STOP TALKING ABOUT YOUR CREATIVE GOALS

BY MARY SPENDER

Word Count: 2062

Reading Time (Approx.): 6.5 Minutes

Having spoken to a lot of musicians, artists and creators over the last two months, I know I’m not the only one feeling totally lackadaisical aka rather unproductive. The first few weeks of lockdown brought on a hurried approach to collaborations and content online, all over Instagram and YouTube and with that, it brought a whole load of entertainment but also a whole load of anxiety. I’m just wondering how productive people have been despite having all the time in the world to get stuff done. It’s just a strange thing for me to get my head around and it’s been interesting to find out, a wiped calendar doesn’t really help as much as I hoped it would.

So, in this video I want to talk around the subject of creating something you know will fail. It might help ease some worry on being creative right now. Make something for you. Not for everyone else.

We’ve all been terrified of failure, whether we care to admit it or not. I know I’ve found it crippling, but I also know it’s the best thing for me. To try and try and still just fail miserably at something, at anything and then still have the audacity to have another go, is actually the only way to achieve something of real value, it’s the only way through.

Although failing can be bad, terrible, the worst, once it’s happened to you and discover it’s not the end of the road, and it will never play out as you imagined, you’ll find it instead acts like a big reset button. It’s given me a huge sense of freedom and now failing on purpose is something I’ve written into my plan.

I want to create things that I know will “flop” and I want to counteract that obsession with gaining a zillion subscribers or followers, views or likes. I need to be able to sustain my output and if I sit down and worry about how many people will see it or how they might react to it, I won’t even put pen to paper and to me, that’s far more terrifying.

Now, I’m relating that failure to how my music, videos or podcasts might be perceived or how many people they’re seen by. When I shouldn’t worry about that at all because I’ve learnt, from growing this audience that I have absolutely no control over it whatsoever. Yes, there are definitely rules I can follow; make a video for YouTube with an intriguing thumbnail and title. Write a song that’s under 3 minutes with a catchy chorus. Write hook after hook so people can’t escape it or get it out of their heads. There is definitely a framework you can mould your art around but what if you try the opposite? Will it actually hurt you?

That’s the question I weirdly ask myself the most. Will it hurt? It won’t physically hurt me and I’ll be creating something that makes me fulfilled because I’ve taught myself to love the process and that ‘something’ was taking up space in my brain, so it definitely won’t be mentally hurting me either, to get it out and made and put out into the world, it’ll actually mean the opposite. I’ll end up making room for the next crazy idea and that’s something perfectionists forget. Once you’ve finished the “thing”, you have to start all over again and make something else.

I’m obviously concentrating this on all the things that I create, but I would like to learn more about you and what you’re afraid of, like what you’re fearful to start because of how it’s going to be perceived. The spectator side of this creativity doesn’t have to involve online viewers. It could be a different type of audience, could be your parents, your boyfriend, your wife, your children, your friends or colleagues. How are they going to see you once they witness your work? Are they going to laugh? Be offended? Find it boring? Are they even going to pay attention? Are they going to love it as much as you? The answer is always going to be the thing you fear most, because those reactions become an option when you let them be a choice.

So how do you avoid that? Well, honestly, I had to make a change and stop showing my work to my friends and family before I released it, because I discovered they’re not my audience and despite them being the most important people to me in the world, we don’t often share the same taste. Taste being judgement. A person’s approval or liking of things.

The reason the world goes around is because we all love and hate different stuff. I had to learn to embrace the differences I have with my closest people and realise that there is another community out there for me to talk to and find common ground with, like you. I don’t want to be the one to hold myself back and overly protect my feelings and pride, I’m not sure anyone wants that, but as I’ve grown up I’ve also realised I don’t want to be in the position to allow someone else I love, to do that to me either. I most definitely do not want to be that to someone else. I have no right to hold anyone back.

That’s part of the problem isn’t it? Other people might be the ones actually keeping you from making and pursuing those crazy ideas, and that might require a painful conversation. But it can be done and for you to take back control, it has to be done.

What if you create stuff just for you? Now there’s the other problem. There’s the space between what you want to be making and actually the skill set you have, which also makes us fearful. What if it’s not what you imagined. What if it sucks?

