Some will tell you that it’s not pos­si­ble to force cre­ativ­ity, or that the results from “forc­ing” cre­ativ­ity are sub-par to the work that “just hap­pens.”  I’m here to argue the opposite.

For some cre­ative folks, such as myself, sit­ting around wait­ing for inspi­ra­tion to strike, for the mood to be right, and for the stars to align is a recipe for get­ting jack shit done.  We will write off our lack of pro­duc­tiv­ity by say­ing some­thing like “I just don’t have any­thing to say” or “the muse isn’t with me today.”  I’ve used both of these excuses even recently to myself.

Hogwash.  The truth is, noth­ing moti­vates me more than a dead­line that has some teeth to it.  A good exam­ple was the Federations anthol­ogy.  I knew about it for months, and I had pid­dled around with a cou­ple of ideas.  Nothing really set­tled out, though.  The dead­line was lit­er­ally 48 hours away when, the idea of los­ing a good oppor­tu­nity to sell work to a favorite edi­tor hit me.  I didn’t want to miss out on an oppor­tu­nity like this, and that was before I knew which lumi­nar­ies of the field are in the book.   With that dri­ving me, I wrote “The Culture Archivist” and sent it to first read­ers.  Got it back, revised it again, and sent it to JJA.  It went through some edi­to­r­ial revi­sions, and then it was in the book.

The truth I must admit to myself is that I am a cre­atively lazy per­son at times.  I want it to be easy.  And it’s not.  It never gets any eas­ier.  You just get bet­ter at it.  But you still have to over­come the same iner­tia that was there when you first started out.  That takes a com­bi­na­tion of willpower, and if you can man­age it, discipline.

This holds true for every cre­ative endeavor  of mine, whether it be pho­tog­ra­phy, writ­ing, or design.  The hard­est part is just get­ting started.  And you have to force your­self to start.  Because if you don’t even get started, you’re not bloody well likely to fin­ish it, are you?

Force your­self to cre­ate using any means nec­es­sary. Some of these might work:

• Ask your spouse or sig­nif­i­cant other to with­hold sex until you fin­ish.  Double motivator–you’ll want it done and your spouse will be really encouraging!
• Go on a bread and water diet until you reach your ini­tial goal. (Do not do really do this, seri­ously.  Eat healthy.)
• Use an inter­net block­ing pro­gram when you work on the com­puter.  These are usu­ally time based, but I sus­pect that 4 hours or so with­out the inter­net will get some­thing writ­ten and/or made.
• Instead of the stick, try the car­rot.  Promise your­self a $50 shop­ping spree if you fin­ish the work, or a night out for dinner.

External forces have always been the best moti­va­tor for me, but with many projects, there’s no exter­nal force.  As a free­lancer, I don’t have a boss beyond the client, and the client isn’t always moti­vated them­selves to fin­ish the project.  So it’s impor­tant for free­lancers to learn to self-motivate.

A desire to cre­ate some­thing great is often not enough moti­va­tion.  Sometimes, you have to prod your­self into get­ting started.  But once the ball is rolling, it tends to stay in motion for as long as you can afford the time.  For me, the sin­gle best thing about cre­at­ing things is los­ing myself in the process.  Time becomes mean­ing­less and my left-brain takes a nice long nap.  Call it what you will–the zone, in the moment, or some­thing else– it’s one of the great­est rewards of being a cre­ative per­son.  That plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence is almost rea­son enough to make things.  The fin­ished prod­uct is just a bonus sometimes.

What are some meth­ods you use to moti­vate your­self when you have the desire, but not the will?  How do you keep your­self on task?  Share your meth­ods with us.

Tomorrow, I will talk about strate­gies for mak­ing time to make things around a busy life.

Tagged as: creative management, creativity, getting started