I resolved, if the latter, to close the webpage immediately out of sheer heresy.
But luckily strawberries were safe, and indeed not even mentioned in this article, which can be forgiven. Instead Ashton outlines the reasons why creative minds of all threads need to learn to say No to using their time for things other than themselves. Selfish? No.
The fact of the matter is, if you write, if you read, if you edit, if you paint, if you draw, if you teach, if you conduct, if you compose, if you scrawl, if you weave...whatever creative thing you may be doing, you are constantly wishing you had more time. I feel this lack keenly because I suffer from not only one artistic need, but two. Both writing and art pull at my free hours, and I am continually complaining that I do not devote the proper time to either. If I am engaging fully in the one, I am invariably neglecting the other. It is nearly impossible to devote the proper time to both in the same day, even in the same week, simply on account of how much time they each individually take up and how much free time I don't have.
There are bills to pay, work to be done, chores to complete, food to cook, people to see, gifts to make, exercise to work in there somehow, and daylight to maybe see once in a while...Ashton reaffirms, quite pithily I might add, that "yes makes less". There is and always will be something else you could be doing. Every moment spent doing one thing is a moment you will not spend doing something else. It is the physical rule of our universe. Multi-tasking is great, but you still have to choose between one thing and another.
Therefore, when it comes to creative work, creative people sometimes have to be very strict with what kind of work they do for other people.
Management writer Peter Drucker: “productivity in my experience consists of NOT doing anything that helps the work of other people but to spend all one’s time on the work the Good Lord has fitted one to do, and to do well.”
Charles Dickens: “‘It is only half an hour’–’It is only an afternoon’–’It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again…Who ever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it.”And, as Ashton puts it so eloquently:
Time is the raw material of creation. Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to problems and problems with those solutions, the work of trial and error, the work of thinking and perfecting, the work of creating. Creating consumes. It is all day, every day. It knows neither weekends nor vacations. It is not when we feel like it. It is habit, compulsion, obsession, vocation. The common thread that links creators is how they spend their time. No matter what you read, no matter what they claim, nearly all creators spend nearly all their time on the work of creation. There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.How do we learn to say this? Not only do we have to be very strict with those who need or want our time, but we have to be very strict with ourselves. I could spend this evening reading another fifty pages in my historical fiction, or I could spend it working on my book. I could spend an hour or so here and there goofing off on Facebook, or I could spend it researching reference pictures or reading my technique book on painting, or, heck, painting itself. How much time should we spend on any one thing?
As crazy and disorganized as the artistic brain can be, we have to be incredibly close knit with our work and our time. We have to organize and learn how to do the juggling-balancing-hey-macarana of our lives.
And if someone asks you if the hokey-pokey is what it's all about, you know your answer.
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