Building a Creative Life through Doing rather than Planning

Allowing versus Forcing Creativity

Sometimes it feels daunting to develop a creative habit and so what do we do?….we give it up. As I have done in the past, I become so self critical at my lack of self control that I think that if I don’t develop this daily/weekly habit, I’ve somehow failed. One of the biggest “things” that gets in the way, is this need to become the person that you wish you were, the artist who goes into the studio and hammers out a painting without worrying about anything else. And so we spend hours thinking about how we will attain this goal and avoid the actual work of making art!

I recently read a newsletter by someone whose work I so admire in this field of our battle with time: Oliver Burkeman. I loved what he said about this “project” of habit building that can sometimes “serve as an invitation to avoidance”….He goes on to say “Sometimes that’s because the idea of building a habit seems rather daunting, and so you conclude that it’s best left until you have more time, later int he year, or whatever.”

How to remove this creative block/obstacle?

My solution (which I don’t always follow but try to) is to just do one thing today that will start the process. It can be just squeezing out some paint and mixing up some fun colors and seeing what combinations are new and exciting to you. It can be making a simple collage with images/words from a magazine. Or how about just doodling, the process of automatic drawing that the surrealists did to start their process of delving into the unconscious mind. Check out my BLOG ON AUTOMATIC DRAWING!

A portion of an automatic drawing my Salvador Dali

This is an INVITATION! Every Friday at 10:30am (PST) we explore these ideas. In our creative community online we meditate, talk, create, write, get creative prompts and share the art process in this beautiful way. It’s a built in habit and you don’t have to create it, I do! Just SIGN UP & SHOW UP!