A Peek into the Creative Frustration

Artists beware!

Sometimes when a seed gets planted for a project, and you start to water it, it begins to grow. Now growth is nothing bad in itself, in fact, it is quite necessary for a project to come to maturity or completion. But sometimes the seed you planted is not the seed you imagined and the growth you experience becomes more than you anticipated. And pretty soon you're up the proverbial creek without a paddle because the seed has grown into a massive tree and you're just a rice farmer. (I always wondered where the canoe was in that adage, or if you're just floating in the water...)

What I refer to is the ever-present notion of creative frustration — frustration not from the lack of a project or idea, but from the enormous scale a project develops.

Such is the case with my June vacation video. Four weeks ago I started editing nine hours of video into segments, and segments into sound bites, and sound bites into gamma rays and... well, I'd better stop there. The bottom line is that I've spent the past week or so up late at night swimming in a bottomless pit of video cutting, computer rendering, music creation, and sound editing. I like what I'm currently working on but... it's quickly becoming a dragon I'm forced to slay and not the cute little lizard I started with. Minus the princess in distress. Or the fire. Or the castle. Or... I'd better stop there.

There are so many varieties of creative frustration in this world. I know artists who are struggling to focus a simple idea into a simple project, others who have reached the halfway mark of a grand adventure and found a desert, still others have completed their project but don't know what to do with it. And me? I think I live in a constant state of all of the above. In one way or another.

If you're an artist, even if you don't consider yourself to be one, don't give up. Sometimes projects get too big, sometimes the well dries up, and sometimes the painting sits on the office bookshelf. Put things aside for a while if you need to or start looking at that dragon as just an overgrown lizard that needs a warm meal and some tender, loving care. I've reduced my massive project to bite-sized pieces. I think I'm nearing the completion of my current effort.

It's a good feeling. And one I'll cling to next time my mustard seed decides to grow into an oak tree.

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