I was trying to draw a picture of the creative process and worked out a few theories.

First, consider the creative process as a race. On one side you have the beginning, the inception of the work, and on the other the completion. In the middle you have pain, to get from the start to the finish requires plowing through this pain.

But there is something unsettling about this. By this representation you accept that art is pain, and that completion is simply a matter of becoming accustomed to self torture and become resistant to it. This doesn’t work for me, I like art, I enjoy creating, and I’m not a masochist. I have no interest in desicrating something I love. Also, I feel if you’re just working on something to fight through the pain of doing it, the result doesn’t tend to be anything worthwhile. You do it to get it done, and then all you feel is the hollow victory of completion. This is creation through fighting pain.

The second representation of the creation process is like a race where you’ve got to reach the finish before the pain catches up with you.

Unfortunately this means reaching completion as quickly as possible, and if the pain catches up with you, you’re finished, and you might as well give up, as every step from that point onward will have you consumed with pain. Projects completed in this way tend to be fun and small with the rush of creating without a full developed creation to show for it. But there are plenty of projects that haven’t been completed with this process, as they are ceased as soon as pain is felt.  This is creation via running from pain.

Then I considered work in the past that I’ve completed that I’ve enjoyed. That’s when I realized that these works were not set up as a marathon, with a start line and a finish line on either sides. Instead they appeared as this.

You work on a project until it starts to become painful, and then you take what you’ve created and you tie it together.  The pain becomes tolerable when you know that in just a few steps you can reach completion.  It’s like a runner who sees the finish line and is able to suddenly pull an extra 10 percent out of no where to finish strong. But try asking that runner to do the same thing when there is no finish line in sight and see what response you get. Impossible. It can not be done.

The key is to make sure that the projects you tackle are ones that can be shortened and still be made worthwhile.

A project begins with a grand vision, but while that grand vision can motivate for a time, inevitably it becomes as a huge unscalable mountain. Once this feeling is felt, you must look for the finish line where it can be found. Cut off all extraneous appendages, tie off the wounds, and you can still have a living creature. It may be smaller than intended, but it is no larger than it needs to be. Otherwise, watch your potential creation decay from the outside in, or come into form as a rotting diseased monster.  Amputation is the finishing touch of a successful project.

Over time, works may increase in size and scope, but in the meantime you’ll be finishing projects, pushing a little more each time.  This is the balance which allows us to create without learning to hate our craft.