WCT2012 #3 - Acknowledging and Measuring Your Creative Progress

[Dan Goodwin]

Welcome to another Weekly Creativity Thread. 

This week we're talking about how we acknowledge and measure our progress in our creative lives.

Most of us are far more creative than we give ourselves credit for. We can easily get stuck with old tapes in our heads that tell us we're not creative, or we don't produce enough. Even when the evidence counter to these beliefs is glaringly obvious to everyone else!

So, three questions for you to ponder and respond to around this topic -

1. How do you acknowledge or track your creative progress? Or do you not currently at all? 

2. How do you measure your creativity now, compared with a month ago, six months ago, a year ago? How important is this to you, to feel you're evolving? 

3. Do people who know you and your work well consider you far more creative (in quality and quantity) than you consider yourself to be? If so, why might that be?  

Thanks for reading, look forward to hearing your thoughts as always.

Dan

[Tereza]

Caroline, you are so right about taking the baby steps.

Its when you have stoped for some time, and have had some big life changes and some trauma that one just does not have that confidence anymore.

So, starting with baby steps is the way to go....and... some suggestions, some one to walk the path with you, give advice, encourgment.  That is why I am doing Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain all over again.

I also have this gut feeling that I should start doing a bit of doodeling to get going.   I know I am capable of doing some presentable work... but my world has been pulled out from under my feet with my husband 'passing over' and I lost every shred of creative confidence I ever had.    He was my best critic, my best adviser, my most reliable and truthful confidant. He would not tell me something is good if it was not.  And everything he knew about art he learned from me.  But I could trust him and his advice when ever I had choices and got in a dither.

[Caroline Alexander]

Doodling, colouring in simple drawings, it does not have to be the Mona Lisa. Its getting back into the doing routine, as alien and disconnected as it can feel. It was spinning that got me through, because I could sit and spin without having to think too hard, my hands and fingers knew what to do and simply did it on autopilot. I still keep finding skeins of yarn around the place from that time and wondering what to do with them because I do not knit, although I crochet. I think a couple of woven rugs will sort that out.

I've not read the Edwards book, though I know its highly thought of, and I was able to pick up a copy of the companion workbook as well, so this will be a self-exploratory journey for me too. It will be good to have company on this journey; the sharing of the experiences, how we interpret what we read, how we apply it, or not, to our personal circumstances will not only be interesting, but will be exciting at times too, and therapeutic.

Learning to be one again is a lonely process, and learning self-confidence tends to be like a dance: two steps forward, one back, then two back and one forward. But you can still use his opinion even though he is no longer physically here; you know instinctively what he would say. Trust that instinct; after all, he did! And I am sure, that like my husband, he is up there saying "Get going girl! You have a life to live, so live it!" Or words to that effect.

All it takes is one small step, and then another, and you have a group here to cheer you on. Its like riding a bike after a long time-you may fall off a few times at first, but you still remember what you have to do to keep riding.

[Dan Goodwin]

All excellent advice.

I wonder where this belief comes from that so many people seem to have - that they must create an absolutely vast amount to "qualify" or meet some criteria as an artist. So thinking they can't do that, and believing it's all or nothing, they give up and create nothing.

There are an infinite number of increments in between, beginning with tiny steps. If you created one little thing each day that took 10 or 15 minutes, in less than three years you'd have 1000 artworks...

[Dan Goodwin]

What happened during those 7 years Di? I'm curious about the ways you did create during this period, because I don't think any of us can switch our creative instinct and desire completely -it wll still find a way through somehow.

If the amount of art you create - and the quality of it - is achieved by cheating or slacking off, then more of us should slack off like this!!