Feeling ready is usually the result of starting, not the cause.
Readiness is emotional, not practical
In the western world, there are times when our shoulders slump and we say, I am ready for a holiday, or a break, or just the end of the working day. We’re tired, worn out, brain dead (perhaps that last one is just me). We feel like a holiday. It’s an emotional thing. We’re ready, but that doesn’t mean we can start a holiday. There is plenty that needs to be done. If we get to this feeling stage and the holiday isn’t planned and the tickets are literally in hand, then we remain where we are, stuck.
Feeling ready to be create and be creative is similar. And waiting for an emotion to arrive just as frustrating as not having the tickets. We don’t wait for the feeling to need a holiday, we plan, book and take it. We shouldn’t wait for the feeling to create, we should pick up the pens or pencils and create.
Starting creates information
If we want to create, whether writing, painting, composing or something else, then starting the creative act provides us with the information we need to get going. The same as planning a holiday leads us to seek a destination, buy the tickets and pack a suitcase, starting the creative act leads us to explore what we can create, save money for, or buy, certain equipment and so on. Starting t create provides us with questions to ask and answers to find.
Confidence follows action
You don’t know if you can do something until you try. Creativity is the same. The more we try something the better we become at it. That may require a lot of practice, and learning, but without the action there is no way we can improve.
As we create, our confidence grows. The more we create the more confident we become, and the more confident we become the more we will create. By creating we create the environment to experiment with confidence.
Waiting delays learning
If we wait for when we feel like being creative we won’t learn. Just as starting builds confidence, waiting, delays learning. If we don’t learn we say, I don’t know how to do that. A danger for someone wanting and waiting to be creative is the cycle of passive tutorials. I have been through countless circles of thinking I need to know how to do this and that before I can start. So I open the YouTubes and watch, and sit, and watch, and sit… and don’t learn.
Now, there are great tutorials out there, but don’t fall into the habit of just watching and hoping to learn by the power of osmosis, we are not plants. We learn by doing. And if we wait, we don’t realise what we really need to learn. It’s no good learning 101 ways to use watercolours if you discover, by doing, that your medium is acrylic.
Imperfect starts are normal
I have spoken about the need to ask the right questions, to grow in confidence and to learn as we create. This all means that our creations, especially those initial scribbles and sounds might, to use one of my favourite BlackAdder lines, be “utter crap”. I can’t say enough to potential authors that first drafts exist for a reason, and that reason is to be a first draft!
Unless you are a one in a billion genius, your first attempt at creating anything will not be perfect. Our art will go through iterations, from drafts through edits, from doodles and sketches to versions on canvases, from demos to rough and eventually final mixes. This is the way for all creativity.
so…
Waiting to feel ready to create is not practical. Our feelings are an emotion, and our emotions are best poured into the creative act itself. Don’t wait to feel ready, create now. And as you begin to create, you’ll realise you were ready, ready to learn, grow and become confident in your art.
Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox
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