Why it’s so hard to finish our creative projects

Have you ever wondered why it’s so difficult to finish your creative projects? Why do you have so many great ideas but getting them across the finish line feels beyond your abilities?

Based on seeing hundreds of people through their projects, and my own creative stumbles, I have an idea of why it’s so hard to stay focused to the finish line.

I have a model that I put in my ebook, Cross the Finish Line that can be a way of understanding why we so often stumble before completing projects that matter. We’ll delve into it here. Hopefully, this will help you banish the idea that you are a creative loser.

If you’d like to work with me and others who are headed toward the finish line, join my writers’ coaching group, Write ON. We meet live each week to make real and satisfying progress on our writing projects. Get the details here. 

Also mentioned in this episode, my Paris historical novel Chasing Sylvia Beach.

Here’s a visual of the model:

 

I’d be so grateful for your help with a review of the podcast Stumbling Toward Genius on iTunes.

Transcript (lightly edited, excuse any wonkiness!)

Welcome to Stumbling Toward Genius. I’m your host, Cynthia Morris. In today’s solo episode, I’m going to share my model for why I think it’s so difficult for us to finish things. If you have struggled with not completing projects that matter to you or even have assumed the identity of somebody who doesn’t finish or a non-finisher, this is the episode for you.

[00:00:35] Have you ever wondered why it’s so difficult to finish your creative projects? Why do you have so many great ideas, but then getting them across the finish line just feels like it’s beyond your abilities. I have a model that I put in my ebook Cross the Finish Line that can be a way of understanding why it’s so difficult and hopefully that understanding will help you feel a little less like a creative loser and B give you insights into making change for the next time.

Before I get into the model of creative blocks, I want to say that I go through these phases in this process with every single thing I make. I haven’t figured it out. I haven’t figured a bypass. I think we all go through this. When I coach my clients. I see them go through this too. So when I see these patterns, it’s the first big step to disrupting them.

Okay, let’s get to the model. First, I want you to imagine a funnel at the top of the funnel. It’s a wide-open field. It’s a big space, and this is where all of our ideas live. This is where anything is possible. It’s so fun and exciting up there. And we love to hang out in this wide-open field of possibilities. We love this part of the creative process because here we are omnipotent, we have all the power in the world because anything is possible.

We can do all of it, we can do everything. And this is where all of our ideas are brilliant. We’re so smart up here. And every idea has this shine and this sparkle. And it’s just like I’m in love with this idea. So this dreaming space has incredible value to us because we love the sense of possibility. We really get a lot of joy and thrill from it.

[00:02:56] We often make the mistake of thinking that is the most we can get out of the creative process. That is the best part, this sense of potential and possibility. So as we move down the funnel, we come to a place where we see, oh, I have to choose an idea to focus on. We want to actually take our ideas out of our heads and put them into form.

[00:03:23] So here it’s still fun because we’re getting into it. We’re having a good time in our creative zone. And if you again imagine a funnel you’re still like in this kind of the cup of the funnel, and there’s still a lot of room and a lot of space. You’re trying things, you’re working it out. You’re coming up with new ways to work with your idea.

Maybe, getting more ideas. We just love this ideation zone, but as we continue on down the funnel, things get more and more difficult as the funnel narrows, we have to shut down our sense of possibility in order to [00:04:00] focus on what is actually in front of us. We start to make decisions here is where the emotional undercurrents that underlie all of our creative processes.

You may start to bump up against existential questions. Like, can I do it? Am I any good? Who will care about this anyway? These are the fears and insecurities that all of us have. This is where it starts to feel so painful because we feel our sense of limitations. And it’s where it’s almost like the sense of possibility flips from everything is possible.

[00:04:41] And it’s all good and shiny and fun. Then it tips to the dark side of possibility. Where, what if it’s really bad? What if people don’t like it? What if I’m just actually terrible? So I think everything has its shadow side and this is where we start confronting the shadow side of possibility. This is when it starts to feel painful and our insecurities sort of take over.

[00:05:09] And this is where we may pop back up to the top where we can frolic in the light and the field of possibility where things feel good. And we love that sense of. But let’s say you stay with it and you keep going further into the project and further down the tunnel. As you’re getting into the narrower part of the cup, you start to come up against even more limitations and constraints.

[00:05:36] Do you have the time to devote to this? Often something strange happens when we commit and we get really into it. Our external world throws us a big challenge. You may have committed to writing a novel and then your computer completely breaks down. You may commit to working with larger pieces and then you have a fire in your studio you’re suddenly becoming a mobile artist, things that you can’t control that make it really easy to give up on what you’re doing.

[00:06:12] Anybody would say, of course, you can’t do that. I call this the test and it happens so frequently and it’s so freaky that I have to think that it’s there to get us to really be clear about how committed are we, what are we willing to do in order to make our thing real and not just an idea? Um, it’s not fun.

[00:06:38] It’s not what we want. It’s not what we’ve ordered up from the universe, but it happens a lot. So if that happens to you, please don’t give up, just use the test as an opportunity to commit evermore de. So another thing that happens when we get further down the funnel is we rub up against our] actual ability to execute on our ideas.

[00:07:04] And this is painful. This is where we have this great idea and we think we can do it. We can write that novel, that’s set in another era. We can write it as a time-travel book. We can write about a real person. Um, this is what I did. I didn’t actually have the ability to do that. My ideas did not meet my skills.

