Tag: craft

Artististic Self-Doubt

Matt

I had a thought about why artists tend to suffer crippling self-doubt — Every creative person’s training begins with the proclamation that there is someone, or multiple someones, whose skill they will never surpass. If asked, “Who is the greatest writer of all time?” we* are expected to say “William Shakespeare.” What about the greatest composer? Mozart. Greatest rock band? The Beatles.

It doesn’t stop at “greatest.” I’ve read interviews where skilled artists preface their influences with some variation of “I’m nowhere near as good as they are!”

I’ve mentioned that I’m working on my drawing skills. It’s not false humility when I say I have a long way to go, and that I am not currently in the same league as my heroes. And, since art isn’t my job, I’m okay if I don’t reach the level of, say, Emma Ríos — but it’s not arrogant to say that if I worked my ass off, then I could be that good. The idea of reaching that level is what motivates me to practice when I could be binge-watching teevee shows on Netflix.

We’ve internalized the myth that some people are born with innate abilities that set them on a higher level than the rest of us, that despite our best efforts we will never be able to advance past a certain tier. I hate that myth. It makes us roll our eyes at young people who say they want to write like Bob Dylan. It makes people who don’t sing feel self-conscious doing karaoke with their friends. I want to emphasize that last sentence: People feel bad when they can’t do things they’ve never worked at.

Creative skills are like any other skill — if you have the time, the opportunity, and the necessary functional body parts**, you can do any of them. You can improve.

I want to live in a world where kids can aspire to surpass their heroes without being shamed, and where adults who never practiced drawing don’t feel the need to apologize for sketching stick figures to communicate ideas.

* By “we” I really mean white people who speak English — we’re the kind of people who assume our opinions are and must be universal.

** Not everyone has all of these things, and it’s worth noting that many of the most famous and successful creators have tons of money that reduces the amount of time they have to spend doing things other than honing their craft. They aren’t superhuman, they just have more time to work.

Not Getting Things Done

Matt

Raise your hand if you’ve done something like this.

You have an idea — a story, a melody, a character, a color — that takes up residence in your imagination and starts redecorating the place. You love this idea; it is, perhaps, your greatest idea. Now you just need to find a way to introduce the idea to the world, so you take a seat at your desk and…

Start making lists. This idea is so good, you absolutely must execute it properly — perfectly, even. You write down all the areas of your craft you are weak in and start finding books and websites to teach you to improve those skills. Days go by. Weeks. Months. For every hour you spend working on The Idea, you spend ten hours in study, learning about different techniques.

One day, you decide to take a look at your progress… only to realize that you haven’t made as much progress as you thought.

That’s where I am with my current The Idea. I started writing a comic, and somehow fell into an infinite rabbit hole of drawing tutorials, theoretical analysis of the craft of comics, and dozens of hours spent drawing shitty hands in the hope of one day drawing less-shitty hands. Learning has been awesome, and I can’t say that I regret anything I’ve read about the process of creating comics in the last several months, but I’ve focused so much on Making The Idea Perfect that I’ve neglected The Idea itself.

I’m sure my anxiety plays into this. In the era before medication, I would get so bogged down in “learning” that I would eventually despair of ever having the skills I wanted and give up. It was the standard fear of rejection, multiplied by a billion. At least with medication, I’m better able to see the anxiety in play and take steps to minimize its impact on my work.

Mental illness aside, I’ve had perfectionist tendencies for as long as I can remember. I often find myself struggling to call something “Done”, instead finding fault after fault and lamenting how much I’ll hate it in two years if I don’t get everything just right. It’s not accompanied by the panicky feeling of anxiety, just irritation at myself for not being better.

(Aside: I could probably write a series of posts on how the “gifted kid” label has affected my self-perception and ability to share my stuff with people.)

So! I’m saying this publicly in the hope that it will stick: I am rebalancing my priorities when it comes to making stuff. I am going to start spending more time working on The Idea, even if it sucks for a time and requires massive rewrites, and less time studying up on abstract concepts related to the idea. Learning is good, and has done a lot for my confidence, but no amount of learning is going to cause my stories to get written. That requires picking up my pen and getting to work.