Articles tagged with: creating

How to Get Started Creating Again

How to Get Started Creating Again

June 8th, 2018

How do you get back to creating after you have been away, whether due to illness, vacation, busyness or distraction?

Whether it has been a few days, weeks or years, the process is essentially the same. Knowing this process is a key skill for artists who want to live fulfilling creative lives.

At the end of May I went to Mexico on a spiritual retreat. It was soul-nourishing, wonderful and rich.

Coming home, I feel deeply reconnected to my Essence, in a place of deeper quiet, trust and ease. I feel mysterious transformations and gifts moving in me on a subterranean level. I feel truly blessed.

Almost immediately I came down with a bad cold, which turned into a fever, then a nasty cough. I’ve been astonishingly tired and had to move at a snail’s pace for the past week.

What with the busy time leading up to retreat, the week away and then being sick, it has been a while since I have been in my studio writing.

Now, when I attempt to begin again, nothing comes.

Do I panic over this? Not at all.

I know this is a totally normal phase, and I know how to move through it.

What You Should Know 

You will have resistance. Know that you need to move through the resistance, rather than buy into it. In this way, you’ll be able to get back to doing what you love.

You may be terrible at first. I call it “Grinding the Gears,” because that’s what it feels like when I’m trying to begin creating again. If you stick with it and are gentle with yourself, this will pass pretty soon, and those gears will be greased and moving smoothly again.

Rekindle a Creative Habit

creative friends making a pact

photo by rawpixel on unsplash

The first thing is to rekindle your regular creative time. Get back in your habits again, if you had them, or start some new ones.

Set aside some days and times that you will make your art. You may need to put those times in your calendar, or perhaps you decide that every weekday evening you’ll take ½ hour to play your guitar, or on Sunday you are going to play with paints. Smaller, regular bursts of time will help you get your groove back, even if it’s been years.

Make a commitment to yourself and keep it, even if in the moment you don’t feel like it. Remember, you have to move through resistance.

It can help enormously to have some companionship, either by taking a class, making a date to make art with a friend, or forming a group to share works-in-progress.

Start Small and Easy

When we return to our art after being away, we face resistance to creating. This is normal. Starting small and easy lowers your resistance, making the way more inviting and fun.

Begin in some easy way to get reconnected to your art, your creativity, your love of making things. Remember why you want to do it in the first place, what it can give you, others, our world.

person reading

photo by Lilly Rum on Unsplash

For me, that happens by reading. I read some poems by other poets. I read about the art and craft of poetry or writing. I may read a bit about the lives of artists or about the creative process.

This is reading for inspiration, not pleasure. I’m not sinking into the couch with a novel for hours. I’m trolling for inspiration, while I’m in my studio at my appointed time.

Then I read some of my own work. I may do some revising.

I’ll give myself a prompt and do a little freewriting.

I may keep the studio time shorter than usual at first.

I want the process to be as inviting, easeful and inspiring as possible.

When I’ve been away from my violin for a long time, I usually begin with a 10-minute session, perhaps 20 minutes. I will play some scales or scale patterns and then improvise for a few minutes. And then I put the violin away before I get discouraged or burnt out. I want to stop while I still feel hungry for more and still feel good about playing.

What are some small, easy, inviting ways for you to begin again? What is the least threatening, most enjoyable way back?

Permission is the Key that Unlocks the Door

As always, the most important aspect of getting started again is my attitude.

And the most important attitude is permission. Giving myself permission to play, experiment, make messes, and most of all, make “bad” art.

I know that often when I start again after being away there is a period I call “grinding the gears.” My words come slowly and awkwardly. The writing is often terrible.

I accept this time and don’t fret over it. I know it’s a necessary stage in the cycle of returning to my creativity. And it passes.

If I let myself be awful for a while, pretty soon the words and imagination start flowing again. I find what I am excited about now, what I want to say, how I want to say it. I find the joy of creating.

Breaks Can Produce Growth

I may discover the time away was a great blessing, allowing me to refresh my connection to my creativity, to learn things while away from it, and to come back with new gifts.

Back when I was playing my violin for hours a day, I was surprised to discover that a break of a few weeks or even a few months could lead to a strange quantum leap in my abilities. As if I had figured something out while away from it.

Longer breaks don’t usually produce this kind of growth. Instead, there will be a loss of ability that I have to make peace with and gently make my way back, rebuilding skills and facility over time.

performer with painted face holding herself tenderly

photo by svetlana pochatun on unsplash

However, at the same time I may have new life experiences and other kinds of growth that do feed my art in new ways. I want to be open to these, curious about who I am now and how I want to make art now, and not just fall into old ruts.

