Fear is, of course, an unavoidable obstacle in any process. As someone who's enduring the college application process, the dreaded Participation in Government paper, and four Advanced Placement courses, I've run into a lot of the stuff in school in general. Naturally, our old friend fear is devoted to hindering the artistic process as well. I would say it's most evident when I'm doing monologues. When you're acting alone, it's easy to get distracted by a variety of things. In my case, since I don't really act or rehearse in close proximity to some form of media, it's usually something in my surroundings. Without someone to keep you going, it's easy to become distracted by a number of things. Fear and self-doubt are always major players here: what if I'm doing things wrong? Am I getting entrenched in something that could be better? Should I change up what I'm doing? It's similar when I paint. A lot of the time, I worry about how the image of the work I have in my head differs from the picture forming on the canvas. It's one of those things that shouldn't bother me, but does. A lot. At any rate, fear is an especially big obstacle in the painting process. It doesn't always figure into my writing, though, as I've got a few strategies to deal with writer's block. And I've started to apply these strategies to my daily routine - and, of course, to my artistic process.
As I mentioned before, I run into fear in my everyday life, thanks to schoolwork in general. Fear can be a motivator, and often is in these cases: fear of failure prompts studying and hard work, and studying and hard work tend to prevent failure. That's part of the reason why I'm getting this blog post done on Monday night when it isn't due for almost a week: between the essays, the tests, and the homework assignments I have later in the week, I don't want to have the post hanging over my head. It's the same thing in art: fear is a sort of omnipresent specter, lurking just on the fringes of view. Fear of not performing to the optimum level, or painting at a poor caliber, or writing The thing is, it can be used to your advantage. The fear of failure can drive you to put more work into your art, whether it's writing, acting, painting, or any other form. If you give into fear, though, fear will work against you. You'll procrastinate, distract yourself, and keep yourself from getting things done satisfactorily. Procrastination is the enemy of success, unfortunately. Naturally, it's much easier to procrastinate and preoccupy oneself with some distracting factor than it is to get decent work done.
Some distractions, however, can prove to be the opposite of distractions. For instance, when I'm writing, I often play some classical music in the background. It can break up monotonous sections without really interfering with the process as a whole. As I mentioned earlier, it's harder to procrastinate when you're acting with another individual, but easier when you're doing monologues or reading lines alone. My own strategy to deal with this problem is a new one for me: I take a two-minute water break and then attack the monologue from a different angle. This helps keep the lines fresher and newer, and alleviates my worries that I'll get stuck in a rut and keep doing something the wrong way. Changing things up a bit works almost universally for me. If I don't think a painting I'm working on is going well, I'll alter my brush strokes and change up how I'm layering things. The results aren't necessarily what I pictured going into the process, but they don't disappoint. Because if they do, I've learned to change things up and make them work. So what if it's nothing like what I pictured? Nobody cares. Getting into the process is the hard part, because of all the self-doubt I feel when I'm painting. Once I'm in, everything starts to flow, and the fear abates. That's a common theme here. Getting into the flow of things is where fear has the most power. Once you begin, though, fear starts to lose its hold.
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