Good Enough?

From Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way:

“As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn’t right. We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth.”

I confess for all the things I produce – blog posts, videos, articles – for each one that sees the light of day there are scores that do not. Some don’t even get past the status of ‘idea.’ I confess also that I hadn’t really thought about how much I criticised myself until I found a way to put that criticism on the backburner.

I had been working on the JohnOfJordan website for months without making much progress. It shouldn’t have required that much effort. It was only set up as a way to bring my videos together with some other information and resources. The truth is I became bogged down in doubts. It was only after I stopped asking myself constantly “Is this good enough?” that I was able to achieve anything at all.

I care about the production values of things I produce, I want to maintain a high quality of work, but being critical doesn’t help realise this goal. Rather it just stops me from producing anything at all. Weeks go by without a single video being produced, despite a library of new and archival material. Blog posts remain “drafts” indefinitely. Some of my best ideas end up on a dusty “to do” (maybe one day) list.

I don’t want to do that any more.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is a place for revision and editing. I believe there is a time and place for scrunity. But it isn’t at the beginning of a creative process.

Tagged as: creativity, JohnOfJordan