Creative Neuroses Part 2

I have a thing (that I’ve heard a lot of creative people describe) where I feel guilty (sometimes depressed) if I don’t spend free time working on the creative thing.  Of course, with a family and full-time job free time is limited.  So I often end up prioritizing the creative thing and sacrificing time with friends, house work, or any number of other probably-should-be-priorities in order to do the thing. 

In the same breath, it’s really easy and often compelling to not do the creative thing.  In part because I know that rejection, in one form or another, is the ultimate outcome of the creative thing.  That might be literal rejection from an agent or record label.  It might be the soft, quiet rejection of the work being floated out into the overcrowded tubes of the internet and ignored by a public whose attention is already spread so thin.  I’ve often thought there must be something off, psychologically, about creative people to take constant rejection and keep going, because normal people would just stop. 

It’s certainly not about the money.  Most creative people I know are financially upside down when it comes to their creative endeavors.  While I’ve sold some records and what-not, on balance I’m definitely in the red on creative pursuits. 

So why would one keep doing the creative thing that can spoil relationships, hurt you psychologically, and damage you financially?  It’s the creative neuroses.  The compulsion to create.  To express yourself.  The belief that if we just keep going, the audience will find it.  The belief that the person who rejected it was wrong.   

There’s a thing that comedians describe when they’re starting out.  They have to learn to love bombing on stage because, especially early in their career, and they’ll never move beyond that point if they let the bombing crush them.  In the same way, creatives learn to, if not love, then at least palate the taste of rejection.  Find whatever little nugget of a lesson we can cling to and convince ourselves we’re learning from the experience.   Revel in the feeling of doing the work itself, that most grand Puritanical ideal.   

Neil Gaiman has proffered the advice not to work on projects-for-hire that you don’t love.  If the deal goes sour you’ll feel you wasted the work.  If, on the other hand, you only work on things you love, even if nothing comes of it, you’ve got the work. 

I’ll try to convince myself of it.