I just read a terrific article over on CNN entitled the Success of Failure. It is rife with cliches of great failures that led to success in writing, manufacturing, technology and the like. Reading it, I had an epiphany regarding an idea I was trying to articulate yesterday. Being afraid.
Our team in the studio was discussing a new direction in dealing with clients. A less task-oriented and more idea-generating-lead-by-pulling-not-by-pushing methodology. I instantly felt a pang of panic that I couldn't explain. I called it fear of failure, of not being able to deliver. I was only partly right.
Failure is vital to creativity, it is the combustion that moves the vehicle. If this all took place in private, I wouldn't have a bit of trouble. In private work, that no one sees, I actually enjoy the false starts and alarmingly bad drawings. It was fear of failure IN PUBLIC that I was feeling, but not a fear of failing to deliver. It is a fear I carry all of the time because it's a necessary part of being truly creative. Nobody nails it first time out of the gate, and if it appears to be a stellar success after the first try, it could have been even better if the concept, drawing, performance had been iterated and improved. I'm not talking about design-by-committee here or playing it safe by adopting an existing idea (that is it's own set of frustrating challenges), I mean raw, pulling-something-out-of-the-dirt making stuff up. The article at CNN mentions a writer's struggle to revise revise revise and it's THAT struggle that I fear and love. It's why the memory of a project is always vastly better than the reality of actually executing the work.
I have learned over the last decade or so that an illustration always gets rendered (drawn) a minimum of 3 times before it goes to final rendering. Laziness will tell you that it can be nailed first round, hubris says it happens in the second. But the Fear knows that you have to fight and die and be reborn through thumbnails, roughs, revising composition, color palette, more composition, loss of message, addition of narrative, redirection... the list goes on, and it's a frustrating and fear-inspiring list. But it is absolutely necessary. It is how great work is made.
That was the fear I was feeling. The self-inflicted, forced frustration of allowing myself to be eaten so that I can understand how the process works. What is masticated? What engergizes, what is fat? How does digestion occur? Then, from the other side of things, informed and battle-hardened, you're ready to eat the bear.