Week 07: Recovering a Sense of Connection
Jul. 7th, 2014 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectionchallenge posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
artistswayThis week's topics are perfectionism, risk, and jealously, and the importance of listening.
N.B.: In the spirit of overcoming perfectionism, I will be publishing this weekly post in its original unedited form, as I wrote it while waiting in an airport at 3 AM. I hope it makes sense but if it doesn't, that's a risk I'm willing to take. See what I did there? Woooooooooo. . . .
Perfectionism is the thing where you can't move on because a thing isn't perfect. It's another one of those faults we (read: I) like to pretend are virtues. Like, woo, check it out, my standards are so freakishly high that I can't ever actually finish anything ever. WHAT A DELICATE AND IMPRESSIVE GENIUS. Oh, but the burden (or secret bonus) of being SO AWESOMELY ATTENTIVE TO DETAIL OR WHATEVER is that I never have to deal with criticism, risk, or jealousy because my supposed awesomeness is always in the future, waiting to be honed or polished or whatever you do with awesomeness when it's a weirdly non-specific stand-in for the possibilities inherent in not finishing anything.
I do want to caveat hard on any attempt to portray perfectionism and all its works as Obviously The Enemy. Art is a two-way street? Is that the right metaphor? I mean, if all I ever did was put stickers on notebooks and light a pile of incense and let all my allegedly amazing creative ideas flap around the room like a flock of dirty birdies, and I never tried to hone that shit or rewrite it or anything, that would be just as big a waste of time as my usual state of perfectionism-induced frozenness, right?
The traits that under the right conditions make up perfectionism are pretty useful in the appropriate context. It only becomes perfectionism when they steal the keys and take over the whole operation. So don't take a vow never to edit anything ever again. Maybe some rules would help?
1. Try setting a TIME LIMIT on how long you can spend perfecting something. Maybe this will work and maybe not? It's been helpful for me when I don't just override it.
2. If it's really hard for you to let go, can you delegate a creative partner to declare when something is done?
3. Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, something something light gets in; I always feel like that song will cause me to write more but it really just causes me to listen to it 100 times in a row.
4. You know better than Julia Cameron or I about what role perfectionism plays in your creative life. Not everyone's creation / revision balance is going to be the same, and for some people the bulk of the magic happens in revision. Don't jettison things that work for you! but do take some time to work out what's working and what you're just imposing on yourself. Maybe take it to the morning pages this week.
Risk is related to perfectionism, but it doesn't overlap completely. The shape of the ven diagram probably is different for everybody. Cameron quotes some movie I haven't seen about risk and concludes that
“[. . .]even if you lose, you win. All risk is like that.”
And I kind of hate that she does that, because it isn't true! Not every single thing is guaranteed to make you stronger. Sometimes you actually lose when you lose. That's what it means to take a risk. And sometimes taking a risk for its own sake isn't the best thing to do. But, ok, I get it, we're trying to strike back against stultifying tendencies, and learning to take risks can be healthy. Is it a form of perfectionism that I'm getting hung up on the literal wording of Cameron's cheerleading instead of the message, which is a perfectly healthy "don't be so afraid of taking risks that you never do anything you want to do"? Probably.
Still, creative risks are more often worth taking than not.
Complete this sentence: "If I didn't have to do it perfectly, I would try..."
And now, jealousy! WOW so in my line of work, I meet people who are blisteringly talented and super dedicated to their work on a constant basis. About half to two-thirds of them are younger than me. Comparisons are hard to avoid, especially when I'm feeling down. And sometimes I'm like, well, why do this if everyone else is a lot better at it? What am I accomplishing except wasting the time I could be spending watching Peep Show?
More than talent, I'm envious of courage and recklessness. I am terribly jealous of everyone who wrote bad (or good) fanfiction and novels when they were twelve, because when I was twelve I was too obsessed with being "a good writer" to risk being a bad writer. These days, I write bad fanfiction to try to catch up. But I still feel envy of everyone who was brave enough to post all their Jack Sparrow self-insert romances in joyful abandon. I don't even want to read the Jack Sparrow romances; I don't even like Jack Sparrow. But I envy what they represent.
So I'm jealous of people who took risks because they weren't perfectionists. It's the circle of life, kind of.
Here is an exercise about jealousy that I copied:
I don't know how this works if you're jealous of people that have legs or money or a non-abusive childhood or something else that it isn't super easy just to grab a little of for yourself. Is jealousy necessarily fear in disguise? It might be a lot of things in disguise, and it might occasionally be itself.
