Daydreaming Is Killing My Creativity

[Gwenevere]

I mentioned this as a comment on someone else's blog.  Daydreaming is strangling the life out of my creativity.  I paint, I draw, I write, I cook, and I even used to sculpt.  The stories I write are so different from the daydreams I create.  The former is art (I'd like to think); the latter is soap opera.  It's junk food.  And when all you eat is junk food, all you crave is junk food.  You lose your energy, you become sluggish, you know you need to eat some asparagus, but instead you devour m&ms.  You eat m&ms until you're at the point where you don't even want to eat them anymore, but you keep eating them anyway because you don't want anything else and you don't know how not to eat. 

I don't write anymore.  Maybe once a week I come up with a few sentences.  Once a week I may add something to a canvas I began painting months ago.  If I actually created as much as I daydreamed, can you imagine how much tangible work I would have produced by now?  

Art takes work.  It takes careful thought.  It takes ignoring that dreadful inner-critic that says, "This is horrible and you're no good."  Daydreaming, for me, doesn't take much careful thought.  It's fun thought.  It's all the fun of writing without the anguish, without the struggle.  If the critic says, "This daydream is stupid," then I either just say, "So what?  It's just a daydream," or a tweak it or make a new one, and keep beginning, beginning, beginning, with no finish.  No product.  

I think it's a mistake to equate daydreaming with creativity.  Daydreaming is creativity's cradle, creativity's training wheels.  A creativity that only daydreams is a creativity that is stunted in its growth, and that cries out to be more than it is.  

[Becca]

your soo right! i love to paint and draw and it always took me forever, lately i haven't allowed myself t daydream and I've made  two pictures in three days. i like how you say dd has no product cuz its so true, my stories never had an end which is what made it so hard to stop

[MatthewR]

YES. That's it exactly. I'm not really creating anything. I'm just stuck in a never-ending loop. I may start a real project but I won't stick with it. If i created as much as i daydreamed, I would have such a body of work to show for it. But alas, i don't. Lots of unfinished storylines and ridiculous scenarios that will never happen. Ever.