Giving Shape to Our Creativity
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Last winter it felt like my creativity was buried deep. A seed, I hoped, not a corpse. All my energy was going towards surviving, staying afloat, and there was nothing to spare to make anything new. My energy had to be used to keep what was already there alive.
Last spring brought the itchiness that comes when creative energy is building up, but you don’t know what to do with it. Do you know that feeling? It’s as uncomfortable as an itch in the middle of your back, in that one place that your arm just can’t reach.
And this summer brought the ideas! So many ideas. I felt alive again, but also frustrated, because there were so many possible directions. It felt like my creativity was trickling down several streams, when I wanted one channel to concentrate the pressure into something powerful.
And now it is fall. The skies here in Quebec already have that moody autumn heaviness and the trees are starting to turn red and yellow. Now is the time to focus, to pick a project and see it through. To show up to my creative work with diligence and consistency, and be open to where it takes me.
But where to start?
In this early part of the creative process, Rob Bell recommends incarnating the work right away: “Give your ideas body, shape, and form as soon as possible. Even if it’s a crappier version. Flesh and blood will answer a lot of questions about what direction to go.”
I put a stickie note over my desk: “Put flesh on it”. I love this because it feels like permission to just get going without having the whole thing mapped out (or any idea of where I’m going at all). I can trust that when I start making things, they’ll start telling me where they want to go.
A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?), 1865, Edgar Degas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
