Shake It Out

"And every demon wants his pound of flesh. But I like to keep some things to myself. I like to keep my issues drawn. It's always darkest before the dawn." Florence Welch


Sometimes you hit the doldrums. Creative people face this a lot - we tend to be mercurial, running hot and cold with equal fervor. Some nights, I can pound out 5,000 words in what seems like an hour, only realizing that it is 4:00 AM when I finally hit "save" on my MS Word toolbar.  Other nights it's a struggle to get 500 words out.  I plod through, and usually end up deleting most of what I have written during my revisions.


It's during those times that you have to truly believe in what you're doing - whether you are a painter, a photographer, a dancer or a poet. It's easy enough to believe that you were meant to do this insane thing called "creation" when it is flowing like liquid silver from your veins onto the paper. It's so much harder when you are staring at a blank screen and chugging a Monster as you hope, with sleep-deprived eyes, that the muse will appear, just for a bit. You can't depend on the muse. She's half nuts and she doesn't like you - not really.


Because in the end, it comes down to work and passion - with anything in life worth doing. How badly you want to succeed is in direct proportion to how hard you work.  My favorite Florence + the Machine song, "Shake it Out" describes the creative process, and its inherent frustrations, so perfectly. This is what I listen to when I get a rejection letter, my inbox remains empty after sending out queries, and my phone doesn't ring:

"And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope. It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat. Cause looking for Heaven, found the devil in me. But what the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me."