Struggling to Finish? Writers and Artists Explore What It Takes

Finishing a novel. The last brush stroke of a painting. How do you know when you’re done? How in the hell do you make/force/cajole/trick yourself into absolutely completing a project? Writers, artists and musicians struggle with this dilemma more than most. Yes, there are deadlines, gallery openings, contests, and commitments, but sometimes even they don’t work. The creative process can be elusive, if not downright maddening.

The devil don’t care how many miles you make

just as long as you don’t make that last one. “

~My Mama

My southern fundamentalist mama pretty much said it all. Except I’ve kind of learned that blaming the devil is a cop-out.  It’s me. I’m the one. I avoid. I sputter and stall. I go into zombie land and forget how important my art is to me. How can I do that? Why do I do that?

I blame fear (another name for the devil, I’m guessing by now) It’s as if I’m afraid of finishing. If I finish it won’t be there any more. If I finish I’ll have to really risk myself and submit the dang thing. If I finish it can be rejected.

Now I’m getting somewhere. (nothing like a bit of self-therapy)

I love that art allows me freedom and yet in that freedom is aloneness and loneliness. When I’m afraid I don’t want to be alone. I need a buddy. An attagirl. I need a hard kick on the backside to tell me to stop whining and finish the damn thing already.

Creativity Coach, Dr. Eric Maisel wrote something to consider in Coaching the Artist Within.

• Make plans and train yourself to honor them.

That’s it. Nothing magnanimous. Maisel reminds me to turn down the voices in my mind and act like a professional, suck it up and do it. Sounds harsh but rings true. I simply cannot indulge my fears. It does no good–not to me or my art.

I call this keeping my word to myself.

Some time ago I heard some self-help guru say that we do far more damage to ourselves by not keeping our word and following through than anything our parents, ex’s, or bad bosses ever did to us. It rang so true that I never forgot it. Since really getting this concept I’ve been a bit better about stepping up to my own artistic plate. Then I read Maisel’s version of the same thing:

“First comes the dream, the desire, the inner compulsion, the passion, the obsession. Next comes the testing in the real world, the sweat, the phone calls, the revisions, the disappointments, the committment to more effort. the dream is the helium balloon, and reality is the string.

A wise creator joyously fills up his balloon but keeps the string firmly in grasp.”

I read these words and take a deep breath. Yeah, I really do love I do. I love to write. I love telling stories. I love creating worlds. I love the torment of revision. I may not love being rejected but I love when I understand something I didn’t get before now–and sometimes that comes by what an editor or publisher says when they say no. And I try again. And I get closer. And I love that, too.

And I’ve found that if I do this enough (writing, submitting, teaching, speaking, marketing) that I get to enjoy a modicum of success.

I still wrestle with the fears. Okay, sometimes a lot, but in the end I know that I don’t want to keep letting myself down.

I will take
up my pencil, which I have forsaken in great discouragement, and I will go
on with my drawing, and from that moment everything has seemed
transformed in me.”

Vincent Van Gogh

This is the where Vincent was taken immediately after his ear incident in December of 1888. The courtyard is just as it was--serene.