You hear it all the time: If you’re serious about your art, you plug away at it EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I’m on the fence about whether this advice is useful. I know that if we’re being honest with ourselves, we rarely manage to do something daily. Yet we try and when we don’t succeed, we harangue ourselves for not measuring up.
Still, there’s some benefit from practicing something on a daily basis. I recently completed a 58-day project. The mission was to do one drawing a day in my Moleskine accordion notebook.
I did this because I wanted the comfort and regularity of drawing, and I liked the idea of recording my life visually. It was great fun and I also gained a lot for my creative life overall.
Here’s what a daily practice taught me that you may benefit from as well:
Daily means that again and again you face and conquer the daunting horror of the blank page. You train yourself to keep moving past it to fill the page with your brilliance. Every single first line I put down was accompanied by the gremlin whispering: “This drawing sucks, that’s not right, you stink at drawing…” Because I couldn’t accept two lines as a complete drawing, I kept going despite this critical voice and almost always came out with a drawing that pleased me.
Except for when I wasn’t pleased. Not every drawing is good. That’s okay. When you practice daily, you get used to a range of proficiency. You grow to understand that not everything you produce will be amazing, and that making more (bad) stuff is better than making just a little bit of (good) stuff.
You discover that you can make time for art or writing in your life. Even a few sips can make a difference. Bit by bit, you see that there is room in your days for your creative practices.
You observe your creative patterns developing over time. You come to recognize what you avoid and what you settle for. You train yourself to identify your style.
You develop your skill. I’m terrible at drawing people. Or at least I think I am. I actually can draw people’s bodies, but I’m terrible with faces. But I don’t avoid drawing them; instead, I keep practicing. I’m still not pleased with my results but bit by bit I learn how to draw a nose or a mouth.
You glean the pleasure of creating on a regular basis. This feels way better than avoiding your creative genius. When you recognize the pleasure of creating, it positively impacts the rest of your life.
With my daily drawing, I had a regular connection with my creativity that was process-oriented instead of results-focused. This allowed me to relax and play. Working in a medium that’s not my primary focus gives me a sense of depth and contour that I don’t get from writing.
You develop trust in yourself, that you can keep your commitments and enjoy them. Use this trust to build confidence in yourself for bigger projects.
There’s much more to be gleaned from a daily practice. What benefits do you notice?
Working with my clients, I notice that we can also turn useful structures and systems into fodder for our inner critic. We almost always have to tweak things to suit our unique way of creating. To help set yourself up to succeed, here are some common pitfalls to watch out for:
Daily drudgery A daily practice can easily become daily drudgery. Don’t let your commitment become a burden. Find ways to enjoy it.
Last-minute practice Doing the drawing earlier in the day rather than later helped a lot. A couple of times I found myself going to bed when I realized I had not done the drawing. Doing the drawing at the last minute was not fun.
Catching yourself unprepared Have your tools and resources easily available. I carried my notebook with me, ready to draw whatever was around. This made it more fun and spontaneous.
Boxing yourself in with rules I didn’t develop a lot of rules for myself other than to play and explore. Some of my favorite drawings were ones where I thought, “I don’t know if I can do that, but I’ll try.”
Bottom line:
I’m an advocate of a daily practice as long as you make it work for you. I hate the thought of a daily practice becoming an onerous burden on your days.
If you want to make writing a daily practice, my online writing class The Devoted Writer is the way to go. We meet in February, May and October. Find out more here.
Coaching inquiry: What works for you to maintain a daily practice?
I am currently doing a daily 30 day yoga practice and it has allowed me to be really candid and observe things I had not seen before. It also somehow takes the pressure off from having to do a “good” practice since there is always tomorrow. And by being on the mat every day, I can see progress more clearly. 🙂
Kate,
I love that you’re doing a daily yoga practice, and that it’s helping you to release performance expectations! Yoga has definitely taught me about the natural ebb and flow of life – through the body’s wisdom.
Thanks for sharing, and thanks for all your great design work on my business cards, newsletter and product badges!
When I took the FWF class I enjoyed the challenge of creating something readable from your prompts and found that several of these had possibilities for further development. But there were ‘dead’ days also; days when I forced the mind and fingers to create thoughts and those were rather horrible.
The most important thing (in my opinion) was that I learned that I could write fifteen minutes about almost anything and that occasionally there would be some fairly decent prose. (Again, in my opinion!)
The disciplined daily practice gave me an idea that I belatedly rushed into ten days of frantic typing of over 24,000 words for Nano…. and then faced reality and stopped and enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday and guests. It’s moving forward again.
Summing up my thoughts (and Cynthia, you DO have a way of making one examine their thoughts) I believe one gains from daily practice! When I was terribly disgusted with what I had written, it was so satisfying to write “Yuck” as my one-word summary.
This cracked me up:
The disciplined daily practice gave me an idea that I belatedly rushed into ten days of frantic typing of over 24,000 words for Nano…. and then faced reality and stopped and enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday and guests.
I love the idea of you snapping to your senses and realizing, Hey, I want to enjoy the holidays with my family. For some reason I think that’s awesome.
From what you said, I can see how valuable it is to see that some days the writing is crap and some days gold. It doesn’t matter either way in our self-identity. Being a writer or any other kind of artist means continuing to show up on a regular basis.
Thanks for commenting, Dannie. I’m so glad you’re writing happily!
Dear Cynthia, thanks for all the support you give us! Well, I do my first MWHH now and I love be. writing every day, I do that every time I can; in the bus, in the shop, in my favorit café and at home. I find a lite hard to write in English because my mother language is Spanish and I living in Sweden, but I try in all the languages 🙂 The writing is more alive and take me deeply in the culture roots. Well, I hope you could understand me. I now know I gain from daily practice, so thanks one more time for your work and love!
Maria-Conchita,
Yea! Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I know from studying languages that we have to cross a lot of barriers to express ourselves, so I appreciate your comment.
I am delighted to hear that you are writing regularly and enjoying it. I assume you’re writing in your mother tongue, Spanish, to really get to what you want to say without too many language challenges!
You are very welcome for my work and love; it’s my pleasure!
I’m inconsistent with daily practice, but I’ve found eating lightly or finishing my dinner (I wrote ‘my donna’ accidentally–madonna!) by 7pm helps. This way, I get up early, early enough to make a difference. With the dark outside, I can make a cup of coffee, & write. I did this so far once, Friday, after finishing a big project. I liked what I wrote, but crazily,became wary of getting too into it…
Indira,
Thanks for the reminder about eating lightly at night. I ate a big meal, late last night and didn’t feel great about it! Thanks for sharing and reminding us how our eating habits affect our creativity!
It is so important to do whatever creative thing we do every day because that gives it value. It gives you confidence, improves your skill and gets you thinking creatively as a way of life rather than an occasional thing. Even if you can only do five minutes it’s so important to try to do something creative every day!