I’ve been struggling to return to mindless doodling and writing–that space of pure invention for pure invention’s sake; deep and personal exploration of what I’m thinking and feeling.
I haven’t quite worked out what it is, but I think publishing as a goal has been taking over. Who will buy it? Who will be interested? What market is this for? These questions are creating barriers to my thinking and my making and it’s not unique to me.
Over the years, I’ve known many emerging and unpublished authors describe the same questions and feelings and they all boil down to the same ultimate question, “What’s the point of making art?” And even though I’ve answered this for myself almost 4 years ago, it’s still difficult to prioritise it when the rest of the world is competing for my attention in so many different ways.
I used to think that self-confidence and motivation was a beginners’ problem but, as it turns out, no matter how many books published, or awards won, this question still emerges in any artist’s mind at different stages in their career; well, it’s been my experience, anyway.
And now that I know this is true, I have a couple options. I can persist with trying to answer the unsolvable questions – who will buy it, who will be interested, what market is this for – before I put pen to paper. This probably means that days, weeks, or months go buy without any physical to show for all the thinking and worrying that’s been going on.
The other option is to just put pen to paper and then worry about the rest later. By visualising somethig (nay, anything), it’s at least a way of recording all the failures along the way. Like any good scientist knows, even a negative result still tells us something. It seems there’s only one way after all.