Cameron likes the idea that our creative works are waiting for us out in the world and we can reach up and bring them down like we would pick maybe an orange or a peach. She calls our attention to directional metaphors: getting things down as opposed to making them up. There's the apocryphal Michelangelo thing where the statue is inside the marble and all you have to do is chip it out.
I have mixed feelings about this approach but it's ok, I guess. But you do have to chip it -- it isn't going to bust out all on its own. That's the point, maybe.
There's also some stuff about searching your childhood some more for people who supported and failed to support you; maybe these activities are relevant to you and maybe not. If I were Julia Cameron's sleep-deprived editor I would call her up RIGHT NOW and tell her she needs to come up with some alternative activities because the degree to which Childhood Emotional Archaeology is useful is going to vary a lot from person to person.
This concludes a thing I wrote while sleep-deprived! Take that, perfectionism!
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week and do your morning pages every day!
N.B.: In the spirit of overcoming perfectionism, I will be publishing this weekly post in its original unedited form, as I wrote it while waiting in an airport at 3 AM. I hope it makes sense but if it doesn't, that's a risk I'm willing to take. See what I did there? Woooooooooo. . . .
Perfectionism is the thing where you can't move on because a thing isn't perfect. It's another one of those faults we (read: I) like to pretend are virtues. Like, woo, check it out, my standards are so freakishly high that I can't ever actually finish anything ever. WHAT A DELICATE AND IMPRESSIVE GENIUS. Oh, but the burden (or secret bonus) of being SO AWESOMELY ATTENTIVE TO DETAIL OR WHATEVER is that I never have to deal with criticism, risk, or jealousy because my supposed awesomeness is always in the future, waiting to be honed or polished or whatever you do with awesomeness when it's a weirdly non-specific stand-in for the possibilities inherent in not finishing anything.
I do want to caveat hard on any attempt to portray perfectionism and all its works as Obviously The Enemy. Art is a two-way street? Is that the right metaphor? I mean, if all I ever did was put stickers on notebooks and light a pile of incense and let all my allegedly amazing creative ideas flap around the room like a flock of dirty birdies, and I never tried to hone that shit or rewrite it or anything, that would be just as big a waste of time as my usual state of perfectionism-induced frozenness, right?
The traits that under the right conditions make up perfectionism are pretty useful in the appropriate context. It only becomes perfectionism when they steal the keys and take over the whole operation. So don't take a vow never to edit anything ever again. Maybe some rules would help?
1. Try setting a TIME LIMIT on how long you can spend perfecting something. Maybe this will work and maybe not? It's been helpful for me when I don't just override it.
2. If it's really hard for you to let go, can you delegate a creative partner to declare when something is done?
3. Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, something something light gets in; I always feel like that song will cause me to write more but it really just causes me to listen to it 100 times in a row.
4. You know better than Julia Cameron or I about what role perfectionism plays in your creative life. Not everyone's creation / revision balance is going to be the same, and for some people the bulk of the magic happens in revision. Don't jettison things that work for you! but do take some time to work out what's working and what you're just imposing on yourself. Maybe take it to the morning pages this week.
Risk is related to perfectionism, but it doesn't overlap completely. The shape of the ven diagram probably is different for everybody. Cameron quotes some movie I haven't seen about risk and concludes that
“[. . .]even if you lose, you win. All risk is like that.”
And I kind of hate that she does that, because it isn't true! Not every single thing is guaranteed to make you stronger. Sometimes you actually lose when you lose. That's what it means to take a risk. And sometimes taking a risk for its own sake isn't the best thing to do. But, ok, I get it, we're trying to strike back against stultifying tendencies, and learning to take risks can be healthy. Is it a form of perfectionism that I'm getting hung up on the literal wording of Cameron's cheerleading instead of the message, which is a perfectly healthy "don't be so afraid of taking risks that you never do anything you want to do"? Probably.
Still, creative risks are more often worth taking than not.
Challenging oneself and meeting the challenge is empowering, and that empowerment helps one to set and meet further challenges.
Complete this sentence: "If I didn't have to do it perfectly, I would try..."
And now, jealousy! WOW so in my line of work, I meet people who are blisteringly talented and super dedicated to their work on a constant basis. About half to two-thirds of them are younger than me. Comparisons are hard to avoid, especially when I'm feeling down. And sometimes I'm like, well, why do this if everyone else is a lot better at it? What am I accomplishing except wasting the time I could be spending watching Peep Show?
