BEGIN
While so-called creatives are often talked about as dreamers with their heads in the clouds, I find it hard to reconcile that with my belief that creativity is about actual creation, not merely ideation. Sure, it’s important to have time for great ideas to come your way, and there’s a lot you can do to make sure that happens. But mistaking ideation for creation isn’t unlike mistaking an architect for a contractor. Both are necessary, but neither does the job of the other.
In order to create, you have to actually make something. In Linchpin, Seth Godin calls it “shipping,” and he places a great deal of importance on it. Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen, talks about it in terms of living a life with a strong bias towards action. And if the attributions are correct, the poet Goethe says simply, “Begin.”
Few things will block the creative process like procrastination, and the more “creative” we are, the easier it is to rationalize that procrastination, to find reasons why it’s not only justified, but necessary.
We do it because to honour the work means to do it with excellence, and (this is the voice of procrastination speaking,) if I spend more time sharpening my pencils, and polishing my ideas, the work will be much better. I’ll start tomorrow. To quote Ze Frank, “My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark.”
We do it because “we’re not inspired today,” so we put it off until tomorrow, never twigging to the reality that the longer we put off our work, the longer the muse stays away, watching from the sidelines while we talk ourselves out of the one thing guaranteed to bring her to our side: work.
We do it because the kids are calling or the dishes need washing. The measure of how desperate we are to avoid beginning our work lies in what otherwise onerous tasks we perform eagerly instead of just sitting down at the potter’s wheel, the laptop, the canvas, and starting.
When pushed, we throw the blame at genetics. “I’m just a procrastinator,” we say, which is, of course, total crap because most of us just substitute one activity for another. We’re substitutors, and if we were more honest with ourselves we’d admit that we’re just looking for one more thing to stand in the way so we don’t have to look ourselves in the mirror and admit that we’re scared of starting yet another thing that comes with the promise of failure, and effort, and the great trauma of being transparent.
I’ve mentioned this once, but it bears repeating. In his book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield talks about fear as though it’s a compass, faithfully pointing in the direction of the thing we most need to be doing. So too, our procrastination points to the lodestone of our fears, and as Pressfield points out, the very thing on which we ought to be working.
That one thing may be terrifying. You may have more to lose by attempting this than by spending an hour on Facebook, but all the friends and followers in the world aren’t going to make your work better, or get it started on your behalf. And where you have the most to lose, you have the most to gain, so get started. Begin despite the fear. Begin despite your unreadiness. Begin despite your lack of inspiration or growing pile of dishes. Start.
The most prolific writers know that this is not an option. They sit down, often at the same time, in the same place, for the same amount of time, every single day, and they write. It is not optional and there is nothing more important they should be doing right at that moment. Giving yourself the choice is where it all unravels for most of us.
I carve out blocks of time and put a line through my calendar, and that time becomes non-negotiable. When I’m writing, I get up at the same time, go to the same coffee shop, listen to the same music, and do my work. There’s something comfortable to me about the ritual of it, but it’s more than that: it’s the self-imposed constraint of non-negotiability. So on days I don’t feel well, I get up and write, even if it’s crap. On days I feel uninspired, I get up and write, and trust that the muse, if she’s out there at all, will show up. On days I’ve got important things nagging at me, I remind myself that they can wait, and my work cannot. If I put it off today, I will put it off tomorrow, and there will always, always, be something that begs for my attention in the peripheries of my life. Facebook can wait. So can my friends and my family. I’m not writing all day, I’ll get to them later, and when I do, they can have my full attention. If I were a brain surgeon the world out there wouldn’t be able to interrupt my work, the dry cleaning wouldn’t suddenly need to be picked up, and online social media channels would continue to churn in my absence, while I, barely missed, did the one thing no one else can do for me: my work.
Conceiving a child is nothing remotely like carrying it to term and giving birth. They are two different, if not connected, things. Conceiving it, if the growth of our race is any indication, is pretty easy for most. Some have even called it fun. There are people that so enjoy that part of it, that they do it often. But the act of getting the seed planted, when everything works as it should, is nothing like the effort required to do the rest. Make love as often as you’ve got the stamina for, but don’t mistake it for the whole process of creating a child. Ideas are fun to play with, but they’re the easy part; they incubate on their own and require little from us but the fertile ground and the, uh, inputs. It’s getting that idea birthed into the world from which we run, which is a shame, because by the time it’s ready to come out and become truly something, the work becomes the most rewarding. Stop now and what little efforts we give those ideas will be born gasping for air and clutching to life.
Of course most of us know this. We don’t come up with ideas that excite us to simply shelve them. Not intentionally. But life happens, and those ideas sit for a while, waiting for the perfect time to begin. The time when we’ve got all the details figured out, or when we just have more time. The longer those ideas sit, the greater the chance they’ll never happen. It’s not enough that we simply begin.
We need, most of us, to begin now. When the idea comes and you’ve got the seed of something that excites you, start right now. While you have some momentum, harness it. While there’s fresh energy there, ride that wave over some of the fears that’ll settle in when you’ve had time to sit on it a little. Common sense and the so-called realities of life will drown that spark, and it’s the ones quenched by those voices that are the ones our own souls, and the world, most need.
Make a checklist. Sketch it out. Put a line on your calendar. Call a collaborator. Do something. The longer you wait, the greater the chance your idea will seem less brilliant, and that’s a shame because the light of day, after you’ve waited a while, is not the time to evaluate your idea. Ideas rarely come out whole. They change as they get brought to life. New constraints appear, new directions suggest themselves, and new influences come to bear. The creative process is a place where evolutions and juxtapositions and unexpected mash-ups occur, but only once we begin. It’s here the ideas show their true potential to us, often so much more than what we expected. Had we not started when we did there’s a chance it never would have happened. It’s not that getting to work immediately is our only chance of bringing the idea into the world, it’s also that it’s often our only chance of making the idea better, proving it and seeing its true genius. The initial idea is a big “what if?” But getting to work on it—and not letting it die out—is where we begin to listen to the answers and find new questions. It’s there that the real work of creation begins.