Beginnings are a threshold.
Big or small, they are charged, shot through with excitement, fear, potential, and resistance. A new idea scrawled in a notebook. A blinking cursor. A sheet of white paper. A lump of red clay. A bit of charcoal. A freshly gessoed canvas. Walking into your workspace on an ordinary day, beginning to write after a hiatus (hello), beginning to make your art again after a long while, or maybe for the first time …The more significant the beginning, the more we feel excitement and resistance.
We stand in this metaphorical doorway over and over again. Our ability to find our way into our creative work hinges on the ability to move across that threshold into action.
As I’m settling into a new year, a new painting studio, this new project, and soon a new home, I’m thinking a lot about beginning. I’m paying a lot of attention to how I feel when I sit down to write (like there are butterflies in my collarbones!) and what helps me ease into writing (a deep breath, practicing not overthinking, just starting). Similarly, I feel a tiny moment of electricity each time I enter my new studio space. I find myself making small adjustments each day, learning how the space wants to be used, getting to know the light, and hanging up older work to lend some continuity to this new container for my practice. It’s a process of continually exploring how to find my way into my work each year, each week, each day, sometimes many times a day.
Daily routines and rituals are helpful for easing day-to-day beginnings. When I arrive at my studio I usually turn on the white fairy lights and light some incense to make things cozy. I make a coffee and sit with the previous day’s work for a bit before diving in. Those first few minutes with fresh eyes usually reveal an adjustment that needs to be made or the next step or a new idea, so I’ll scribble those things on sticky notes and stick them around on walls and paintings. I might make a few notes in my studio journal. And music is my go-to pavlovian signal to drop down into the rhythm of working. That’s my routine, but it’s different for everyone. An artist friend of mine makes tiny watercolor and ink paintings as a way to enter her practice. Another example is an artist at my old studio building who always had a small TV on in his studio, as background noise. Amazingly (to me at least) it helped him focus.
It could be almost anything. What matters is that it works for you. That it shifts you into forward movement, across the threshold and into action. I find that once in motion, the work finds momentum.
One of my favorite quotes about starting a creative workday comes from writer Stephen King:
“I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places…The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.”
I love that last bit, “...you’re going to be dreaming soon.” His routine emphasizes the value of regularity, of priming ourselves to begin.
The beginnings of new projects and transitions require more. More space, more trust, more kindness and compassion for ourselves and the work as we engage with a new thing. These kinds of starts are always at least a little rough, and I guess that’s mostly what I want to say about this kind of beginning–that it is usually exciting and difficult, more so than the day-to-day. If it feels uncomfortable, it is not because you are doing something wrong. By showing up in these new experiences you are doing something right. It’s simply what crossing creative thresholds feels like. As long as our work remains a living and evolving thing, our ability to keep going depends on our capacity to cross over into new territory, again and again and again.
What about you?–Tell us about your work rituals in the comments below. What helps you drop into your work and start new projects?
Gleanings
Quote from “Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King” by Lisa Rogak
Both of Mason Currey’s books about Daily Rituals are fun. I especially love his second book, Daily Rituals, Women at Work.
“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.”
-Meister Eckhart
Loving Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks, and starting to dip into his newsletter as well. Highly recommend! My writing cadence is beginning to evolve into dailyish.