Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Practicing as creatives

It takes a lot to be an active creative. There are time and money constraints, the need to learn things we're not good at (like marketing for some of us); there's a lot of self-doubt. But the longer I keep actively pursuing my creative life, one commitment has become the most important: how I practice.

A teacher of mine recently said, "We are what we practice, and we get to choose what we practice." We can practice going to the studio or practice staying home. We can practice writing every morning or we can practice sleeping in or reading the paper. We can practice making mistakes and trying new things or we can give up when something looks flawed and stay with what always works. We can practice being okay with rejection or we can practice being devastated by it.

It can be good to inventory our creative practices from time to time to see if we want to make any adjustments. About every four months, I'll sit down and write down what my creative practices currently are and then make a second list of what I'd like them to be and how I can get there. If you try this, let me know how it goes.