Interesting. When I think about difficulty and the creative process, I juxtapose Leonard Cohen with Roger Miller. Leonard Cohen was never finished. He would take years to finish a song, and even then continue to change and tweak it. Whereas Roger Miller would just start singing and the lines would come to him. They both wrote exceptional lyrics.
Poe was mathematical in his approach. That always sounded really difficult to me.
I think I am still trying to figure out what the line is of how difficult it should be for me. . .
I think a lot of it is individual. If you really love the meticulous stuff and returning to it over and over is exhilarating for you, more power to you! If you're great at flying by the seat of your pants, that's how you should do it.
It's when the thing you love doing turns into a chore that the approach becomes a problem—I'm still struggling with the sense of "I should do Substack THIS way" because it's so ingrained in us to stick with a consistent pattern (as you've no doubt noticed, I've posted every Monday since I started, and I don't know how I feel about that!).
I'm reading a book called The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life right now, and it talks about the constraints of culture vs. the wild impulses we've tried to drive out of ourselves (and largely succeeded), and I think letting ourselves be a little wilder is probably the key. Whatever you're naturally inclined to do is the way to do it. There's no one right way. There is only YOUR way.
Agree everyone has to find what works for them--although I think experimenting with the other is also good. My wife is a very meticulous painter. In grad school a visiting artist made her sketch life-sized figure studies quickly. He forced her out of her comfort zone. Faster, stop thinking, just draw what you see! The work was amazing, although not sure where to put the six foot by three foot nudes that are rolled up in our basement. She did not adopt that style of work, but likely had an effect when she returned to her meticulous consider every stroke style.
I should add that you're right--there's nothing wrong with experimenting with the opposite of what you're inclined to do, either. It's all part of finding YOUR way. :)
Ahh, you hit on the key: STOP THINKING. That's honestly where most of us make all sorts of things—not just creative stuff—way too hard on ourselves. I've been learning to question my assumptions about how things "have" to be, especially when they feel constricting and wrong, because a lot of the time, that's all they are: assumptions. The "Wait, is that really true, or do I just THINK it is?" moment is incredibly powerful. A lot of the time, it's not true at all, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
The same is true of overthinking things, which is related, but different. We get caught up in those cycles and make ourselves so dizzy we can't see our way out of them.
Interesting. When I think about difficulty and the creative process, I juxtapose Leonard Cohen with Roger Miller. Leonard Cohen was never finished. He would take years to finish a song, and even then continue to change and tweak it. Whereas Roger Miller would just start singing and the lines would come to him. They both wrote exceptional lyrics.
Poe was mathematical in his approach. That always sounded really difficult to me.
I think I am still trying to figure out what the line is of how difficult it should be for me. . .
I think a lot of it is individual. If you really love the meticulous stuff and returning to it over and over is exhilarating for you, more power to you! If you're great at flying by the seat of your pants, that's how you should do it.
It's when the thing you love doing turns into a chore that the approach becomes a problem—I'm still struggling with the sense of "I should do Substack THIS way" because it's so ingrained in us to stick with a consistent pattern (as you've no doubt noticed, I've posted every Monday since I started, and I don't know how I feel about that!).
I'm reading a book called The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life right now, and it talks about the constraints of culture vs. the wild impulses we've tried to drive out of ourselves (and largely succeeded), and I think letting ourselves be a little wilder is probably the key. Whatever you're naturally inclined to do is the way to do it. There's no one right way. There is only YOUR way.
Agree everyone has to find what works for them--although I think experimenting with the other is also good. My wife is a very meticulous painter. In grad school a visiting artist made her sketch life-sized figure studies quickly. He forced her out of her comfort zone. Faster, stop thinking, just draw what you see! The work was amazing, although not sure where to put the six foot by three foot nudes that are rolled up in our basement. She did not adopt that style of work, but likely had an effect when she returned to her meticulous consider every stroke style.
I should add that you're right--there's nothing wrong with experimenting with the opposite of what you're inclined to do, either. It's all part of finding YOUR way. :)
Ahh, you hit on the key: STOP THINKING. That's honestly where most of us make all sorts of things—not just creative stuff—way too hard on ourselves. I've been learning to question my assumptions about how things "have" to be, especially when they feel constricting and wrong, because a lot of the time, that's all they are: assumptions. The "Wait, is that really true, or do I just THINK it is?" moment is incredibly powerful. A lot of the time, it's not true at all, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
The same is true of overthinking things, which is related, but different. We get caught up in those cycles and make ourselves so dizzy we can't see our way out of them.