Review, Reflect...Reject?

Over the past few weeks I've written a bit less and read a lot.  I tend to operate in phases with my creative work, listening to music nonstop for a couple weeks and then rededicating myself to playing or singing every day, devouring novels one after another before taking out a writing project again, mulling over photography exhibits and waiting for an idea to surface.


Upon coming back from a week-long vacation, the first thing I wanted to do was get my current manuscript out and read over the last half of it with fresh eyes and a good cup of coffee.  This I did, and I discovered exactly what point of the creative process I had entered.


I found myself experiencing considerable distaste for every paragraph.  Had I really created this haphazard story, these preachy chapters full of flat characters?


I always seem to encounter this hump when working on a big project: the no man's land between finishing the foundation work and beginning to see a well-developed product can be brutal.  After spending too much time on something to reasonably turn back, I realize I've brought something utterly mediocre into the world.

This likely happens to every artist, with perfectionists like me experiencing an intensified version thanks to our desire to make everything top-notch material fit to win an award on the first draft.  I know I've felt it looking at half-completed paintings, first batches of photographs, and most recently this manuscript that's taken up weeks (months) of my life.  Suddenly, I'm struck by the question: was this even worth my time?

I suppose what defines the experience -- and the artist -- is the decision to say yeah, it was, and keep moving.  Take the awful last half of that manuscript and make it something to be proud of.  Figure out how to make my characters dynamic and believable people the reader feels invested in.  Plenty of people stop at this point and let that self-doubt get the best of them, let it convince them that they'll never create something amazing.  But some of us don't, and no matter what I think we've got a great accomplishment to look forward to.  Nothing great comes out of an easy task -- otherwise there'd be no reason to feel we'd done anything.

Quelling my self-criticism and deciding to keep developing a project past the tough halfway-point is, to me, one of the most important pieces of the artistic process.  Overcoming frustration and/or disappointment, refusing to feel embarrassed at the quality of a work in progress, and stubbornly coming out with something I'm excited to put on display gives me perhaps the biggest sense of achievement.  It's what -- in my mind -- sets me apart as a professional artist.