Be Kind and Encouraging to Yourself

Gentleness is very important. You want to think of yourself as a child that you are encouraging to be creative. How you treat yourself will have a big impact on your creativity and your art.

So, be the best parent you can be to your inner artist—incredibly loving and encouraging but firm too.

Now it’s time to get to it! Make a time, make some art! Let it be easy and fun.

Share with me in the comments below what you got from reading this and any questions you have. Let’s keep filling our world with beauty, truth, imagination, wonder, play.

How to Access the Power of Love to Realize Your Dreams

How to Access the Power of Love to Realize Your Dreams

January 12th, 2018

In this post, I share with you how to access the deepest power in the universe, the power of love, so that you can draw upon this limitless power to help you realize your dreams.

This is the fourth post in a series on Enthusiasm vs. Willpower in reaching your heart’s dreams. If you missed the last post, you can read it here. In it, I offered you a radical invitation to help you connect to heart, passion, delight and fulfillment in your life. I also introduced you to the Inner Taskmaster and the Rebel, both of whom can sabotage your dreams.

In discussing the Taskmaster in my last post, I talked about the unhealthy kind of willpower and how it really doesn’t help us reach what we long for in our lives. Today, we begin with a healthy kind of inner power.

Accessing the Power of the Mother Bear

photo by matthias-goetzke on unsplash

The second kind of willpower is that of the mother saving her child. This will is unstoppable. We all know better than to get between a mother bear protecting her cubs, because no force is stronger than that love.

This is the kind of will we want to access on the path to living our heart’s dreams:  Our powerful, passionate, unstoppable love for what we long to be, do and have, our fierce commitment to it.

This is a force that can move mountains, including the mountains of our own fear, doubt and resistance.

Connect to Your Deep Why

So, how do you access that kind of will?

You dive down to the core of your love and longing for your dream, the heart of your passion for it. You become deeply connected to what that dream gives you, what it will give you, what you love and enjoy about it, what it can give to others, how it connects to values that you hold dear.

You get very clear on what I call the Deep Why of the dream. How does it serve you, others, our world?

Then, you keep reconnecting to that why, that love and vision, as long as they remain true for you. You keep recommitting to your dream from that place of love.

Call up your fierce, powerful love for your art, your dreams, for the power of art itself and what it gives our world, how it changes lives. Let that be the source of your willpower to act day after day in a manner congruent with your dreams.

A Little Will and a Lot of Love

photo by craig whitehead on unsplash

So, yes, a little will is involved. It can serve you well on the path of dreams, when used properly. You may have to draw on 30 seconds of willpower every single day to get yourself into your studio and begin creating.

But deeper than will for me is the love of creating, the passion for art. Being clear in knowing what creating gives to my life and knowing what is lacking without it. And having a strong, inspiring vision of where I am headed in my life.

Vision, love, joy—these are unbelievably powerful on the path of dreams.

If you are not feeling them for your dreams, you may have the wrong dream. Or you may need help clearing past hurts, fears and doubts that keep your passion and enthusiasm at bay. If you lack inspired vision for your life, you may need some expert help uncovering it and uncovering what keeps you from it. (Check out my creative life coaching here.)

Please cultivate a little will too, your core of inner strength, that mother bear love, and persistence.

Cultivate commitment, that shining bridge. (If you missed the post on the shining bridge of commitment, you can read it here.)

But, commit only to that which you truly love, desire and value, that which inspires you and lights you up. No shoulds here. When you waver or forget or lose your way, simply recommit if the dream is still alive for you.

Dream big, but set yourself small, reachable goals toward your heart’s big dreams. (See my post on The Power of Small Bites).

Commit to those goals. Succeed at them.

In this way, you can move mountains and realize your great dreams—for yourself and for our world.

The Deeper Power Behind Everything

Love is the deeper power behind both enthusiasm and willpower. Behind willpower is devotion, which is love. Behind enthusiasm is passion, which is love.

Notice how everything comes from Love. Love is the deepest power on earth. Nothing is stronger or greater than this.

Loving what you do, being passionate about it, being lit up by it, being engaged with and curious about it. Taking joy and delight in it. These are so essential. If they are persistently lacking, I would strongly suggest you choose a new dream.

Give Yourself to Love

photo by eye for ebony on unsplash

If you can consistently return to love and draw on love to power your art and your dreams, nothing can stop you.

The realization of your dreams may not look how you first imagined, but what you arrive at will amaze you.

Your life will be immeasurably enriched by walking the path of Love. And so will the lives of everyone you meet, as well as many others you never meet.

Far greater than will, greater than enthusiasm, greater than discipline, commitment or passion, greater than inspiration is love.

