When is the Artist Allowed to Stop?
Dear readers,
If you're just tuning in-
For the last 10 weeks, on this corner of the internet, something strange has been happening. An artist has been attempting to make art consistently on a weekly schedule. And the wild thing about this is that it was actually working.
The artist wrote an essay every week for a number of weeks that was discovered to be larger than any number of pieces written or shared by them in the entire year before that!
How fantastic was this discovery that art could be made on schedule, and how surprisingly simple the recipe they used to arrive at it: routine, discipline, deadlines, and public accountability. Four ingredients. That was it! Why didn't everyone know about this? Why didn't everybody practice it?
How fantastic was this discovery that art could be made on schedule.
Why didn’t everyone know about this?
Well, let's not kid ourselves.
Nine weeks on, the signs of system breakdown were palpable.
What began as a hopeful attempt at real spontaneity was quickly transformed into a rigid railroad track onto which the artist's spirit was tied up and hoping only for release; see how week 1's Dear internet, written with a bundle of joy and no expectations of the outcome, became: week 8's Zigzag thoughts: a dialogue with my writer's block, that took several days of tortured attempts to write, and was reluctantly released as something, anything, to post on a Friday...
This was, to put it simply, a tale as old as time. But why?
Why must artists reach their own breaking points, why must they inflict rules upon themselves to reach audiences, only to have to break their own rules and feel like prisoners on the run-- elated, terrified, free.
Was this a flaw in the artist or the system the artist was raised in?
Where are the systems and communities that help artists feel worthy even as they don't produce something beautiful or meaningful or tangible or finished for years? While they deal with their mental health, or work to earn a living, or take care of others?
Where is the belief that artists are valuable in themselves, for existing, and not for making art on an assembly line to a deadline every week?
I am looking for this belief in myself because I am not convinced that every piece of art I make should be for your eyes to see, whoever you may be, dear reader...
But I am desperately holding onto the idea of pleasing you while I also try to find myself, my voice, to value it on its own terms - and not on yours.
Where is the belief that artists are valuable in themselves, for existing, and not for making art on an assembly line to a deadline every week?
This feels like an impossible task most days of the week.
To cultivate authenticity and integrity and develop a voice fit to purpose is the most difficult thing I am facing about being an artist, and last week, I discovered that my integrity didn't look like sticking to the routine. The public promise. The making something to show this small, growing, audience that I could. It looked... to my absolute surprise... like taking a break from every rule I had written for myself.
I admit, I skipped last week's Friday post. And I confess, I have made art more freely and joyfully in the week off than I have in the entire month prior.
But to be honest with you, I do not have anything tangible or easy to show you from the week, nothing perfect or complete, no project or written piece, because I have been experimenting with new forms and I'm uncertain how best to present them on here just yet.
I know that this is a sign of growth. Experimenting is a sign of growth. But it's the fact that this kind of growth can only happen in private, and without an outcome tied to the end of it, that is difficult for me.
For lots of artists, our reputations, our social value, our livelihoods, are often tied to the work that you can see and not the work that you don't.
Perhaps the seedlings of this private work will flourish into something for your eyes one day, perhaps not. I have to risk it anyways, for my own sake. And I have to live with the ambiguity of half finished projects and the seeds I'm planting now growing very slowly over years to come.
This is not a parable about perfectionism, although that has certainly played a part.
I am proud of what I've made so far on here, and I am so excited to make more things... but I just don't think those things will be made on schedule, can be made on schedule. And though it may seem shockingly obvious to every artist that this has always been the case, I actually only just realised that.
To be clear, none of this is to say that the practice of showing up consistently to the writer's desk and with "perfect seriousness", as Miss Mary Oliver would say, was from the beginning a false start.
We have all read memoirs by famous authors who bang out 2000 words a day every day and publish a-novel-a-season until they kick the bucket. we have heard these stories and we have lived in awe of them. But they are the exception.
Of course it wasn't. Quite the opposite, week 7's The accidental birdwatcher was a piece that simply would not have been written, nor the delightful animation made, without a push from this looming deadline and a real determination to meet it. Same goes for week 4's Read the fine print, or week 6's On period poetry. I love these pieces.
But the issue with the deadline was that it had been set. And like the sun setting in the spring it shifted by a few minutes each a day until, by the end of summer, it was setting hours later than it had started...
And now, here the artist is present to hammer the point home: writing this piece on a Saturday morning when they began with an intention to publish each week on Fridays at noon, then at 4pm, then inevitably, shamefully, not at all.
This is not a parable about perfectionism, although that has certainly played a part. Week 3's Poetry and its Ghosts, was written over two weeks and took about 20 hours of writing and editing and overthinking and publishing (and then still amending a few words afterwards). And week 10 became so terribly significant and terrifying as a number, I skipped it all together.
The point is this -- yes, there are benefits to writing routines. We have all heard them listed off on writing blogs and in memoirs by famous authors who bang out 2000 words a day every day for years and intend to publish a-novel-a-season until they kick the bucket. We have heard the stories and we have lived in awe of them. But they are the exception.
This kind of creating to a schedule is not realistic or attainable and all it does is keep us under the shameful illusion that if we are not consistent, we are doomed.
Yes, of course there are benefits to writing routines-- but there are also benefits to breaking them.
Last week, I had to surrender to the different demands of my full life and the place creative practice exists within that, as part of it. I had to allow the limited flow of creative energy to ebb again, as it always does, to allow my creative spirit to be pulled back into the sea of living and the depths of interiority and to let it break out into a wave only when it was ready...
Lucky for me, this time, it was ready one week later. In years past, I have spent months waiting for it to be ready, and sometimes felt the agonising impulse to push it out before it was. Everyone is on their own journey at their own pace. And we are many selves contained in one self, at different times of day, at different seasons of living.
Everyone is on their own journey at their own pace
So whoever you might be today, dear reader.. whatever season of life you’re in, wherever you are in your process. If - like me - you have with the best of intentions volunteered to chain yourself to the railroad tracks of a creative routine and find yourself feeling inhumanely exhausted, burnt out, or just stuck and uninspired as a result... this is your sign to take a break!
Don't force yourself to write or paint or make anything at all. Instead, sleep in, or go for a swim, or light a candle and just breathe. I promise, it'll be okay.
You are still an artist whether or not you create art today or tomorrow or the day after that. And this life will be worth it for you having lived it for yourself.
Signing off,
- An artist finally giving themselves permission to stop.