Creative Impatience and the Power of Intention
It’s funny how life goes. Last week I was feeling impatient.
Impatient that I wasn’t making money from my art. Impatient that I can’t get it all finished in a day. Impatient that I haven’t finished my poetry collection. Impatient that I have two novels started and abandoned. Impatient that I don’t have much bandwidth to create.
I know I need to slow down my thoughts and my expectations but I’m a girl from the instant gratification generation. In the words of Veruca Salt: I want it and I want it now!
I called on the universe to give me patience and she answered my cries. Resources started knocking on my instagram windows, books revealed themselves on my shelves and I finally logged into a session for a creative collective that I hadn’t attended in months.
The power of intention is real. What she seeks she will find.
Today, I’m going to share three resources that came to me when I called.
1. “Kicking the Can Down the Road” - Jason Allen-Paisant
T.S Eliot Prize nominee Jason Allen-Paisant shared his writing practice with the Poetry School. I’m not usually one to interrupt the scroll hole to check out an article but for some reason the post whispered to my tired creative soul: “There’s therapy in this article.”
There’s no healing without first being triggered. And there is was in the first line:
“For me the editing process looks like kicking a can down the road.”
Kicking a can down the road. Kicking a can down the road. Kicking a can down the road like a day so hot there’s nothing better to do, no more energy to expend than kicking a can down the road.
But making art isn’t supposed to be lethargic, right? It’s supposed to be purposeful and costly.
Mary Oliver claimed she made 40-50 revisions of each of her poems, a process that sounds like forming a diamond – heavy, time-intensive, perfect – until all that is left are the necessary, glittering sharpness of her words. It costs lives to mine diamonds.
Kicking the can down the road sounds lazy. Like there’s nothing better to do.
But I guess there isn’t. I write because I have to write. Because if I don’t write I’ll go crazy.
Kicking the can down the road means finding time to write in the boring parts of the day: in the waiting room at the doctors; waiting for the bus; waiting for the pasta to boil.
I can’t even get past the first paragraph without being triggered again:
“I have many documents on my computer.”
Same, brother, same. I have so many starts and not enough finishes. No cohesive completed project, that’s for sure
But Paisant’s creative practice allows space to honour all of his creative ambitions. He slowly kicks the can down the road for each project adding quotes, vignettes, overheard conversations and articles into a master a document.
This master document is his block of marble that he has to chip away at to get to the completed project.
Kicking the can down the road. Chipping away slowly.
Working in this way Paisant released two award-winning books of poetry within two years and completed a manuscript. That looks prolific but it’s owed to a constant, unglamorous process of kicking the can down the road.
Working in this way appeals to my watery creative nature. It’s not time-based. Instead, it allows for the ebb and flow of ideas, inspiration, and the space to write. It honours the fast-flowing river of expression and also, the still pond of rumination.
Having multiple projects on the go allows space for the greedy creator in me that wants to take action on new impulses straight away, whilst at the same time honouring projects that are ticking away in the background.
Finishing projects doesn’t have to be the process of chisel, polish, buff. It can be more like a slow-cooked stew, adding a few more herbs as the pot simmers gently.
Paisant says it best:
“Going back to the document—kicking the can down the road—is giving myself time to understand the form that the work is suggesting to me.”
2. Fear of Success workshop - The Inspired Collective, Amie McNee
Amie McNee’s Inspired Collective only opens to new members twice a year, so when it opened in September I jumped at the chance to join.
Unfortunately, life commitments meant I couldn’t attend the sessions for the first few months. But, in a fit of coincidence I had the time to join a live session after asking the universe for more patience.
The session was called “Fear of Success.”
Amie started the session by quoting Gary Vee: “Insecurity festers when we don’t have patience.” Under that quote I have written “we’re refusing to be ourselves.”
Because there is a tension that grows when we’re impatient that stops us from performing in flow and in our ideal states.
I’ve felt a wonderful sense of flow in my life before now. It feels like jumping across stepping stones in complete darkness. I cannot know for certain the next step will be there but I trust implicitly that the ground will rise to meet my feet.
Inspired Collective journaling prompt: What is your relationship to patience on this journey?
My answer: I have so many project ideas but none of them are getting finished. I feel like they may all coalesce at some point. I want them to happen now. I have just started a new project and getting the website and all the content together takes time I know it does. But I need to make sure I give time to my art as well. Maybe I just work on my collection and then my novel. Maybe I just do it all at once. I don’t need to just be at my desk. I don’t need to confine to writer’s hour. I can write anywhere and everywhere in my phone.
Paisant’s article, paired with this session helped me realise that I could have multiple projects on the go at once and still honour them all.
Coming through University and the corporate world, we’re taught to set SMART goals. But I don’t like being penned in. If I give myself deadlines, or targets I go to shit. In my last big marketing role I started being pressured into hitting specific goals and my performance suffered immensely.
Why should I replicate that in my creative ambitions? The answer: I won’t.
I don’t have any specific, measurable, time-based goals. In fact, I’ve taken ‘goal’ out of my vocabulary. Instead, I have a list of ‘Hard Things’. These are things I’ve been putting off doing but I know I can achieve. I don’t care if they don’t all happen this year, I’m not putting time stamps on them.
And the Hard Things aren’t chores. I’m going to have so much fun doing them. I am taking a step into the darkness and the ground is going to meet my feet.
Pairing Notes:
If you’re not following Amie on Instagram (@inspiredtowrite) you really should. She writes love notes to creatives, giving us permission to be messy and exhausted and I love her for it.
It’s never not the right time to set creative intentions. Download the Creative Intention Setting Workbook.
3. The Flinch - Julien Smith
The Flinch by Julien Smith is about doing Hard Things, feeling that moment of hesitation but doing it anyway. It’s a free resource that encourages us to get on with it.
That doesn’t sound very patient?
It comes back to this idea of insecurity and not being ourselves. When we flinch we are stopping our authentic selves from becoming actualised. We are doing what we think we should be doing. In other words, we are remaining in our zone of comfort.
I propose the comfort zone is where impatience thrives. We want things to be happening but we’re not taking steps into the darkness and trusting the ground to greet our feet. We only need to take small steady steps to feel this magic.
Mastering the Flinch requires patience. It requires slowing down to notice the flinch when it occurs and sitting with that uncomfortable feeling.
Impatience is the death of action. It says “I deserve achievement” without carrying on with the work. I’m not saying your manuscript isn’t amazing and deserves publication. I’m saying just keep going. Create through it and don’t allow impatience a home to fester in.
Impatient Affirmations
Impatience is cured by playful action.
Impatience is cured by one small step.
Impatience is cured by creative community.
Impatience is cured by making bad art.
Impatience is cured by reading your heroes.
Impatience is cured by helping someone.
Impatience is cured by mastering the flinch.
