Over the past several weeks, we have been gathering materials to serve as inspiration for our creative project. We will be diving headlong into the endeavor once spring rounds the corner. With this change of seasons coming soon, I want to offer some postings with a more philosophical bent. I hope that these entries encourage forward movement for the project – by developing a positive mindset for the work ahead.
I expect that you are getting excited to begin production. You possibly have an image in your mind of the finished product – shimmering in beauty and reflective of a Platonic ideal. This anticipation is good; it will motivate your process. But I want to steer you away from the notion of the perfect endeavor. Perfection is a bogey man that will crush any heartfelt attempt to craft something meaningful. All your best intentions will go nowhere, once you hit the unscalable wall of perfection. The artistic process will begin to feel daunting and overwhelming. The joy of discovery will vanish. Let’s find a way over that wall.
I learned a simple strategy to circumvent perfection in the artistic process. Jim Taylor shared this little trick with me many years ago. Taylor works in the medium of film. He received an Oscar for screenwriting with the film “Sideways,” so his perspective is a successful one.
He never tries to create the perfect screenplay. Instead, he selects a modest goal for any project. For one screenplay, he may decide that he is focusing on dialogue. If he can get the characters communicating in a way that has the verisimilitude of truth, then he will call the screenplay a success. For another project, he may want for his action sequences to move seamlessly over the pages. If he reduces his aspirations for the creative endeavor to more manageable goals, then he can let go of the prospect of creating the perfect script. No longer is “perfection” a part of the process.
The beauty of this technique is that it forces the artist to zero in on craft. Developing expertise in one aspect of the medium means that the skill is always in the artist’s arsenal. They can always rely upon it for future projects – for there will always be future projects. And if you have already tackled the craft of writing snappy dialogue in a past project, for example, then you can summon that knowledge and apply it to a current project. You are methodically building a skill set over time. In short order, the creative endeavor has turned in to a career.
Spend some time today contemplating what element of your project you really want to shine. This can be applied to any work of art. Just devote an hour or so to this question, and something meaningful and purposeful will undoubtedly emerge.
This advice from Taylor also brings to light another fascinating aspect of the creative endeavor. Assistance from others with more experience in the artistic process will come out of the woodwork to support you, as you more fully commit to the work over the next several months. You may have a lot of unanswered questions right now – wondering about how to go about constructing your endeavor. You will be surprised how these questions are naturally resolved by others that you encounter. Artists are a generous bunch; we are always willing to share some insight into our own travails. The mystery of the path becomes a little less shadowed, as you walk down it with resolve and determination.
