Hello everyone!
Lately I’ve been having a hard time staying focused on creative goals. It’s been rather difficult to sit down and get started on the task at hand. Whether it’s writing, reading, editing, or an art piece, there is a lot of time I find where I’m just sitting there not really doing anything. A lot of people tend to say that “getting started” is the hard part and I do agree that it’s become rather challenging to do that, but it feels like there’s more to it. I think it takes some more self-reflection to figure out the problem rather than throwing yourself at the task and ending up in a similar position.
Something I’ve come to realize I’ve been doing is creating distractions for myself to work on something else other than the main thing I want to be doing. I know many tend to do this as well with things like cleaning the house, doing chores, and generally other productive things to still feel like they’re doing something good. I thought I was clever by not falling into that trap, but I realized I sort of did but in a different manner. Rather than work on finishing editing my third book, my mind is wandering to brainstorming the stories for books four, five and six of The Legend of Nariko series. It’s also, I realize, what started my new series in progress, Sierra’s Odyssey. Even now I’m also working on an art piece for a story that moved me deeply rather than continuing the cover for my third book. These are all still creative projects that further my own goals, but they’re all tangents to the thing I should actually be doing. While I got myself back on track with editing, it doesn’t help that I feel compelled to finish this art piece before I get back to finishing the revised map for the Nariko series and the book cover. But I think recognizing that is a good first step to stop myself from doing that more.
Another thing I realized was a problem for me is an uncertainty in my own process of doing things. While editing and writing I’ve gotten a process that feels comfortable for me to do, art is a bit more difficult. I’ve been writing now for a good fifteen years so I’ve gotten a clear idea of how I should be approaching it, but with digital art, it’s been a relatively recent thing I’ve gotten back into. It’s a bit of an ongoing problem that with art, “getting started” isn’t quite good enough I realize. I can start and I can sit there with my art file open but it doesn’t help that I overthink what I need to do and lose focus so I just sit there and get endlessly distracted by things like YouTube and whatnot. I think a lot of people struggle with this too and there’s different ways to approach this. I’ve found recently that reviewing the art lessons I’ve taken help me kind of remember how to actually do this. It starts to feel less insurmountable, like I can actually do this.
I’ve started trying to approach things in a way to make it seem easier and more manageable than something like “publish this book in the next month.” It feels incredibly difficult and monumental when I look at it like that because it causes my mind to spiral along all these lines that make me feel unmotivated because there’s so much to do. But I found that keeping that as an overhead thing and telling myself something small and simple makes it easier to start. “Write one paragraph,” “put in the base colours,” or “edit this one chapter” makes it feel way more approachable and easier. Some days are a bit harder and I have to tell myself something a lot simpler like “Write a sentence,” “colour in this one bit,” “just read this chapter and see if it sounds right.”
It’s been a tough couple of weeks but I’m trying to stay on track and keep myself motivated. I still have my goals and dreams that I can work towards even if it feels difficult to do so. I tell myself to try and make things easier and take breaks when I need to. I’d be lying if I said it was easy, but it feels good to make some progress, even if it’s just a tiny bit each day. And for me lately, that’s become enough for now.
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 