WHAT COUNTS?
Thoughts on tracking the creative process
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Do you keep track of the activities you want more of in your life?
According to business experts, “what gets measured gets done.”
If you look up that quote attributed to Peter Drucker, you’ll fall into a rabbit hole of finance and management articles. There are variations on the quote including "what gets measured gets improved," or "what gets measured gets managed."
For me, the benefits of tracking are not about endlessly worrying whether I’m “improving” or striving for something I don’t have yet.
I use tracking to keep me honest.
Tracking provides a clear picture of how often I am showing up for the activities that are important to me. Instead of diving deeply into data analytics, keeping track helps me to reflect on how I’m spending my time.
It is so easy to fool ourselves. If you want to exercise more often, keeping track of how frequently you exercise keeps this priority top of mind. Tracking your efforts shines a light on how frequently you are actually doing the thing you say you want to do! If I call myself an artist, I best be creating some art, no?
In my last post, I declared that I was feeling invited to show up more regularly to my creative practice. I’ve been keeping track of how often I actually do “creative work” for a while now. It’s so easy to believe that I'm spending lots of time creating when in reality, I’m spending lots of time consuming other people’s creations.
How do I keep track? Besides indicating the days I engage in some kind of creative activity on a monthly lunar calendar by April McMurtry (and a blue colored pencil), I also track of the days I meditate (using a yellow colored pencil) and the number of steps I take each day (with a red colored pencil).
Here’s the one drawback of keeping track of my creative practice: I need to decide what "counts" as part of that practice. At a minimum, my definition has to be more expansive than smooshing color around. When I can give myself as much grace as I would extend to others, I can conclude that almost anything that is not consuming other people's outputs is probably creating and expressing my own ideas. And all of that counts!
There are quite a few steps that could be counted as part of the creative process. The only part most people see is the finished product. The process leading up to the product is largely invisible to anyone outside the art space. Let’s take a peek!
The first stage begins with inspiration, and can require some research to help clarify which direction I’ll take. This is mostly an intellectual pursuit, one that I can easily get lost in. Because I’ve engaged in intellectual pursuits most of my adult life, there is little risk in this activity. It’s hard for me to know when enough research is enough, though, and it’s easy to slip into consuming other people’s artwork under the guise of doing research! Should all the time spent in “research” count as part of my creative practice? Unsure.
The risk level amps up for me when it is time to get into motion, moving into the actual creating stage. Clearing a space in the studio, and preparing papers, panels or canvases are of course a necessary part of this stage, but the fun begins when you get to the ‘smooshing color around’ part. ‘Fun’ as in “oh crap, how is this going to turn out…where is this going….” And the voice of the inner critic asking me who exactly do I think I am?? The creative stage can be an emotional roller coaster - from “ugh, this is awful” to “wow, this is awesome” and back to “ugh” again. Scary as this stage is, all of the time spent here clearly “counts” as part of my creative practice.
Time spent taking progress photos and sharing my art on social media counts as part of the creative process but time spent on the socials can easily steal away precious energy, as noted above. It is way too easy to be a passive consumer of other peoples’ work than it is to put down the phone and pick up the paint brush!
Does writing these very words about tracking and reflecting on my creative process “count” as engaging in my creative process? Here’s where it gets a little trickier to parse. I usually consider this “creative-adjacent.” For what that’s worth!
The most amorphous phase of the creative process is integration - when you finish for the day, or finalize an entire series of paintings. I completely stopped painting for months after finishing my series of nine paintings called “Reimagining Mary.” Integrating is time spent allowing the creative process to settle, letting all the disparate parts of the experience meld together into a unified whole. It’s very important to look back and reflect on what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve learned, what you’ll try differently next time, but this stage can look like doing absolutely nothing because much of it happens in the background. And it’s really hard to ‘count’ any of this stage because it can be so difficult to measure, or even to know when you are engaging in it.
To sum up, I encourage you to keep track of the days when you spend time doing what lights you up, so you can notice when you aren’t. You are worth spending time doing the things that matter to you. And in the final analysis, it does not matter what you choose to count so long as you show up for yourself in ways that feed your soul.
Remember that there are no Art Police, so you get to decide what “counts” for you!
I've been playing in my studio lately with paint and pastels and collage, all of which feed my soul! That feels like the right thing to be doing. I've been trying to listen to my intuition more and create from that space. More on that in upcoming posts.
The mountains in these two landscapes just asked to be scratched into wettish gesso with a chunk of black pastel. Using that medium felt craggy and visceral to me. Creating these brought me back to recent visits to the mountains of the Scottish Highlands and the ancient dolmens sprinkled throughout Ireland. Good times!