Love will carry the day. Love will see you through.

So, draw on it. Call on it. Connect with it. Express it.

Dare to love in all you do. Find what you most love and do it, be it, give it, live it.

To your powerful love,

Maxima

P.S. One act of love you can take now is to share this post with someone who might benefit. You can use the share buttons below.

Great Artists Steal or How to Learn from the Masters

Great Artists Steal or How to Learn from the Masters

October 18th, 2017
1 Comment

T.S. Eliot famously wrote, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

What did Eliot mean by this seemingly outrageous assertion? He wasn’t talking about plagiarism, which would be directly quoting or copying exactly another artist’s work. What he was talking about is recognizing great ideas, great techniques, great tools and making them your own.

When you borrow something, it doesn’t belong to you. When you steal, it becomes yours, a part of your unique artistic style.

How To Steal and Make It Your Own

  • You observe closely. Take note of exactly what the artist is doing that makes their work so powerful and effective. What is the shape and weight of the line? How do they create that shading effect? Where are the line breaks in the poem? How is metaphor used? What is the structure of the musical piece? What is unusual about the harmony, the melody? Most of all, what is it you like so much about it?
  • Man playing piano

    by Francisco Gomes on Unsplash

    You start by copying. Many student artists are given the assignment to reproduce a great work of art. Many musicians learn to play note-for-note the solos that great performers improvised. This is phenomenal training. If you can pull it off, as closely as possible, you will learn an enormous amount about how to make a great work of art.

    And, significantly, you will learn it in your body. As your hand attempts to create the exact curve and delicacy of line of a Michelangelo sketch, your body engages in deep learning about beauty, art and drawing. When you learn something in your body, as opposed to just consuming information in your mind, you truly learn it. It becomes a part of you.

  • You adapt what you love to your own art. Once you’ve learned the techniques and embodied them, you return to your own voice and aesthetic, your unique expression, enriched with a powerful palette. Now, your job is to find exciting, inventive, imaginative ways to use those tools and techniques to express what is uniquely you. Now it is time to be authentic, to say what you need to say, while using what you’ve learned works to make extraordinary art.

    The brilliant editor Shawn Coyne [visit his site Storygrid.com for loads of free, useful information] talks about the importance of including in your writing the “obligatory scenes” and “conventions” of whatever genre you are writing in. He stresses that a story won’t “work” for readers without these scenes and conventions. For instance, the thriller genre must include a scene of the “hero at the mercy of the villain.” And yet, he adds, the challenge and the art is to create those obligatory scenes and satisfy those conventions of the genre in new and surprising ways.

Learn By Copying

I once typed up all of Salinger’s masterful short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” so I could feel what it took to write a great short story. I learned so much about how the story was made, even though I had read it many times before. For example, I was surprised to discover how much of the story is dialogue.

I got the idea to type Salinger’s story from the great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. Bartok copied by hand all of Beethoven’s string quartets before writing one of his own, so he knew what it would feel like to write a great quartet. Time-consuming, painstaking work. The result:  He wrote six magnificent string quartets of his own that sound nothing like Beethoven.

When You Need Inspiration, Look Around You

Artist at desk

by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash

As a graphic designer, when I needed a great idea for a new client or project, I would start by looking at other designs—on book covers, coffee cans, posters—and also in nature and all around me. I would look for colors, shapes, ideas that jumped out at me. And I would steal: That use of layout, those wonderful colors, that arrow highlighting an important element.

Sometimes I practiced reproducing a layout exactly, so I could learn how to do it. I’d often have to discover new uses of tools on my computer.

But my designs were my own. I stole elements and great ideas from other designers, but not whole designs. In this way, I expanded my palette as a designer and didn’t get stuck in ruts.

I often practice writing poems and stories, modeling the style, voice and/or exact forms of other poets. This is a way of apprenticing myself to them and getting new ideas, new possibilities.

My students worry that if they do this, they will sound too much like some other writer. My feeling is that you would be very fortunate indeed if you manage to create something truly reminiscent of some famous writer. In the process, you will be becoming a better writer. And then, you can use that knowledge to sound more like yourself. 

Become an Apprentice

If you want to be great, study the masters. Artists apprentice themselves to great artists in order to learn, to grow, to study their art and craft. David Levine wrote about this, “Shakespeare routinely stole plotlines and even whole scenes from other writers for his own plays.” Remember, stealing means making it your own, not just direct imitation.

Austin Kleon wrote a wonderfully inspiring, helpful, wise and fun book that leaps off from this idea of theft as being important to the creation of art. His book is called Steal Like An Artist. I recommend it highly.

What artist will you commit to studying in depth and stealing from today?

