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21
Mind Space: Giving myself permission to work
March 21, 2007 |
[-essay, process-]
The space in our minds is often more cluttered than our studio space. Here’s an article that may help unclutter yours.
by Suze Corte
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Here’s the way I work.
I’m not saying it’s efficient or even evolved; it’s just what comes naturally. For me there are two kinds of goals: the practical, everyday type and the creative ones. When I set a practical goal like having the house clean by Friday, I go about it directly and stay with it until I finish. True, I may procrastinate until Thursday night but still, I can plan exactly how to go about the task, how much time it will take, and what the final result will look and feel like.
Not so with creative goals.
When I dream up something I want to accomplish creatively, I invariably begin somewhere in the middle and work towards both “ends”the start and the finish. I remember doing this with a newsletter I was asked to create. The content included children’s art and writing, so the style, I felt, needed to be free flowing, surprising, and playful. Since it was a four-page newsletter, I had plenty of space to express myself. I began working on the project by brainstorming. I jotted down ideas for a while, then switched to playing with type styles, and soon found myself sorting through drawings and stories. I hit on an idea to use an appealing child’s drawing of a bee and repeat it, buzzing through the issue to highlight different articles. I tried it, liked it, but decided to set it aside in case I thought of something even better later on!
The process went on in this manner—somewhat like a bee flitting from one flower to another—until the newsletter began to take shape and make sense conceptually and visually. I eventually got around to designing a logo that fit the style, but I found that I needed to lay out a lot of the content before I knew what the “beginning” of the newsletter looked like. The point is, the final result was not something I originally foresaw from top to bottom. I had started with some basic space and size requirements and vague conceptual notions, but no concrete vision of the end product. Quite characteristically, I didn’t head out towards this creative goal on a smooth linear route. To the contrary, I weaved, spun around curves, backed up, switched around, and regained forward movement by fits and spits. Despite the path I took—or maybe because of it—the newsletter turned out to be delightful, inspiring to readers, and visually pleasing. And I felt fulfilled creatively, as if a puzzle had been solved and a mystery revealed. It was great fun!
Sometimes, of course, creative goals are not geared towards this kind of progress to their final destination. For me these are often the ones where I not only begin the journey in the middle of the road, but also complicate my life even further by nebulously approaching as if it were a circle, with no beginning or end, something like a traffic roundabout with options shooting off in many different directions. I don’t do this to confuse or frustrate myself; I find that it just happens as a matter of course with some impending creative quests. These are the projects that tend to get set aside until some future time when other ideas emerge that will send my thinking in a more fruitful direction. And let’s face it, some projects don’t deserve to be finished and are meant to be perpetually stalled.
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I often put off creative pursuits by telling myself that I am working on them when really I am just cleaning the work table. I know a lot about procrastination, having developed my skills to master status. Gathering supplies is another nice technique for avoiding actual creative work: you look busy and you are, in fact, dealing with the tools of the trade, and so it is a great trick for pretending to be in the actual process of producing something. However, there are times when even these ruses turn towards the light and become useful. Sometimes while playing like I’m cleaning my studio, a glinting object will catch my eye, and like a magpie, I start to gather goodies and fill my creative mind with interesting bits and pieces, thought and ideas, connections and relationships that work.
In the course of writing this article—which, by the way, was only a vague concept in the narrow recesses of my mind about an hour ago—I have rediscovered a great two-part truth about my way of working towards and reaching creative goals: it doesn’t matter how I get there as long as I get there AND I must give myself permission to honor whatever path I take. There is no one right way to go and there is no reason to feel like there’s suddenly a Wrong Turn sign in my way when I choose to select a meandering path to my creative goal. This has all been very therapeutic for me, and now I will go create something. Or not. Or not now-ish.
My studio table is a mess.
words and images © 2005 - 2007 Suze Corte; all rights reserved
Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly; theme: space and spaces
Suze Corte is a writer, artist and pre-school teacher in Houston, Texas. In 2007, she was chosen as be the Houston Area Association of Educator’s of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year and the Texas Association of Educators of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year. Congratulations, Suze! It is a well-deserved recognition.
also posted in: Essays - Contributors , Self-evolution , Creative Cross-pollination , Inspiration , Motivation , Practice & Practices , Contributors , The Original PCQ, 05-06 , Process
tags: bees, clutter, create, creative, cross-pollinating, golals, journey, middle, permission, plan, practical, process, procrastinate, projects, self, skills, space, spaces, studio, suze corte, unclutter, way, work
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Results of our previous poll
What is your biggest creativity problem?too many projects at once can't get in the groove not enough time everything else takes priority self-doubts
other ['not enough talent']27% 20% 20% 15% 15%
5%
