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Updated November 3, 2022Youβre reading an excerpt of Creative Doing, by Herbert Lui. 75 practical techniques to unlock creative potential in your work, hobby, or next career. Purchase now for instant, lifetime access to the book.
One of Shantell Martinβs most popular projects involves two objects: a black medium-width Staedtler Lumocolor marker and a white wall. Using the permanent marker, sheβll cover an entire wall in elaborate line work. She also draws murals on walls and surfaces at live shows, incorporating an element of performance art to her process.
Martin has said, βIt takes a ton of work and practice to get to the point when a line is a true reflection of yourself.β
It can feel incredibly inspiringβand overwhelmingβto consider a final body of work. Instead, as youβre starting out, turn your focus away from the final vision of the project and toward the simplest element of it.
In Martinβs form of visual art, each piece of her work is made up of lines. In all forms of writing, each article, book, or poem, is made up of words. In the recording arts, each bar and song is made up of notes.
As you start to discover these common elements, youβll realize final pieces of work are just polished combinations of them.
The simplest elements may take a day to learn but a lifetime to master.
β¬ Or flip this prompt: Work with What You Have
After years of learning and applying rules, you might live within these constraints even when they donβt actually apply to you. Youβll feel like youβre bumping into invisible walls. For me, a huge invisible wall was the traditional publishing system; I felt like I needed to have a book agent, write a book proposal, and build an audience, all before I could actually start to write a book. For years, I tortured myself with that idea that I needed the systemβs buy-in before I could write a book. This fixation on being accepted by the traditional institutions distracted me from the clear vision of what was in front of me and the valuable experiences and ideas I already had.
The reality is, as I found out years later, I couldβve written a book at any time. A book can be as simple as 20,000 words strung together. If I stitched together 20 articles at 1,000 words each, which I was writing every week, I couldβve put a book together. (In the traditional book publishing world, some books are even just 11,500 words.) This is true for you as well. As soon as youβve figured out the simplest elements of your craft, you can start creating. Elsewhere in this book, youβll do exercises that involve finding new materials to work withβnew lines, words, and sounds, for exampleβand more deliberately setting a mission and theme, which can be based on one specific element of your work.
Even before we start our creative work, itβs easy to find reasons to stop. We donβt have the equipment that the professionals use, we have no one following our work, and weβre unsure if what weβre trying to do is even βreallyβ what we want to do. If youβve let your craft get more complicated in your headβthrough the mystique and magic of creativityβitβs time to let them go. Donβt impose fictitious rules on yourself.