When the Creative Process Halts, Do You Give Up?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” said Charles Dickens in the Tale of Two Cities, a book I read so long ago that I have forgotten the plot now. But I am currently living these words that I remembered. On the heels of something incredible and miraculous comes something difficult and dreadful. My submission was accepted. And now I have to move my 85-year-old mother out of her house without a place to put her.

I was on such a roll there with my creativity and success. The Our Creative Selves October project week was so glorious filling my feed with creativity and happiness. And I felt like I was home. And then that stopped. And now with the worry of what’s to come, I’m also feeling a little like my progress has stopped. And this feels like all those other times when I doubted myself and any plans.

But a very wise woman, Anna Lovind whom I helped out with a fundraiser this past Spring, wrote this the other day on Instagram,

“Creative work is always slow and gentle. It can move in bursts and floods, and then nothing for a while and then another growth spurt.

What causes trouble is when we apply the expectation that the progress of our creative work will move forward like clockwork, steady and consistent, always the same throughout the cycle of the project, throughout the day, the month, the year.

Steady like a machine.

It won’t. And we can try to force it, but it won’t work, because the nature of the creative process is cyclical just like the sun, like the seasons, like our bodies.”

I read this at a moment when I was beginning to slow and doubt myself. Because stuff is blowing up and I can’t do both success and hardship simultaneously. There isn’t enough room. I almost didn’t even think I had anything to blog about. But then Anna’s words came forward.

Wherever you are is right where you are meant to be.

The only way is always through.

And many of us will be right there beside you feeling that emptiness where we want that creative success to be. Our creative process just doing its cycling thing.

If you have any thoughts, please drop a word below in the comments. Or you can…

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