In my next post, I’ll give you a specific “stealing” assignment, a creative prompt based on the work of another artist, for you to use as a jumping off place. Stay tuned!

Facing the Blank Page: Tending Your Creative Fire, Part 2

Facing the Blank Page: Tending Your Creative Fire, Part 2

March 30th, 2016

[This is part of a 2-part series on Tending Your Creative Fire and how to get yourself started creating each day. If you missed part 1, you can find it here.]

As artists, we all know the horror of the blank page (or blank canvas or the equivalent in whatever medium you work in), that gaping void waiting to be filled with brilliance, if only you knew how to begin.

So how do you begin?

Have a Familiar Entry Point

Having a regular way that you start your creative time can be a tremendous support to overcoming the blank page/blank canvas syndrome, and it will decrease your resistance to getting started.

For instance, if you are working on a novel, you might begin your creative time each day by rereading what you wrote the day before. And then, have decided in advance what scene you will be working on that day.

As a dancer, you might have a particular warm-up you always do. When I dance, I begin by lying on the floor for quite a while, stretching and rolling around. I need to make strong contact with the earth, the base for all my dancing, before I move into the upper levels and become more active. Knowing this is where I begin, I enter the studio and lie down and begin. I don’t have to wonder where to start.

photo by Derek Truninger

photo by Derek Truninger

As a poet, I usually begin by reading several poems by other poets. This helps me shift into a musical and alive use of language and sparks my imagination for what’s possible in a poem.

Then, I usually follow that with a writing prompt (a word, phrase or topic to write about) and do a 10-20 minute freewrite, using that prompt, to get the words flowing. (If you do not know what freewriting is, I highly recommend you read Natalie Goldberg’s now-classic Writing Down the Bones, and familiarize yourself with this extraordinary tool for writers.)

These two short activities—reading a few poems and doing a freewrite—help me to prime the creative pump. I don’t always begin in this way, depending on what I’m working on, but I always have this simple practice to fall back on, and it’s how I most often begin.

Use Creative Games and Playful Activities

I have various creative games and exercises to bring me into a more inspired state in an inviting, open way that often yields profound work.

Playful and inviting are touchstone qualities for entering into creative work.

Creativity is play, at its heart. Unfortunately, as artists, we often forget this, to our detriment. We turn our creative play into hard work.

We approach it as work, partly because that helps validate the activity in our minds and the minds of others. American culture, grounded in the Puritan work ethic, and many of our contemporary first world cultures, tend to revere work and think of play as frivolous. But approaching our creative activity as hard work is a sure-fire way to make it less appealing in the long run, and hence generate more resistance to doing it. And I believe, it is ultimately not true to the creative spirit.

ladypainting_123rfI recommend that you create some of your own playful invitations in whatever medium you wish to work in. Search out interesting creative exercises and try them on.

Small challenges and assignments are also incredibly helpful. As are larger projects you can work on over time. Limitations or boundaries actually set our creative imaginations free.

As a painter you might decide to begin each painting session for a month by making a quick 4” x 4” painting in 20 minutes. Or you might allow yourself only certain colors. Or you might always begin with a still life sketch. If you get bored with your assignments after a while, change them up.

The dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp in her wonderful book The Creative Habit has an exercise she calls “Do a Verb.” She expresses with her body for several minutes a single verb, such as “twist.” This gets her moving and thinking creatively.

Collect a Treasure Box of Generative Ideas

Here’s an idea:  Create an index card box full of creative prompts and draw one out at random when you begin your creative time. Then, do whatever is on the card. Come up with a batch of your own ideas to get you started. Ask friends for other ideas. Write them down. Collect them.

Or, choose a regular way to enter your creative state, a routine, a habit, a practice, and stick with it. Perhaps your regular way is drawing a card from your treasure trove box and doing it.

What matters is what works to get you started. Few things are more daunting than the blank page or blank canvas or stage with no idea where to begin. Have a way to begin and know what it is before you enter the studio that day. You might leave yourself an assignment at the end of the previous day’s work.

Collect some fallback methods or exercises that you can rely on. Ask other artists what works for them to get started. For me, when all else fails, I revise earlier work. No matter how uninspired I feel, this always gets me into creative engagement, and it moves my work forward.

How will you begin the next time you enter your studio? What helps you get inspired and flowing?

My Recommendations

Use some or all of these as they work for you.

  • Decide in advance how you’ll begin the next day
  • Start with something small and easy
  • Think playful, inviting or inspiring
  • Experiment and see what works
  • Consider creating a regular warm-up practice, a habitual way to begin your creative time

To your creative fire,

Maxima

The Power of Ritual: Tending Your Creative Fire, Part 1

The Power of Ritual: Tending Your Creative Fire, Part 1

March 4th, 2016

[This post in the first in a two-part series on Tending Your Creative Fire and getting started creating.]

