We sometimes like to talk about this nebulous thing called writer’s block. I’m struggling with non-fiction writing malaise and music writing malaise right now, which I guess you could call a block. Mostly it’s because I’ve been abnormally tired and lackadaisical these past few weeks, focusing more on trying to fix some of my health issues rather than creating the next best work of art.
I don’t think it’s bad to take a break. I’ve said it before. I talked about Mark Twain a while back. He said that he got stuck during two of his books. He went and did other stuff, and when he came back, the books wrote themselves.
Of course, there’s a line between taking a much needed pause from frenetic scribbling and complete inertia.
I can usually tell I need a break from writing and music when I try to work on a song or story and I can’t stand the sight or sound of it. Usually, I take that as a sign that I’ve reached saturation point and need to do some other stuff, like cook or shop or walk the dog or read books or focus a bit more on other non-creative stuff.
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I spent these past few months working really hard on my writing and music–eating, sleeping, breathing my songs and stories, and then I went to Hawaii and when I came back I had to focus on some other things that had cropped up. Got sick, realized that the food allergies I’m having aren’t mild and need to be assessed better, that I’m under too much stress in my life, again–stuff that takes time to get to the bottom of. Those things, and finding a way to earn a bit more money, have taken priority in my mind, are sucking up the energy I had to focus on my art. But in addition to those things, I’m just not feeling it the past few weeks.
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I was wondering the other day if the reason we force our art out on schedule, day after day sometimes is only because this is the way our society functions. Crank stuff out nine to five–at least part-time–or fall by the wayside.
Many of the artists, musicians and writers we admire were rewarded for their crazy work ethic. The ability to plug their creation cycles into that ebb and flow of modern society, the circular mode of produce, produce, produce with no space.
It would be interesting to look back and see how creative people we admire performed before the industrial revolution.
The writers I admire don’t make a lot of money at their art (not by choice, necessarily). They create more sometimes than they do at other times. They often take a pause, go on long walks, write letters to their loved ones…ways of coming back to themselves by not forcing the process.
It’s important not to force the process.
Sure, I could force myself right now to open up a document or pick up the guitar and start editing a song or story I’m stuck on, but my edits wouldn’t be intuitive right now. I know that if I fill up my tank by taking a pause I’ll be able to come back to my music and writing with many more ideas, and I’ll have an outpouring of inspiration. It’s happened to me most of my life this way. Can’t force it. Not me.
Which comes down to the ultimate question: why do you create art?
Do you create for reward from society? Or do you create because it’s who you are and how you process the world? It’s OK for the two to overlap. I certainly want to be recognized for my writing and music in this lifetime, on however small a scale. But if I’m motivated by money and the need to feel I’m being productive, that I have a good work ethic, I’m usually not in line with my own personal goals. I don’t do this for money. Some do. They’re called bestsellers. There are only a few of those out there. I’m not one of them, so of course, take what I say with a grain of salt (as I know you will).
What’s your creative process?
I try to do as little as possible and just get things done when necessary. Not many people can manage that without going crazy, thinking they’re lazy or useless. Sometimes I feel lazy, but I mostly just don’t care.
You can’t measure yourself by other people’s progress. I learned that by doing graphic art. There are things that just don’t have a common ground to stand on. They may have similarities, but they are not the same.
I do wonder what kind of daily schedule Da Vinci followed. or any other number of artists. How much of the year did a mason work on average? Was 9-5 always necessary? I think it’s an industrial revolution thing.
(Apparently Wiki agrees. http://goo.gl/aZQnr) I guess there were longer work days at times. I think we’ve got longer work days now… who do you know that doesn’t pull two jobs? Or have one job and get encouraged to do overtime without compensation? A lot of people I know.
But how did people work before? I don’t know. It would be interesting to compare.
I think I fall into the logic going around that if people did something before, it was more natural or better, which I have to admit, on further scrutiny, is not completely true.
There is an urge to go back to more “natural” living, eating whole foods, respecting nature, respecting the limits of my body, etc. I’m a true nature girl in that regard, in that I feel like in modern society we are disconnected from our internal and intuitive wisdom.
(I always feel silly when I say things like that, because living near Berkeley makes words like intuitive and wisdom invite a taste of vomit in my mouth, but it’s what I believe.)
I think we are progressing and learning as a race, but a few people are kind of messing it up for the rest of us. I would rather live a bit more like a European — 6 weeks of vacation. Or switzerland, where I read an article on a shorter work week leading to more productivity. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/125/all-in-a-days-work.html
And the quintessential essay on all of this is here: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html (In praise of idleness, by Bertrand Russell)
Leading me to believe that everything has been said before, I am merely experimenting with these findings in my own narrow scope of reality.
I think I do it for the release. I do it to eventually share it. I do it to remind myself of who I am … down at the roots.
Me too. I do it for a lot of those reasons.
I think for much of history since work became specialized enough that each person didn’t have to do everything, your job was literally who you were even to your name. My name ‘Smith’ means ‘one who works in metal’. Which I do a lot, actually.
And, I do think that ‘sun up to sun down’ was quite common. Although ‘anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherers tend to have significantly more leisure time than people in more complex societies.’
Another thought I got from Wiki is ‘ Situationist International maintains that free time is illusory and rarely free; economic and social forces appropriate free time from the individual and sell it back to them as the commodity known as “leisure”.’ I know that’s not quite to the point of your post.
In England during the Industrial Revolution, ‘The working day could range from 10 to 16 hours for six days a week.’ ‘French workers won the 12-hour day after the February revolution of 1848.’ ‘The eight-hour day might have been realized for many working people in the U.S. in 1937, when what became the Fair Labor Standards Act was first proposed under the New Deal.’
Very interesting!!
And this may not have been what I was talking about, “Situationist International maintains that free time is illusory and rarely free; economic and social forces appropriate free time from the individual and sell it back to them as the commodity known as “leisure”” But it is definitely something I’ve thought about and never been able to put words to…how “Free time” in the US involves spending money to go somewhere or do something, something I felt strongly in Hawaii, looking at all the buildings clogging the lower half of Oahu and wondering about all the thousands of people who come every day to partake of this scripted version of paradise that scarcely resembles the beauty you can find elsewhere in the Hawaiian islands. I also thought about that as I watched food prices double and triple in the airport and I notice it when I’m spending $10 on a movie at the theatre and all of a sudden $1 candy is $5 for a quarter as much…
Thank Teddy Roosevelt, and many others, for our park systems or there would be a fence or wall closing off every ‘natural wonder’ there is!
Mike
I tried the produce, produce, produce route and it was counter-productive. I was trying to imitate a friend who puts in 12 hour days 6 days a week, massively markets, and makes a 6 figure salary. i couldn’t do it. I felt like crap and my work was just so-so. I’m not her. I had to cut back.