The Creator Gets Out of His Own Way

I've probably led you astray in the last month with all my talk about working. The act of creating is more than work. There is also the process of creating art, which is mysterious. Anybody who says that there is no mystery in creating art is no artist. This can be proven when you ask to see their art and they can't show you anything.

A creator must learn to work and must learn a work ethic. If she does not show up at her desk, at her canvass, at her block of marble every day, she will never succeed as an artist. And this is what I mean by work and work ethic.

But if she uses the same steel determination to then create her art, she will fail. the violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch says that to create you must disappear and I agree with him. What he means by this is the force must stop and the play must begin. When we play we disappear, we are not really aware of ourselves, we are not thinking too much about our existence or our problems.

If you have a bowl of water, filled to the brim, and walk it across the room, you're likely to do it without spilling the water. But if you take that bowl of water and walk it across the room while describing out loud to yourself your every thought, that is how you are walking it across the room, what your strategy is and how you are not spilling it, you will certainly spill the water. Try it now and you will see.

It's like this with your creation. Your work ethic will get you to your desk, but then you must stop thinking about how you are doing what you are doing, and you must simply play, you must disappear and play and create.

The Creator Gets Out of His Own Way is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog