of subsequent drafts of new work that muddied the process and left me wondering about ever succeeding in a constantly changing market. Today's artists must also confront the paradox of producing creatively from the same inner well that online social media self-promotion draws from. Can an artist both create and market simultaneously? Cycling between producing work followed by promotion, can the artist find a way through a now almost perpetual uncertainty? What does it take to begin creatively again?
Stay tuned.
Read More
