To create art is to risk failure. It’s that simple. Some people can’t live with that reality. They want their work to come forth fully formed, Athena emerging from Zeus’ head.
Art isn’t like that. It’s messy. It falters. It breaks. You falter; you break.
It’s stubborn, too, art. It doesn’t easily bend to your will. You have to shape it and reshape it. You have to visit it regularly. If you don’t, it reveals itself a lion on the prowl. It will devour you.
To create art sometimes means starting over. Ground zero. A new outline. A new project. New supplies. A new location.
Other times, art means cutting two-thirds of the work so that only gold is left. You have to be ruthless. Don’t linger when it comes time to kill it. Kill it, and kill it fast. Rip the bandage off. Quickly, quickly.
Sometimes, art requires that you become the lion on the prowl. You wait, crouching in the darkness. When the idea comes, you pounce. You grip it in your paws and make it your own.
No matter what, you keep going. No faintness of heart. No. To be an artist is to put your heart on the line and to find strength in vulnerability, weakness. To be an artist is to be a vessel: filled and emptied, filled and emptied. Again and again. For a lifetime.
And failure? Failure isn’t the real cost. It hurts, to be sure, but it isn’t the final note in your song. The final note is when you decide to stop creating. Which is more important: creating or perfection?
If the former, you keep going. You don’t give up.
Need encouragement for your artistic endeavors? Consider purchasing Write Right’s Emergency Hope Kit, a journal to keep you going in the good and bad times.
Image: cosmo_71 (Creative Commons)