A day of sixes, so a six patch block for six months of quilt blocks. Six blocks for my parents' 60th wedding anniversary. My dad has been gone for 22 years now, but it's still my mom's anniversary. And nine six word things I've learned from this project in the past six months:
1. You must show up every day: No matter what else is happening in your life - pestilence, floods, real end of the world stuff - still do your work. This does not, in fact, get in the way; it helps to keep you balanced and anchored.
2. It will be dull, I guarantee: You will make dull and boring things along the way. Each day’s work will not be a glittering example of heavenly inspiration. Some of it will actually be pretty awful. But it doesn’t matter because you showed up. That’s what’s important: It’s process not product.
3. But you still need product, too: You need “product” to stay accountable. Paragraphs/pages written, cold calls made, exercises completed, pictures taken, paint applied to canvas, beads stitched to surface, dance steps choreographed, progress made.
4. Tools are important, perfect tools aren't: You cannot work without them, even if, no especially if, those tools are your body or your mind. Keep the tools ready, cleaned, honed, but don’t keep chasing the perfect tools/materials. Just start working and keep working with what you have. The needs will be met as you go. New tools, materials, resources will appear as you need them.
5. Read, watch, listen, absorb, study, work: Pay attention to everything you can that contributes to your work. Go to quilt shows, museum exhibits; listen to music, audio books, lectures; read magazines, books, websites that will help you know your field, expand you knowledge. And always do your work.
As visual artists we need constant stimulus to keep things fresh. When I think, "I just can’t make one more quilt square – I’ve done everything you can possibly do in a 3” square," it’s time to bring out the quilt books. Just seeing the colors, the movement in the patterns, the shapes and designs will inevitably spark something in my creative process to make the next square.
6. Keep working, one isn’t always enough: The process of one square per day is wonderful and has made a huge difference in my way of working, but now I need to expand it. Just making one quilt block each day is not enough. It’s becoming a bit like, “Did that, done for the day.” For the second half of the year, I need to expand that process. One block per day, then keep going on the next step. Certainly some days I’ll be lucky to get one square done. But the main discipline of working needs to be one square then add the next step.
7. Keep your space ready for tomorrow: As much as you possibly can prepare your work for the next day. Organize the studio so you can start to work immediately rather than waste time looking for your tools. Have your rehearsal clothes clean and ready to wear. Have the rehearsal space reserved, the class booked. Have the typewriter/computer charged and ready, pencils sharpened, paper at hand, back up device available. That list of new customers on your desktop with your phone charged and ready to go. Make it as easy as possible to get started the next day. Don’t place impediments in your own way. If you need to get some new supplies, do it the evening before so you don’t have to stop the day’s momentum to run out and get something. Things to mail/pick up? Do it at the end of the day not in the middle of prime work time. If you’ve read Steven Pressfield’s, The War of Art, you will know all those distractions are just Resistance keeping you from your work.
8. Find those pockets of hidden time: Don’t wait until you have a minimum of four hours of uninterrupted time. You will never get anything done waiting for just the right time. This is true of everything from getting into your studio to starting a family. Find the bits and pieces of hidden time throughout the day. Do research online while you eat your lunch; pick up supplies for the day’s work over your lunch hour; drop off those brochures or manuscripts at the post office on the way to or from the day job. But don’t let anything interfere with your actual work time. If you get up three hours early in the morning to write, don’t use that time to pay bills. If you work second shift, get into the studio as soon as your caffeine source kicks in each morning. Use the freshest energy you have to create your work before you hand your brain over to someone else for eight hours.
9. Be honest with yourself about it: I will not finish this project by the end of the month. It’s a year-long, one-day-at-a-time, 365-days-in-a-row project. You won’t finish a whole novel in 30 days. (At least it’s highly unlikely, and if you can write like that you don’t need my advice.) Be honest in your expectations about your work. We have to show up every single day. Most “overnight successes” will tell you they worked hard for a long time before it all came together. It’s like building anything – you have to do the right steps in the right order, piece by piece, day by day, to get to the finished product, whether that product is a house or a painting, dance, business, symphony, sculpture, quilt…. No one else may do the steps you do in the order you do them, but you can’t skip them or the building will collapse around your ears. Or your novel’s plot just won’t work; or the quilt squares refuse to fit together, or business plan just won’t coalesce. One step at a time, but a minimum of one step a day, preferably more, until you wake up one day and you suddenly have book or an enterprise or a finished quilt.
Six months down, six months to go! Mary
Six months down, six months to go! Mary
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