[00:07:29] It took me 12 years and 17 drafts to develop those skills, to meet those ideas. I don’t really even know if I succeeded. I did finish the book. So I feel I’ve succeeded. My novel Chasing Sylvia Beach is no longer an idea. It is a thing out in the world that you can read. But right away, I certainly did not have those skills.

[00:07:53] So 17 drafts may sound painful and definitely at times it was, but the cool thing was that with each subsequent draft, I got so much better as a writer and I could see the changes. I could see the improvement and that is something that I really clung to. And I still cling to whenever I’m iterating on my projects and my ideas that each version is better than the previous version.

[00:08:21] So that really helps me. And maybe that helps you too. This is where in the funnel, as you bump up against your skill limitations, you might look for, what do you love about your medium? What do you love about learning? Finding your humility? It’s great to not know what I’m doing.

[00:08:41] It’s great to get help and learn how to do it better versus thinking that you should just give up or you’re not good enough. You’re getting good enough by doing it. You don’t get good enough by thinking about it or sitting on the sideline. So. Often at this phase when we’re deep in it, another project comes along, maybe it’s an assignment or another idea that pops up that makes you think I should do that thing.

[00:09:10] This happens so much. I’ve done it myself. I see people do it all the time. And my challenge as a coach is to catch somebody before they just bop off to another project. That’s in the easier phase and ask them. You know, some deep questions about committing to the original project and what is their original commitment and what’s important about staying with it.

[00:09:35] so sometimes we will be lured away from the challenges of the current project and we will pop back up to the beginning honeymoon phase of a project because that space just feels good. Okay, but let’s imagine we do stick with it. We really stay with it, despite all of our fears and actual limitations.

[00:09:56] And we get to the last part of the funnel, that narrow tube. I think of this as a kind of creative birth canal. This is the last 10 or 15 or 20% of a project and it is excruciating going down through that tunnel toward the finish line. At least it’s excruciating for me because here you’re in this tube, and you can really only focus on your project.

[00:10:23] You can really only focus on the minute details of the project. You can’t look around and do other things you can’t multitask. All of your energy has to be focused on getting this thing across the finish line and out the tube. And that’s where for me, I get so tired of the project.

[00:10:43] You’re tired of the details. You’re not in love with the idea. You’re in a deep relationship with the reality of the project and the scope of the project and what it demands of you. And often this is the place where we’re bringing something out into the world or publishing a book where need to do all that marketing and pitching and all of the things that we don’t really like doing here, we have to develop a whole new set of skills, including asking for help. And when I think about those last percentages, the last 2%, like the night before launch the night before hitting publish the night before bringing it out there. The demons love to gather around. They’re waiting at the bottom of the tube to catch you and slay you. That’s when you really want to rally your allies and the people around you who believe in you. You definitely don’t do any project alone. You’ll see this in the acknowledgment pages of a book.

[00:11:48] It’s no joke. The acknowledgment pages of a book are incredibly true that you really need a group of people to help you get stuff across the finish line. So what makes it really hard at this last phase is this is where you’re in the final decision-making zone. It’s so hard to complete things because there are a million little, and big decisions you have to make at the end.

[00:12:16] And most of us aren’t really great at making decisions. We have a tough time committing. We second guess ourselves, we fret over quality and we tend to overwork things. We’re seeking to achieve some standard of good that we haven’t even defined. We’re just trying to make it better and better.

[00:12:37] So here in this creativity, birth canal, we face our limits. It gets so challenging in this final phase that we will sometimes opt out and pop back to the realm of possibility where creativity is really just about play and fun. And I understand how we don’t want to face our insecurities and lack of skills. If this is you, you will see that you have a lot of projects in various phases of completion.

[00:13:00] You probably have an identity of being a non-finisher or someone who doesn’t finish things. This may seem benign and depending on your reasons for creating, it may not be a big deal that you never finished. But I have to say that it’s worth getting at least some of our projects across the finish line, even if we don’t publish or share them publicly.And here’s why.

You may have heard me say that what we make makes us, we grow into who we want to be and who we really are when we’re able to honor our original impulse and make the things that we are called to me. Even though we face our demons and challenges while making things, we also gain a lot. We feel good honoring our commitment to our creativity.

[00:13:48] We improve on our skills. We connect with others who are making things, and we can feel an almost ineffable sense of wholeness and satisfaction. Well, before the project is even finished. And when we finish, we get even more for each project that moves across the finish line. We earn a gift. It might be more confidence or a sense of your tenacity or insight about what’s really important for you.

[00:14:20] I believe wholeheartedly that we are rewarded through the process of finishing things and not by accolades or validation from others, but by our own sense of fulfillment. I’m on a mission to help banish the identity of being a non-finisher. If you relate to what I’ve said here, do yourself a favor. Please get more comfortable with the discomforts that are inherent in the creative process.

[00:14:47] You’re not facing these challenges because you’re inept or incapable, but because they are part of the job. Get better at recognizing your demons at getting help and sticking with projects that matter to you deeply. I hope this has helped you if so, make some notes about it.

[00:15:05] If you know somebody who thinks of themselves as a non-finisher, please pass this episode onto them. Again, you can find the visual for this funnel model at this episode’s webpage at. Impulse.com and there you’ll also find a link to my ebook Cross the Finish Line, where you can get more guidance and support for bringing your projects across the finish line.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this, and whether you’ve seen yourself in the cycle, please leave a comment below and share your experience and thoughts.