Where Did I Leave the Joy Again?

It's easy to lose sight of the joy that's supposed to come hand-in-hand with getting to practice your art.

When you're a kid, you live in that joy. You follow your own creative interests, down any road--regardless of whether that road is marketable or effective or whatever. You don't care. You're doing it for you, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. You don't even think of the opinions of others.

As you get older, however, you have to think of the opinions of others. Those people's opinions make a difference in whether you get cast, your book gets published, you get hired...you have to make your art to please other people, whether you like it or not. Keeping the creative joy going can be hard under these conditions. Here are a few thoughts on how to keep it going.

Ignore everyone else in the room. Your performance or novel is not about them--it's about you. For instance, I went to an audition a few weeks ago that was improv-based. These types of auditions have historically made me really nervous. This time, after a conversation with a mentor about how I needed to let go and have more fun, I went in with that attitude--that I was going to have a blast and do something I could genuinely smile about later--whether I got cast or not was out of my control. I really committed to my choices, had a blast in the auditions--and booked the part! I didn't let the people watching make me nervous about acting like an idiot, which is a pitfall of auditions like this.

This can work for writing, too--write like there are no critics. Write like there's no audience. Write for you--write what makes your blood sing. Let other people's opinions work themselves out later.

Forget your ambitions. It's so easy to get discouraged when you're not getting the result you want in your creative career. When you've gotten a lot of rejections lately, when your book is just refusing to follow your neatly-planned plot, when you've been at it for ten years and still aren't making a living. WHen we're kids, we're playing--but when we're adults, the stakes are higher, and there are clear winners or losers. Try to get back into that play mindset--and reject the idea that there's any way to "fail."

Be gentle with yourself. If you've never read The Artist's Way, you should get yourself a copy. One of its suggestions is to take yourself on an "Artists' Date" fairly regularly--to a place that inspires your creativity. Whether that's a museum, a musical, a park, a store...whatever. Do things that inspire you. And take care of yourself. The industry will be hard on you--so that means you can't afford to be hard on yourself. Don't blame yourself for things that are beyond your control. Don't look down on your own work. Be realistic--and if something needs improvement, work to improve it. But always be sure to mentally recognize your own successes as well.

Being creatively successful is so much a mind game. You need to be emotionally strong and able to withstand the difficulties of an unforgiving industry--and a lot of the time that means going easy on yourself when no one else will, even if you're a perfectionist and your instinct is the opposite.