Common threads to the artist’s journey

I have been listening my way through a series of books for writers.

They are philosophical works by good and great writers trying to explain what writing is, and who writers are, and, in general, the unique weirdness of writing and writers.

As a result of my survey I can see the patterns.  i.e. what they all have in common.  The similar thoughts and themes.

I will share these with you.

1. Get it out.

Universally the writers’ brain trust advises you that the best thing you can do if you want to be a writer is to write.  Get it out.  Consistently put words on the page.

This advice takes many forms, but it is universal.  Some examples are ‘morning pages’, ‘1,000 words a day’, ‘free writing’, journaling, or ‘first draft’.

Which reminds me of a Nabokov non-fiction I read many years ago where he was complaining about Hemingway driving around Europe in his moveable feast, getting drunk, while Nabokov was working.  “Writers write!” was what the peevish old Russian exclaimed.

The commentary on this is that there is this legendary beast called ‘writers’ block’ that may or may not exist, but clearly can only be slain by the act of writing.

2. Follow the muse.

A refreshing conclusion that all of these prognosticating writers come to is that you need to writer what you want to write.  The path to mediocrity, sadness and failure is to try to write like someone else, or, even worse, to try to write the way someone else instructs you is the ‘right way’.

Follow your muse.  Ignore the naysayers’ babble.  Forget what they taught you in school.  Write what makes you happy and your muse, your unique voice will find you.

3. Get out of your own way.

Writers are an interesting and troubled lot.  They have a unique, and overwhelming psychosis that they are compelled to write but then do everything in their power to get in the way of the writing.

They spend hours and days and weeks and lifetimes worrying that they are not good enough or live in fear of rejection.  The create filters and excuses and barriers.

They self-sabotage.

They build funeral pyres and immolate themselves.

What an odd and contradictory race of beings.

The ‘suffering artist’ archetype is just another excuse to not do the work.

4. Don’t filter, don’t judge.

Your role as an artist is not to pass judgment on your own work or worthiness.  Your duty is to the art.

Your role is a conduit for a greater force that cannot be controlled, filtered or even understood.

Don’t try to control the muse.  Let it have its way.  Be an efficient conduit for the art.  Give it the time and the space it requires to figure out what it is and why it is.

That will come.

The artists has no control over how the art will be received.  The writer and the reader are two different people.

Your responsibility is to create.  Once you set the product of the muse free, your job is done.

And knowing this should give you the freedom to let the work create itself and find itself outside the corrosion and rot of expectation.

5. Find your places. Experience matters.

You can’t write if your well is dry.  The creative well needs to be refilled.  And the way it is refilled is with various stimuli.

The first stimuli is the change of place.  Go somewhere else to create a new a different environment.  This may be the local coffee shop and it may be the slopes of a volcano in a Polynesian jungle.

New input means new inventory.

And because we are social primates find a tribe.  A group of similar troubled primates who you can interact with when you feel dried up.  This interaction drives ideas that fill your tank.

6. Go for a walk.

It surprinsed me how many of the authors, the writer of these writing books, are runners.  If thye’re not runners they are walkers or something similar.

Because another universal piece of advice is to push away from the desk and go for a walk.

When you hit a wall, focusing harder is not a great solution for creativity.  Trying harder, bearing down, gripping the wheel – however you phrase it – does not create creativity.  These things eliminate creaticity.

While a long walk or run in the woods somehow unlocks creativity.  It’s a form of the ‘my best ideas come to me in the shower’.

Creatives mistakenly think that the work of creativity is done at the easel or the desk.  That is where the work is consummated, but the thinking and imagining is found in episodes of ambulatory musing.

And I am running late on time this morning with stacks of real-world things to attend to, so I will leave it there.

Cheer up, you long suffering creatives.  The challenges you face are not unique to you.

Stop worrying and give your muse space to flourish.