Working Desire: 5 Tips for Maximizing Pleasure in Your Creativity

I love my job.
Every day and all day, I get to write and do other creative work.
I love writing and being creative so much I use working as a reward for getting other mundane tasks done.
But what happens when you love your artistic craft, but have a hard time actually doing the work?

The Key to Cultivating Desire

I haven’t always written full-time. So I know from experience that many obstacles, both internal and external, can stand in the way of our efforts to write or create art: limited time, limited energy, artistic insecurities, lack of motivation and the list goes on.

The key to tempering or overcoming these obstacles is to focus on the pleasure and rewards derived from your creative work, which in turn creates an on-going desire to work on a consistent basis.

Given our busy schedules and the less-than-creative nature of typical, everyday life, it’s easy to lose touch with the inherent pleasure of creativity and our desire to engage it on a regular basis.
So, how do we cultivate this desire to work creatively? How do we maximize the pleasure that is inherent to creativity?

Tips for Maximizing Pleasure

Here are some strategies I use for cultivating the desire to work and maximizing my pleasure in doing it:

1. Focus on what you love. It’s easy to focus on what you feel you “should” do creatively, instead of focusing on making possible what you love and what stokes your passion. For instance, you might feel you “should” be focusing on publishing your poetry, when what really excites you is spoken word performance. Or maybe you write poetry, but what you really enjoy is writing prose. What if you write, but actually love some entirely different creative work, such as painting or music? Take a deep look at where your creative pleasure truly lies, let your core creative desires guide you, and focus your artistic efforts in those directions.
2. Identify and address obstacles. In my experience, dealing with internal or external obstacles comprises the main challenge for doing creative work. For instance, most artists struggle with finding enough time and energy to work on our artistic craft.  And identifying and addressing emotional obstacles to being creative is fundamental to finding the courage and self-confidence required to create brilliant art. So, look closely at what’s keeping you from doing what you love to do creatively and determine the best methods for overcoming or tempering those obstacles.
3. Take creative risks. Finding ways to focus on our core creative desires and overcoming internal and external obstacles usually require that we take risks not simply in our creative endeavors but also within our daily lives. For instance, cutting back your hours at a day job in order to pursue your creative work can be such a frightening idea that many artists don’t even consider it as a possibility. Or making the effort to shift your family and household management in order to create more time for your creative work can seem so daunting as to be impossible.  Or putting down the writing pen and taking up a paintbrush can be truly scary. Regardless of your external or internal challenges, creativity requires risk in one’s work and in one’s life. However, if you’re not taking risks, then you won’t be able to gain the immense rewards and pleasure that come with creative success. So, open your mind to what’s creatively possible by determining the risks, large or small, that you can take in your creative work and career.
4. Be diligent. Some artists swear that rigorous discipline is necessary to working. And if you’re able to produce creatively by being disciplined, then that’s fantastic. However, if the notion of discipline, or regimented routine, seems too stifling or inorganic to your creativity, then try reframing your work as a matter of diligence, or as simply making an honest and simple effort to do your creative work on a regular basis. By shifting your point of view from discipline to simply making a consistent effort, you might be surprised by how much more easily you can produce creative work and thereby enhance your pleasure in the process.
5. Let it be good enough. Finding satisfaction and pleasure in your creative work requires that you let your best efforts be “good enough” until you’re able to stretch creatively and make more brilliant art. In other words, it’s important to practice and work towards strengthening one’s creative skills, but it’s equally important to sit back and bask in a job well done.  If you’re constantly dissatisfied by your creative work, then there’s a serious problem.  It’s pleasure in creative success that will take you back to your artistic craft over and over again, not dissatisfaction or the perfectionism that tends to underlie it. So, let your creative work be good enough and take in the pleasure that comes with making a solid creative effort.

Have Some Creative Fun

Creative work is fun and easy if you nurture the inherent pleasure of creativity.

And that type of pleasure is addictive. The more you feel pleasure in your creative work, then the more you’ll actually want to work. And in this case, you’re much more likely to practice on a regular basis, to stretch your creative wings, strengthen your creative skills, and grow as an artist. Once you’re actually enjoying your creative work, then it’ll become playful and fun, and it won’t seem like “work” at all.
So, focus on and maximize pleasure in your art and see if you begin to feel an intrinsic desire to work. But most of all, simply let yourself have some fun.