I’ll have a vision, but my ability is not where my dreams are. I’ll have ideas of the ways I want to play the guitar or film a cinematic sequence in a video but actually being able to reconstruct that is next to impossible because I’m tens of thousands of hours away from that level of proficiency. I haven’t played enough, I haven’t studied enough, watched enough and I haven’t practiced enough.

I have the idea, and I know what I need to do. I need to close the gap. If I keep my head down and work really hard, I’ll wake up one day and know that I can make what I want to make, or maybe all that trying will activate a failure that will help me create something beyond my imagination. I actually want to build something so exciting to me that I’m not quite sure how it happened. That feeling would be exhilarating.

The same goes for song writing. I know where I want to be. I know what I want it to sound like, but it’s still just not there. I haven’t read enough. I haven’t written enough. I haven’t listened enough. I haven’t produced enough. So, what do I have to do? I have to try. Trying goes hand in hand with failing. It’s just part of it. I now know I have no other option.

I’ve come to terms with something recently, that might be obvious to another person, but I’ve realised I’m never going to have more time. There are 24 hours in a day. That’s all I have to work with. One thousand, four hundred and forty minutes. 168 hours in one week. No matter how successful I am, I’m never going to have more hours. Each day needs to involve sleep, eating, family and friends, errands, meetings and plans so what time is left over to get those creative goals finished and out of my system?

I don’t know whether this resonates, but the idea of “making it” to me, is more about making time for my interests rather than money but also we need to put ourselves to work to stay financially sound and that eats into your dreams and ambitions, then trying to make money out of creativity is another thing altogether. Not one for today.

My parents have always pushed me to have a strong work ethic and teach me that form of resilience you need to get out of bed every day to get “it” done, just like I bet your parents taught you. There are always days when you don’t feel like going to school or work. But they never gave me another option. They taught me to treat school like going to work, because they had to go to work and everyone has to make a living and it’s ultimately called work for a reason. Can I say ‘work’ any more times?

I’ve been doing an exercise since February of simply mapping out the hours in my week. Realising I had to confront how I spent my time and why I wasn’t getting enough done in all the different avenues of my life. That applied to stuff other than my career like socialising, educating myself and practicing the guitar. It was about getting to the gym. Taking on a new hobby like boxing, where if I put myself in the ring, I’m 100% likely to fail and get punched in the face, which will hurt (the one thing I’m actually afraid of), however, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a musician with an ego.

The first week I wrote it all down, just documenting what I was doing each day, rather than forcing myself to do things at a particular time, showed me that I wasn’t working as much as I thought, but I was also sleeping very little, so I was just tired all the time. Now I’m working twice as hard but also sleeping more and relaxing with purpose, because I’m no longer lying to myself. I’ve also tried and tested my limits to help avoid burning out. It’s a long game.

The final element of this stream of consciousness I want to confront myself on, is talking too much about the things I want to do or make. I heard recently that if you talk about something, say a project you want to work on. That novel, that album, that podcast, that film script, by talking with others about it, you’re actually getting a dopamine hit from that and it makes you more likely to put the idea off. You’ve already had a piece of the satisfaction, so why bother finishing it?

For me, that’s crept up on friendships, relationships and my health, not just creative work. It’s when the idea of something is far more romantic than actually putting in the work, so ever since I’ve kept my head down and just got on with it, I’ve been more content and most definitely more productive and it’s eventually started working.

I want to end on an excerpt from a book written by someone who is far more qualified to talk on such things and someone I want to interview one day (just putting that out into the world).

‘Big Magic’ by Elizabeth Gilbert is a non-fiction book I’ve now gifted to quite a few friends and honestly if you’re having a tough time with any of this, I couldn’t recommend it more. She says,

‘Recognizing this reality - that the reaction doesn't belong to you - is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you've created, terrific. If people ignore what you've created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you've created, don't sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you've created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest - as politely as you possibly can - that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.’

[Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear]

Thanks for watching this video, maybe something has resonated with you and do let me know in the comments. Please subscribe and check out all the links below, but otherwise, I’ll see you soon.