Managing your creativity is a lot like managing a healthy marriage. They both start off with a honeymoon period where everything is fun, fresh, and exciting, but then the prospect of living happily ever after gets challenged when reality starts to set in. You knew it couldn’t always be rainbows and unicorns forever. When the dust has settled and the initial excitement is gone, you are then left with confronting some challenging aspects of your project. And in turn, if you have any sense, confronting your own demons in the process as well.

Today, we’re going to take a look at how you can manage your creativity in the same way so that you don’t end up with the proverbial divorce, or at the very least, unhappy marriage that you feel stuck in. Once you understand how the phases of a project mirror the phases of a marriage, and how cyclical they actually often turn out to be, the better equipped you’ll be with committing to your creativity with all earnestness instead of committing to it out of necessity, or worse, outright abandoning it.

There are three phases in a creative project that mirror a marriage and they are:

1. The Honeymoon
2. Slap From Reality
3. Renewing Your Vows

The Honeymoon

The Honeymoon is every creator’s favourite part and wish could last forever. And how could you not? Little to no effort is required. All you gotta do is sit back and relax enjoying the company of your favourite person in the world. Likewise, with a creative project, getting to work on it at the beginning can feel so effortless because you’re overwhelmed by your excitement for the novelty of a fresh new idea, so you hit the ground running and work at it to your heart’s content, and sometimes even to the point of burn out.

But what if I told you that despite of how great this phase is in a project, it’s actually not the best part of it? It’s definitely there to entice you and motivate you to accept all cognitive demand it may require. Whether you’re writing a novel, composing a song, or painting a picture, you know that it takes a lot of patience and focus to create. It just doesn’t feel that way because the initial euphoria of stumbling upon a fresh new idea makes the difficulty of its conception feel easy breezy.

Much like in a new relationship or a marriage, you look past the red flags and do your best to keep the peace because you just want to bask in all the positives of your partner. Likewise with your project, you want to build it up in your mind as this next best thing that your genius has conjured up, so you’re bound to look past its flaws and maybe even your own flaws as a creator.

Until, of course, you get a…

Slap From Reality

After several weeks into a project, you start to see where it may not be the greatest thing after all. Maybe you have a plot-hole you’ve yet to figure how to cover up. Maybe an entire section of your song bogs down the pacing. Or maybe you have some bland colours that aren’t really making your image pop the way it should be popping. Whatever the case may be, creators are always confronted with the things their ego begin to remind them of: you and everything you make will always have fundamental flaws in them.

And so the resistance becomes stronger. Your initial passion for the project begins to wane and you wake up less and less excited each morning to tackle it. Instead of wanting to do it first thing in the morning, you shy away from it, anxious and exhausted merely from avoiding it. You might even start to feel guilty for doing so and the sunk cost fallacy makes you believe that you might as well continue ignoring your problems because if you’ve already gone this long on procrastinating, what are the chances of actually recovering if you gave it a shot now?

Well, you never know until you try is what I always say. In my opinion, this slap from reality is actually the best part of the creative process. Many people fear it for being difficult, but growth is found in overcoming difficult obstacles. And in order for you and your project/marriage to grow, you’ve got to be willing to fight for what you once had and breathe new life into it. You made a commitment and you’ve got to be willing to see it to the end, and with all earnestness, not obligation.

Renewing Your Vows

Marriages and creators who have stood the test of time have done so because of their commitment to renewal. Of course anything can get boring and difficult when you have too much of it. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, after all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have that good thing forever and always and still be able to appreciate it further down the line. It takes a renewal of perspective and the courage to grow in order to maintain it.

So with whatever project you’re working on right now, if it has you down in the dumps, try and revive your love for it by reminding you of what got you interested in the first place. If it no longer resonates with you, try and think hard about what new meaning you can add to it in your life and how this renewed version of it can push you forward. Or if you haven’t even started on a project in fear of reality slapping you in the face, you now at least know to expect that phase to disrupt your initial joy with it.

But don’t fret because like a good marriage, projects will have their ups and downs. Your true character and your commitment to your craft will often be tested to see how badly you want to express whatever your current project is meant to express. Whether it’s what you truly feel or you’re discovering what you truly feel through it, you will never know unless you see it through to the end.

And if you can do that, maybe you will get to experience a happily ever after.