There seems to be an ebb and flow to creating. For weeks, you are knitting something (or several somethings) stitch by stitch. You hop from project to project, keeping it interesting. In my case, I also bounce from drawing to knitting, from painting to crochet, from typing up a new design to making cards and prints for the Shop.
Then you hit a week where several projects get finished! Oh wow! Happy Day! The blanket you’ve been crocheting is suddenly the perfect length. The sweater you’ve been knitting now has all its ends woven in, and the canvases that have been sitting there for a time with lines drawn on them, now have color and paint and they worked out and oh Happy Day!
But then you move on. You begin other projects, one stitch at a time, one line at a time, beginning….again. This can be an exciting time. But it can also lag a bit for me, having enjoyed the excitement of finishing, of completion, of TA-DAH!
The key for me, is not to begin too many new projects at this point. So often, as I’ve been slowly plodding away at the previous batch of creativity, I’ve also been dreaming of the next batch. There are always too many. I have to be selective and choose only a few or else I’ll glut the limited time I have with too many things vying for my attention. Three or four works well. Too many more and I’m a spinning top wobbling in all directions, not knowing which project to tackle next.
Easy does it. Slow going. Tortoise steps. One thing at at time. One stitch at a time. Being present to the line, splash, or row I’m on. Leaving the next rows and strokes for a later moment.
Draw breath. Draw life. Stitch with focus and flow.
LIVE your creative life!
It is so comforting to hear that my creative process is similar to yours in that I have many different types of project on the go and flit from one to another (and often they do seem to come to a conclusion at similar times) – I had always wondered if this was a fault of mine, lovely to hear you embrace it so positively!
It certainly is good to know others deal with the same stuff! And we just need to always give ourselves permission to be the creative people we want to be! Hope you are having a creative kind of day!
Good point! 🙂
This resonated so much with me – I find it’s good to have several different projects on the go at once but as you say, not too many and finding the knack of staying with them rather than haring on ahead thinking of the next thing is not always easy! Long term projects need a few quick ones alongside, I find, to deliver a bit of a regular finishing fix along the way! this way I find it easier to hold in there on long haul projects like blankets. I really loved your final four words and they reminded me very much of that poem of R S Thomas called “The Bright Field”. Do you know it? The lines your phrase made me think of come at the end of the first and in the second verse, “Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.” It’s so easy not to “LIVE your creative life” but somehow always be bypassing it in its present fullness and trying to leap ahead or lag behind. I’m going to write your words up somewhere I can see them as a reminder to enjoy the present from a creative point of view as well as lots of other ones too! Thank you! Hope you find lots of “lit bushes” in the the ebb and flow of your own creative present. E xx
Oh I LOVE this poem excerpt you wrote here!! How lovely! Is this the same poet as the one you sent to me? I’ll go look. thank you for leaving this comment! I’m sipping my English Breakfast tea thinking we would have loads in common if we were to ever be able to sit and have tea together! Have a wonderfully creative day Elizabeth! -Jennifer
Glad you like the RS Thomas poem. No the other poem is by another totally different poet also called Thomas! The poem I sent you before is by Edward Thomas not RS Thomas – no connection between the two as far as I am aware. I know, it’s confusing to say the least! I agree, I think we might find a great deal in common sitting down over a cup of tea, not least the tea itself, of course! Hope your afternoon is lovely – it’s beautifully sunny and Spring-like here and I’m wondering if I dare take my afternoon cup of tea outside! E xx