A lot of people talk about how it feels like the spark died. About how the color went out of things. They pine for the days when everything was new, and exciting... but they overlook an important truth. A majority of what makes relationships work isn't extreme chemical reactions, and potent attraction; it's commitment. It's adjusting your life to one another's eccentricities, it's doing chores when they need done, it's finding solutions to problems so you can both live easier lives. It isn't sexy, and it often isn't fun, but it's the thing you need to do in order to build a life.
Now use this as a metaphor for art, and how it's made.
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| Most of it is blood, sweat, and tears, instead of glitter and rainbows. |
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The Results Are Sexy (The Process Isn't)
Making art in all its forms, whether it's plotting a story, conceptualizing a podcast, painting a painting, getting ready to animate something, and so on, and so forth, often have a New Relationship Energy phase as well. After all, when the idea or concept is fresh it's got a power and pull that can be compelling and exciting. You're going through the early stages building a world, or sketching out a rough idea, figuring out how you're going to turn it into a reality, all of that.
But the longer the process goes on, the less of that initial excitement there's going to be. Oh you'll still have moments where you come up with a really great turn of phrase that you're proud of, or you figure out a solution to a sound effect that was giving you problems, but between that whirlwind of Initial Excitement and Project Completion you just have a long stretch of Execution.
And Execution isn't fun. It isn't sexy. It isn't glamorous. It's the artistic equivalent of doing the dishes, throwing in the laundry, putting the baby down for a nap, walking the dog, and all the other necessary chores you have to do. It's boring... but if you don't do it, the art doesn't get made.
Consider this video essay I made for the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which you should go subscribe to if you haven't yet). Now, when I first had the idea of how to fix the evil corporate antagonist that is Pentex, it really set my brain on fire. It merged with all the knowledge I had of history, and I immediately thought of several really fun things that could be done with it. Even writing the script for the video essay was pretty fun, since it was only about 4,000 words and change, and I got to dive down several historical rabbit holes throughout the process.
You know the part that wasn't fun, though? Sitting in front of my screen for something like 16 hours to assemble all the disparate parts of this video essay. Because I had to find all the video clips, make all the title screens, assemble everything to transition at just the right times, and add in all the effects I wanted, while trying to make it all look seamless.
And that is the part where so many people give up.
Whether it's picking up the brush and making the thousands of strokes to bring a painting to completion, or taking a certain space of time to add a few hundred (or a few thousand) words to a document every day, or editing a little more of a big video on your days off, so many people give up when they reach the actual art stage of making art. Some of them do it for a while, but then they miss the spark when it was new. They miss that excitement, and the rush they had when they were playing in a sandbox, or handling a steaming hot, completely fresh idea that captivated them.
Too many people out there think that making art is all frenetic energy and manic excitement, with furious typing or being seized in the grip of the muse for hours or days on-end. And that really isn't how a majority of the process happens for most people who make art. There's some of that in the beginning, absolutely, and little fits of it here and there as we hit different snags or challenges, or we get to pieces of the project we were really looking forward to. But most of the time, making art is just a boring ass grind where we put one word, one brush stroke, or one more sound effect in front of the other until the job's done.
To return to my favorite metaphor, it's like following an exercise routine. Nobody gets absolutely shredded, completely built, or able to lift hundreds of pounds overnight. But no matter how impressive the results are (whether in terms of power, endurance, or just aesthetic), everyone who achieves their fitness goals had to put in the hours to get them there. And some of those days might have been fun. Some of those workouts might have given them an endorphin rush. Most of it, though? It's just putting the fuel into the machine, and getting in the reps and steps until you're that much closer to the goal.
The end result is amazing! But getting there? It's just grind.
And I'm saying this because so many people think art is supposed to be this inspired thing that just flows through you, just like how so many people think that love (or at least relationships) are supposed to be effortless, that things should just come naturally, and if you have to work at it that's a sign that your relationship is dying. In truth, that's just the way all of these things happen.
Being able to work through that grind, and to find meaning and purpose in it, and to find the discipline to watch the end result take shape... that's what separates artists in any field from people who are just pissing about. So remember that when you start getting bored, and wondering why this feels like work.
Because the simple reason is art is work. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how hot your creativity burns, forcing something to transition from an electrical impulse in your mind into a completed, finished thing is work. Period.
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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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