Everyone has a different technique, a unique set of steps that they follow to get themselves into the right mindset to begin creating.  In art, this can be scribbling a few lines on a piece of blank paper, and in writing it might be establishing a time or a place that you feel drawn to.

We are so easily distracted now, by social media, the internet, and general day to day things that sometimes getting that focus, to let those extraneous things go can be very hard.  Finding that space in our minds that allows us to create new worlds and adventures is even harder when we know where to find mindless entertainment without much effort.  Creating things is easy, but making them tangible both to ourselves and others is hard.

Until only last year, I would physically wait for inspiration to find me before I would attempt to sit down and get anything done on a project.That is not the way if you are serious about about wanting to make something wonderful.  Every serious author or artist will tell you that you need to fail sometimes before you can succeed, and that means sitting down and forcing yourself to create even when you don’t feel like you can.

Nothing in life is easy, and the best things in life require more then just a little effort.  The most wonderful masterpieces sometimes take years to perfect, and those are the things where you literally stand in awe of the finished product, soaking in the intricate details of everything that makes it simply breath taking, not just beautiful.

I feel like the tone of this post is aimed more at art then writing, and that might be because last weekend I spent a few days at the Edmonton Art Walk enjoying the beautiful weather and loving that for a few days, there was a chance to view a good sampling of the multitudes of artists in and around my own city during a single event.  It was glorious, and even though I don’t make art in the typical sense, I found myself spending more time appreciating the art for the level of detail and time you could see was put into each and every piece displayed.

Is that not what writers do as well?  Our work can be just as easily broken down into time spent perfecting what it is that we’ve penciled out, refining the wording, cutting away the extraneous parts that take away from the bigger picture.  Every book or story looks the same at a glance, but it takes someone to spend a little bit of time with a piece of written art to see the true beauty that lies within.

This is why we don’t have writers walks, they would take too long to get through.

And that brings me back to the point, and the place where I started today: Focus.  I’m going to take that little bit of child-like awe I got last weekend while I was letting my eyes and heart delight in the beautiful colors and visages of someones’s hard work drift past, almost in a blur as I catch sight of another wonder just around the bend, and I’m going to remember how long a masterpiece takes to create.  I’m going to poke away at it slowly and surly, and gradually smooth out the rough parts until I know that what I have in front of me, be it on a screen or on paper, has been scoured and picked at so many times that it can’t help to be perfect in its own right.  Because this is what we do.  We create, and nothing that has been created was ever perfect the first time it came off of a drawing board.