I think one of the lessons of consistent creativity is that you have to come to terms with uncertainty and incompetence.
For example if I was practicing my football skills I can tell with ease whether I hit the mark or not.
I can see with my own two eyes whether the ball hit the target or not.
I either did or I didn’t.
It’s a black or white outcome.
But with a creative pursuit the ‘mark’ is ethereal, intangible and difficult to describe.
It’s in the realm of feelings and hard to be objective about.
Just because you hit the word count does not mean you hit the mark!
Secondly tracking creative progress can be disheartening because it’s not a steady measurable incline.
It is not every managers dream chart – a nice straight line up and to the right.
In reality the progression looks more like a rollercoaster ride.
It would be fantastic and all too convenient to follow up your best blog post to date with an even better blog post and replicate that to the day you die.
Just because you hit the mystical mark yesterday does not guarantee you’re going to hit it again today.
If you want to be a consistent creative you have to get used to missing the mark.
Each day you stand at the crossroads of ‘It might work, it might not work’.
And sure, if we were to plot a trend line over your rollercoaster ride progression it would show the average increasing but it also means you have to come to terms with being bad in the short term.
With enough creations missing the mark is inevitable.
And I think that sounds all very logical in theory but in practice ‘missing the mark’ feels like being flayed alive. It makes your skin crawl and prompts contemplations of exile.
Because we were never taught to be comfortable with incompetence.
We were taught there was great shame in failure.
So I think consistent creativity offers a brilliant lesson in what it means to be an imperfect human being.
Thomas Duggan 