Getting Started on that Long Overlooked Project
An image by the artist Bill Traylor whose career only really began when he was in his 80’s.
If you’re reading this then there’s a good chance you’re a creative professional. And if you’re a creative professional then there’s an equally good chance that you have a long lost personal project tucked away somewhere in a bottom drawer. Maybe that’s the bottom drawer of the desk where you’re sitting right now, or maybe it’s a more metaphorical one, somewhere in the deep recesses of your mind, tucked between best laid plans and good intentions.
No matter where it resides, that long ignored personal project, your novel, screenplay, painting, whatever, has, let’s face it, always been more of an idea than a reality because life as a creative professional is busy. There’s the daily commute on a packed train to the studio; there are the meetings, the useful ones and the meetings about meetings; and there are the conversations by the kettle about the latest must see on Netflix.
At least there used to be.
But not anymore.
Now we all have rather more time on our hands.
Even if you’re one of the lucky ones who has been able to hang on to some paying work, you’re probably finding that now there are more hours in the day. Without the meetings and the commute and the conversations things take less time than they did just a few weeks ago. And maybe that’s got you thinking again about the contents of that bottom drawer.
Could now be the time, finally, to begin?
The principal reason you’ve been reluctant to get going for so long can be summed up in one word: fear. So long as your idea remains just an idea then you don’t have to confront the possibility that it might not be any good, or, worse still, that you might not be any good. But, if you don’t pull that drawer open you’re not going to know how good you could be either.
And let’s get a little perspective on the task in hand: you’re not walking into an intensive care unit filled with pandemic victims, all you have to do is strike a keyboard, lift a brush or press the shutter.
Jerry Saltz in his recently published book ‘How To Be An Artist’, which is worth picking up if you’re looking for a final nudge to realise your creative dream, puts it plainly: ‘Work, you big baby! Work is the only thing that banishes the curse of fear.’
Oh, and if you happen to be one of those people who thinks that maybe the moment has passed and it’s way too late to get started now, know that Raymond Chandler didn’t publish his first novel till he was 44, Julia Margaret Cameron first picked up a camera at 48, and the American folk artist Bill Traylor only really got going at 85.
Iago by Julia Margaret Cameron.
Overcome your fear and the next hurdle you’ll face is where on earth to begin. A common problem with self-initiated projects is that their scope is just too big, their breadth too overwhelming. A novel about masculinity. A documentary about childhood. You know the kind of thing.
The trick is to start small, to know that the only way you’ll ever get up the mountain is simply by putting one foot in front of the other. If you’re hoping to write a novel, start with a single scene. If it’s a photography project, concentrate on the first image and nothing else. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know where you’re heading. The novelist E.L. Doctorow once said, “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
Dig a little into the lives of any of our great writers, artists or musicians and you’ll discover that there’s one thing almost all of them have in common: a routine. And you’re going to need one too if you’re to find your way to completion.
By now, a few weeks into lockdown, you’ve probably already started to discover a rhythm to your days. Ask yourself when you’re most likely to be able to make an hour or two for yourself. If you’re like me it’s when the living nightmare that is home schooling has finally passed, the torture is over and the kids have been hurled back into cyberspace.
Make your writing or painting or drawing time the same time every day and give yourself a rule that you only leave your desk once you’ve done some writing, painting or drawing, no matter how bad it is.
Which brings me on to the question of evaluation.
When I was a kid I used to like making up stories. And I liked the idea of being a writer. So I used to try and write my stories down. But I could never get past the opening sentence, because as soon as I had those first few words I’d read them back, figure I could maybe do a bit better, rip the page up and start again. And again. And so the stories never got written.
As a reader of my blog you are, may I humbly suggest, a person of taste. And it will be very tempting, once you begin your project, to evaluate your work against the best exponents of the genre. Resist this temptation to judge too soon. As the artist and sometime nun Sister Corita Kent declares in her brilliant art department rules, ‘Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.’ Get your first draft done first. When it is eventually time to evaluate, go easy on yourself – perfect doesn’t exist.
Corita Kent’s Art Department rules, hanging on my wall at home.
And, finally, give yourself a deadline. You know how they work in your professional life, that’s how you get things made. So introduce them into your personal project too. Why don’t we say the end of lockdown? And let’s go with the most optimistic view of three months. That’s twelve long weeks for you to hesitate, get started, stop, get started again and just put one foot in front of the other until the whole damn thing is done.
Now stop reading this article and open that bottom drawer.
We need your creativity more than ever.
This article first appeared in Creative Review magazine.