A while ago, I sat down to make a list entitled “Things That Are Screaming At Me Because I Haven’t Made More Progress On Them”.

(For “things”, here, read “creative projects”. Because I’m sorry to say, even though I do have a daily creative practice, that doesn’t mean all is rose-scented rainbows at unicorn mucking-out time. Sigh.)

It was a long list.

I made it because I was wound up to ninety, and braindumping the contents of my writhing mind seemed preferable to sitting there like a spare brick. I gave the headweasels free rein; they were not kind.

I think the weasels don’t really believe in progress

In their opinion, there are two acceptable states for a project:

1. conceived, but not started (hence, existing only in its Platonic ideal state);
2. finished, perfectly.

The part there in the middle, where I’m actually doing the work, makes them deeply uncomfortable. It’s like a wobbly rope bridge over the Chasm of Failure.

So every time I have an idea, they say, “Wait … is this really the best approach? Do we have exactly the right materials? Shouldn’t we research a bit more first? Maybe someone else has already done it better. Have you read so much as twelve books on the subject? Listen, let’s just hang back for a while, OK?”

And quite often, I listen to them for ages before shutting my eyes, gritting my teeth, and jumping in.

Then, every time I work on a project I’ve managed to begin, the cacophony strikes up: “Why isn’t this done already? Why haven’t we got further by now? Why aren’t we there yet? And why do we always take so long?”

(Gosh, I wonder.)

These are the whys of fear and frustration, obviously, not the whys of curiosity. No matter how much progress I make, it isn’t enough, because it should have been finished ages ago.

Finished is safe – progress is risky

There’s a third dimension too, I now realise, which is that as I draw near to the completion of a project, the poor old headweasels start to panic, because it’s … just … never going to measure up to that original, perfect inspiration.

“Wait!” they exclaim. “You can’t be planning to leave it like this! It’s not finished! Not properly! Remember what you were going to do? This isn’t half what it could have been – in fact, should have been. Lookit. Tell you what. Why don’t you put it away in a drawer for a year or two, and maybe when you come back to it you’ll have become the person this project deserves, and you’ll be able to do it justice.”

The results of all these emotional gymnastics?

Shame. Aversion. Avoidance. Resistance. Paralysis.

Thanks a million, weasels.

So anyway, I wrote my list

I shared it with some of my onlinies, and along came my good friend Fi Bowman to wave her magic wand. Whoosh!

First, she kindly and firmly reminded me that all creative people have work in progress. Obviously. Not having finished everything yet is proof of nothing whatsoever.

Second, she unhooked my anxiety around the many pieces I’ve abandoned: “They’re now officially Samples. Again, it is important to have lots of Samples as evidence of your creative explorations, even the ones that are not worth taking to a Resolved Conclusion.”

All of which is blindingly obvious, of course, but it took someone else to point that out to me before I saw it.

(How? How could I be so resistant to having samples and experiments, even after all these years? It makes no sense!)

Anyway, in an instant, instead of a list of Unfinished Things bracket Aaaarrrrgggghhh bracket, I now had WIPs and samples. Real Artists, tee em, have such articles coming out their ears, so I can too. Right, weasels?

Headweasels: Mmff.

Progress! I think.