How to bring love to the creative process

Tips for keeping your professional relationship fresh
 
You could compare the creative process to marriage: The longer you keep at it, the harder it can be to keep it fresh, new, and romantic. Day after day, year after year, you might feel like you’re simply going through the motions, and that that initial spark and thrill of excitement you’d originally felt are now dimmed and dulled.
 
How, then, do you succeed? Are there creative-process equivalents of candle-light dinners and spontaneous getaways?
 
Of course there are. Which is why we’d timed this post to coincide with Valentine’s Day.
 
Counseling
 
First, let’s examine the problem. It’s the weariness that accompanies a steady load of creative challenges. If you feel like “This isn’t fun anymore,” then you’re experiencing what we could call overload burnout. You can’t find the joy in the creative process anymore.
 
(This is not to be confused with so-called “writer’s block,” in which you feel you can’t come up with creative ideas in the first place. We’d tackled that condition in an earlier post.)
 
The problem isn’t just one of attitude. It’s one of results. No matter how experienced you are, no matter how good your inherent creative chops, your output will suffer if you’re not having fun.
 
It will show in your work.
 
And that’s not good.
 
Turn the beat around
 
There are actually lots of ways to surmount this seemingly Sisyphean challenge. Our favorite might best be described as “romancing the details.”
 
We were working on a video project recently, and the amount of footage that needed to be cut down was simply overwhelming. What should’ve been a fun project felt daunting, intimidating, and draining.
 
Here’s the attitude adjustment we employed: We threw all of our creative energies into the very next cut that was to occur between two subsequent shots. This is easier said than done. It requires self-discipline to effectively/temporarily ignore the rest of the entire project. But it gets to the heart of the problem: The project had lost its allure simply due to its size. But it truly was a fun project, and each individual edit held the potential for a creative challenge and commensurately creative solution. So focusing solely on the next one at hand made a previously-numbing experience not only bearable, but fun.
 
The best part? This creates a virtuous cycle, quickly. Putting the time, effort, and love into that one edit created—surprise!—a beautifully executed, absolutely fun-to-watch cut. We watched it over and over. It was immensely satisfying. And seeing that beautiful edit amped us up to do it again.
 
And so the next cut was a work of art. And love.
 
So the project got done. Each cut was a delight. The trick was recognizing the initial hurdle, and devising a creative way of surmounting it.
 
Other tricks
 
Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that, as a creative professional, you have a rare and enviable job. You get paid to create stuff. Many people dream about it, but few are able to actually pull it off. So it’s safe to assume that you’ve been attracted to the creative process all along; it’s just the onslaught of assignments that’s beaten you down.
 
So you can rediscover the joy with some surprisingly simple tricks. Here’s one: Change the venue. You’ve got a laptop. Take it somewhere. When’s the last time you sat on a peaceful park bench, with the crisp air to breathe and the birds to serenade you?
 
Here’s another: Use play-snacks. Indulge in a little something you can keep beside you and sip or munch or fondle while you work. It could be coffee, tea, candies, jerky… anything like that. Let it contribute to the creative ritual you carve out for yourself.
 
Here’s one last one: Solicit unconventional assistance. Ask little kids for their opinion or ideas; their utter lack of bias and parochial constraints will spin your head around. Bounce ideas off an un-creative friend or spouse. You might not get awesome ideas, but sometimes, simply speaking your thoughts aloud, and having a receptive audience for them, can help you to gain newfound perspective on a problem you might be too close to.
 
A parting shot
 
It is possible, of course, that none of the above tricks will work. You might be so burned out that you need time off. If you’re past due for a vacation, get your work/life balance back in order and take one.
 
Just be sure to pick a romantic destination. 

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