I’m very fond of metaphors – which is not strange, given my line of work. In their sideways approach to a subject, they can often unlock meanings that aren’t obvious on the face of it.

Metaphorically unlock, that is. (You see what I did there. You love it.)

Here’s a metaphor I find useful when thinking about creative work: the Blaze and the Shimmer.

The Blaze

… is the work.

Imagine that your creativity is a roaring bonfire, sparking and burning in all the shades of red and orange and yellow, deep and bright, leaping in long tongues with flickering hearts of azure and lilac, endlessly fascinating and delightful, providing heat and inspiration and nourishment and joy.

And (this is important) consuming fuel.

Your blaze needs fuel. In order to do your creative work, you must feed your creative fire.

Perhaps you already know what fuelling strategies work best for you – in which case, do them.

If you’re not sure, try one or more of these and see how you go:

Encounter some art – whether in your own disciplines or outside them doesn’t matter. This could be as simple as listening to a favourite song, or as dramatic as travelling to another country to see a big exhibition.
Read for pleasure – give yourself an evening or a day or a weekend to gulp down your favourite kind of book. Guilt-free, any genre, any style. Pick whatever turns the pages almost without your noticing and sends you deep into a state of flow.
Have sex – by which I mean enjoy intense physical pleasure in whatever way makes sense to you. Doesn’t have to be with anyone else, either. So there. Why not try your hand at something new? (Yes, I wrote that out loud.)
Finger-paint – not a euphemism (although? … no). What I mean is make some blobby, scribbly child-art: messy, immediate, imperfect. Actual paint on your fingers is not a firm requirement here; spontaneity is.
Get quiet – by which I kind of mean “meditate”, but that term has baggage. The simplest way to do this is to close your eyes and breathe, slowly, down past your ribs, in through the nose and out through the mouth, paying attention to the sensations. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. You’re done. Go further if you feel like it.
Go outside and find something green or blue – leaves or water. Rock and sky work too. The wilder the better, but even a spindly tree waving gamely at the traffic is worth pausing to look at, to touch.

Make time for these things in your life. This week. Today, if you can.

They will allow you to get down into your specific furrow and engage hands-on with your art, to give of yourself what is required.

Creative work is not easy work, people.

The Shimmer

… is what happens above the blaze.

If your creativity is a bonfire, the shimmer inhabits the air above it, setting it trembling and dancing in oily coils and curtains of haze.

The shimmer changes the view through to the landscape beyond.

Imagine that the shimmer is the effect your creative work has on the world. No other person – not now, not ever – has your particular artistic perspective.

You make art, and that changes the view.

Never doubt that.

Remember

Please do not confuse cause and effect. The blaze produces the shimmer, not the other way around. To put it another way: the shimmer does not fuel the blaze.

It’s easy to get seduced by the shimmer, to start half-believing that focusing on the shimmer helps with the art-making.

It doesn’t.

By all means, do shimmer-related work, when it’s time to do that. Find your audience, make yourself visible, publicise your work as hard as you can personally bear.

But don’t forget, you’ve got to make blaze to produce shimmer.

You’re going to want to produce shimmer, of course. Shimmer is a large part of why we do this.

The essential aim of creative expression, after all, is to communicate meaning, to reveal your unique viewpoint. That’s all shimmer.

Moreover, when people buy your work, the shimmer is what they’re paying for.

And yet you must remember that the blaze is where the work is. More than that, in fact: you cannot really control the shimmer much, if at all.

What you can do is tend the blaze, and do the work.

Go to it.