3 indulge the process
A creative impulse doesn’t come because you called and it answered. It strikes out of nowhere and sometimes so fast, you only realise it came after it’s gone. There is the idea that keeps visiting, until you finally invite it in. There is the one that only reveals itself in the making. And then, there is the moment that simply passes, unclaimed and unresolved. It’s not that the idea isn’t willing to be grasped fully, perhaps it doesn’t even know what it is just yet. Although, this part really is your riddle to solve. Suddenly, you get a hold of something with a surprisingly swift hand. When that happens, it kind of feels like luck and you can’t quite explain it. You’d swear you didn’t do anything, except maybe answer the door when you heard a knock. Maybe that’s it: always answer the door, especially when you have no clue who might be there.
There is a painting Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made back in 1910 titled Artist. It made me cry warm tears when I saw it at the Brücke Museum in Berlin, and it answered a question I didn’t even know I had. The title is misleading though, because nothing about this painting suggests the creative act. Nothing hints at an atelier, nor anything being made. In fact, the artist in question is doing nothing but sitting there, with the tired and pensive melancholy that has everything of the momentary heaviness of being a person. She is not making, she isn’t doing anything, she’s just here, she just is. And she still is an artist.
Her being an artist has nothing to do with the creative act, it’s about the downward pull of gravity holding her to the couch, and her face to her palm. It has everything to do with being anticlimactically human. This is where the process starts and this is the middle of it, no end. Process never truly stops, and in its midst, you get to idle. Sitting around and snacking or staring out the window is not procrastination. It is tuning to the transmission. You need space for a portal to open, a bit like a plane needs that big wide space to land, right? It is loving to the process to be a bit useless. And it even rhymes. Some days, all there is to do is breathe in, breathe out, open the window and air out the room. Process is the beating heart of creation, and it’s all the time, mostly outside the studio and inside the world, which is our shared studio, the Great Studio.
If process is all the time, if creation is just living, must it belong to a single form? Is commitment deeper when building intimacy with a single craft, to the point that it becomes second nature or sticks like a sort of second skin? There is beauty in such engagement, almost like choosing someone to age with, a companion for the pilgrimage. Still my answer is no—not for me. You get to seek and find countless ways to say something. Pursue your love of everything—and by everything, I mean exactly that. Devotion can be as large as your hands when they’re eager to touch it all, when they’re wide open with everything to give. The many modes of expression you feel drawn to, however different from one another, they come from the exact same source, they fill the same container, support the same vision, the same craft, the only one worth mastering and also failing at, and that is living. Let me remind you that you’re doing that already. You’re doing it right now. And now.
There will be the pull to give in to dissatisfaction. You might be tricked into believing that things aren’t moving fast enough, that everyone is right on time, except for you. This kind of discontent is a true paradox: it paralyses and propels, destroying the things you haven’t even made yet while pretending to help you make them. This is an alluring but dangerous deception to fall for. You can never be late or in the wrong place, unless you decide so. Resist the urge. Go slow. Slower than that. Aim for a little bit at a time. Take breaks often. Welcome the ease of a hook written in minutes, let yourself be stuck on the same page for several days. You have no idea how many times I had to rewrite this paragraph. It’s easy until it’s not and before you even let that sigh of frustration out, it’s easy again. The ideal timing is not yours to choose. Accept the moment as it comes, for you are always in it.
Not everything arrives summoned. Some things rather take their time, slipping in through the side door unnoticed. Creation is unhurried, indifferent to impatience, it moves with a step that cannot be rushed. There is no clock ticking against you. The pace of creation is neither linear nor fair; it does not answer to urgency. Some days, ideas rush in like a flood; others, they barely trickle through. But slowness is not stagnation—it is the unseen taking shape while you’re not looking, dressing backstage for the curtain reveal.
PRACTICE: CARVE AN OPENING
If the final verse simply won’t come, shift your focus to what flows effortlessly, something your hands already know how to do. Press play and move, bake, sweep. Do something else, anything else. It’s not escape—it’s surrender. A way of staying in motion inside a room that breathes, instead of gasping for stale air. Doing this, you are not abandoning the work; you are reminding yourself that certainty is a choice you can make anytime. Confidence is not chased—it is lived in, like a favorite outfit worn to go nowhere in particular.
Open a window, let the air shift. Step outside. Walk until the edges of your mind soften, until your thoughts stretch out and dissolve into the vastness that holds you. Get out of the house, walk to the middle of a field, tread in open waters, let the world show you once more how to move without force. There is no need to wrestle what hasn’t yet arrived. The energy you seek will find you—it knows where you are: here. An inseparable part of the current that carries everything forward.