More than talent, I'm envious of courage and recklessness. I am terribly jealous of everyone who wrote bad (or good) fanfiction and novels when they were twelve, because when I was twelve I was too obsessed with being "a good writer" to risk being a bad writer. These days, I write bad fanfiction to try to catch up. But I still feel envy of everyone who was brave enough to post all their Jack Sparrow self-insert romances in joyful abandon. I don't even want to read the Jack Sparrow romances; I don't even like Jack Sparrow. But I envy what they represent.
So I'm jealous of people who took risks because they weren't perfectionists. It's the circle of life, kind of.
Here is an exercise about jealousy that I copied:
Name three people you are jealous of and say in as much detail as you can exactly why you are jealous of them. Then write something you can do to get some of whatever it is they have that you're jealous of. If you're jealous of somebody who's written an excellent novel, try writing one yourself, for example.
Jealousy, Cameron says, is a way of disguising fear, often fear that there's not enough of whatever the other person has for you to have some too. But there's always more out there, and a good way to get some is to acknowledge that you want it and take a first step towards getting it.
I don't know how this works if you're jealous of people that have legs or money or a non-abusive childhood or something else that it isn't super easy just to grab a little of for yourself. Is jealousy necessarily fear in disguise? It might be a lot of things in disguise, and it might occasionally be itself.
Cameron likes the idea that our creative works are waiting for us out in the world and we can reach up and bring them down like we would pick maybe an orange or a peach. She calls our attention to directional metaphors: getting things down as opposed to making them up. There's the apocryphal Michelangelo thing where the statue is inside the marble and all you have to do is chip it out.
I have mixed feelings about this approach but it's ok, I guess. But you do have to chip it -- it isn't going to bust out all on its own. That's the point, maybe.
There's also some stuff about searching your childhood some more for people who supported and failed to support you; maybe these activities are relevant to you and maybe not. If I were Julia Cameron's sleep-deprived editor I would call her up RIGHT NOW and tell her she needs to come up with some alternative activities because the degree to which Childhood Emotional Archaeology is useful is going to vary a lot from person to person.
This concludes a thing I wrote while sleep-deprived! Take that, perfectionism!
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week and do your morning pages every day!
no subject
Date: 2014-07-07 08:15 am (UTC)From:"If I didn't have to do it perfectly, I would try..." the AU where I steal someone else's HP fanfic AU premise, but do it right, without the awful ableist ickiness. Or the post-Jak 3 not!crackfic where I was tossing disabilities at characters and watching to see if any stuck out as actually interesting. Illustrations of that fic I wrote that was vastly less popular than I wish it were. The origfic working-titled Sora's Story. A little TWML gaiden comic where Loki helps Zelda deal with her father's legacy. The Jak and Daxter centric (as in, the characters) Jak and Daxter (as in the fandom) fic that is a sequel to Last Chance. A prequel to my as-yet-unposted origfic working-titled The Jotunheim Roadtrip. Asking IRL Person In Charge Of Deciding Who Gets To Do The Thing whether or not I could do The Very Difficult, Very Flashy Thing That Would Make Everyone Notice My Contributions In Particular As Distinct From Everyone Else's. A Legend of Zelda fic that is a novelisation of a nonexistent Zelda game where Zelda is the/a player character (not the cdi games) and even more of a hero than usual.
Then write something you can do to get some of whatever it is they have that you're jealous of. If you're jealous of somebody who's written an excellent novel, try writing one yourself, for example.
I guess this means I'm required to do awesome landscapes, hyperrealistic portraits, and hilarious religious comics. Unfortunately, while I could do photorealism, I hate it a lot and never get past "yup, that sort of looks like a thing, and I've spent almost an hour of my life looking at this useless piece of still life making pencil marks on paper, and I could spend another four hours making more pencil marks to have some funny shading that looks just like the thing from a certain angle, not that I would ever want that, and if I did, I wouldn't want it five hours worth." And my line quality is terrible, so comics are, uh. And Jesus is IME not as hilariously dysfunctional as Loki. Which is usually what I'd call a good thing!
So my other option is to review writing books and give useful feedback on people's fanfics like
no subject
Date: 2014-07-07 08:20 am (UTC)From:I don't know the original AU you're referring to, but this sounds like a good idea to me.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-07 03:43 pm (UTC)From: