At the beginning of this year I decided that it was time to commit to doing one or two projects over the course of the year instead of simply doing whatever I felt like doing creatively. Whew! I had no idea how challenging the projects I chose would be. So today I want to talk about
The Value of Creative Projects
I began the year working on developing a photography project that was different than simply making “pretty” pictures. After a couple of weeks of feverish work and exploration of some new ideas and techniques I stepped back and felt like I no longer liked anything I had created. (I’ll probably write more about this project when I get clearer about it myself.)
So I took a break from my photography project and decided to work on the book project I envisioned.
I’ve begun working on writing a book of essays and photographs about joy. After several false starts and working hard to overcome my own resistance I think I’ve finally found a way to move forward a little bit at a time.
I’ve decided that first thing after I finish breakfast every weekday I will sit down to write a single short essay for the book and chose a single photograph to go with the essay. That’s it.
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
― The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Initially I tried gathering past blog posts about joy and tried to put them into some kind of order that might work in book format. After gathering all of the posts I found myself stuck. What do I write now? And how do I put all of these disparate parts together into a whole?
Keep it Simple
I tried using Blurb’s book design tool, Bookwright, to design and write. I found figuring out the formatting too challenging and distracting and felt like I just kept spinning my wheels with design issues when I hadn’t really created much content. Then I tried using Pages to write and design with. Again I kept struggling with design issues instead of focusing on content. Finally I decided to simply use LibreOffice (my open source replacement for Microsoft Word) to write each day’s essay. I also import the daily image into the document but I’m not fussing a lot about formatting at this point.
For two days now I’ve written new short essays (using ideas and a little bit of content from past blog posts).
This process has taught me a lot about the creative process. I am learning that it’s a totally different thing to commit to working daily on a project versus doing small spurts of creative activities willy nilly.
Dig Deeper
For me, the value of committing to a project is the learning that happens. When I dig into a single topic I am forced to dig deeper into the wells of my own creativity and being. What do I know about this topic? How do I feel about it? Why is it important? How can I express all of this so that others understand it?
It’s hard to sit down and face my own seeming emptiness some days. I feel like throwing up my hands and saying, “I’ve got nothing!” And it’s oh, so easy to piddle away time editing old photos, fussing with formatting, and otherwise distracting myself from the task at hand.
But even the emptiness and piddling are teaching me things about myself.
“We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.”
― The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Like all of my creative endeavors I have no idea whether my projects will ever see the light of day. I may work hard to create them and then simply let them go without trying to put them out into the world. It doesn’t matter to me how the projects end up, only that I dig deep and keep working on them and learn something from doing them.
Is it time for you to envision and commit to a creative project? Will it bring you joy?
May you walk in beauty.
Note: today’s photos are from Hawaii
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