Getting started with creative activity is the very hardest part.

We say we want to write, paint, sculpt, make films, sing, but when it comes to actually doing it, we procrastinate and distract ourselves endlessly, never seeming to get around to it.

And thus, another day goes by when we aren’t living our dreams. We beat ourselves up about it, but that doesn’t do any good.

So how do you get yourself to actually sit down at the piano or your desk, enter your studio, stand at your easel, pick up the pen, or doing anything else you love to do?

Two Extremely Helpful Practices To Get You Creating

Two things will help you most to get started creating each time:

1) A regular creative practice at the same day/same time each week, so that it becomes an unquestioned habit (nothing helps more than this). See my post on The Power of Creative Routines for more about this.

2) A way into the creative activity itself, a way to begin.

In this essay and the next one, I address the second step above. I talk about ways to help yourself get started once you are in the studio. However, these tools will also reduce resistance to getting yourself there in the first place. (To find out more about getting yourself into the studio, read my essay on Resistance to Creating.)

Create a Simple Ritual to Invoke Your Muse

Altarish2_MichaelDuliba

Photo by Michael Duliba

Create a regular way to enter into your creative practice. A simple ritual is helpful. Simple is, most often, best, so that your ritual doesn’t become yet another hindrance to doing creative work.

The ritual serves to alert you that you are entering a different state of being, one set apart from the workaday world, you are opening yourself to the creative flow, making yourself available to greater powers to flow through.

The ritual is like a gateway you pass through to enter the creative state. It announces your availability to your muse.

I like to light a candle, ring a small bell, and say a short prayer. Sometimes I also fill a bowl with water and a few drops of essential oils and wash my hands in a symbolic act. In this way, I evoke my physical senses and engage my whole being in the creative act to come.

Take a Moment to Connect

In whatever ritual you choose, take a moment to connect to the following three things:

  1. Your reason for creating—what it gives you, why you love it, why it matters. This is what I call your Deep Why.
  2. A promise and commitment to yourself to not judge what happens during your creative time that day—not the work itself, nor how much you did or did not do, nor your abilities or talent.
  3. A sense of offering up your work in service to something larger than yourself. This may be the world, others who will benefit from it, the Divine, or art and beauty itself. In other words, detach from your ego’s ambitions and attachments to the work and reconnect to a deeper purpose.

It only takes a minute or two to connect to these three things, and they will help you be motivated and free to create from a place of love and giving, and keep your ego mind more quiet, so that you can do the work/play.

At the end of my creative time, I have a little ritual of closure to mark my transition back to the so-called ordinary world. I ring the bell again, blow out the candle, and pour the water in the bowl onto the earth outside.

Ritual Helps Us Enter the Creative State

Full disclosure: I don’t always do my ritual. Sometimes I resist the ritual itself. Often I simplify it to just lighting a candle and ringing a bell.

But I find the ritual helps me in small, subtle ways to cross a threshold into creativity and to sanctify the time and activity, making me less apt to get distracted or off-course or to postpone starting.

The ritual also reminds me that I do the work not for my sake alone, but for a greater purpose, that my art is meant to serve others and the Divine. It gives me a moment to reconnect to this larger purpose and helps me put my ego aside and dive into connection with something larger than me and more meaningful, and that, at the same time, is motivating and inspiring to me.

Your Ritual Needs to be Right for You

Meditating person

Photo by Dingzeyu Li

Bottom line: Your ritual needs to work for you and suit your nature. It could be going for a walk or doing yoga before your creative time. Coming into the body and getting the energy flowing is very helpful because our creative energy is our life force energy, or chi, and it helps to have that flowing.

Your ritual might be as simple as clearing off your desk before sitting down to write, removing distractions. Some artists put on a special piece of clothing each time or their favorite music. Some simply begin by making a strong cup of tea or coffee. Many have superstitious and strange habits that work to signal their muse to show up.

Your ritual need not be elaborate, and it is essential that it works for you. By “works for you” I mean it suits your nature, and it does not become another obstacle to creativity. Your ritual should help you to enter the creative state, to invoke your creativity and inspiration and set aside your self-judgments, doubts and preoccupations with the rest of life for the time being. You may need to experiment a bit to find a ritual you like.

In our next issue of Creative Sparks, I give you some bright ideas to help you overcome the blank page/blank canvas syndrome and get creating. Click here to read Part 2 of this series on Tending Your Creative Fire.

To your creative fire,

Maxima

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