Stupid Distractions!

I have a project that I have been wanting to start, but I never seem to find it in me to actually start it. Other projects have been started, and finished, but this one just seems to pop into my mind and stay there. I have resisted using ideas from it in other projects, because I was "saving them" for this big, grand project.

Well, I was in my studio this evening, working on some caligraphy and listening to the rain and it dawned on me: this idea I have is a bad one. It is bloated, moves in too many directions, would be costly, time-consuming, and has little chance of actually working. So I cannibalized it and will see what can be used in other things.

It is a good feeling to reject an idea before investing too much in it.

However, I am wary of feeling too triumphant. Other bad ideas were put to rest only to pop up when, in a moment of weakness, I thought "Ah-hah! Before it was wrong, but here I have the solution. Now I will make this thing!"

The danger of these bad projects is that they are never done and they require so much work that I get really reluctant to scrap them once they are started, even after hours and hours and hours of reworking. I have this one canvas, for instance, that is probably beyond saving, but when I look at it I see a good idea here and a good idea there and think of the hours I have put into it, and I balk at doing the sensible thing of burning it and starting something new.

Part of what stops me is the memory of one really bad painting that finally got so wretched that I completely reworked it, so that only a couple of square inches of the original paint are visible. That painting ended up being one of my favorite ones. I finished the reworking about eight years ago, and I still like to look at the painting.

So, with these faulty projects I just plug away, secretly hoping that I will eventually wreck the thing and HAVE to radically rework it.

But it still feels good to nip a grandiose monstrocity in the bud!