Don't rest on my WHAT?

The smoke has cleared, the dust has settled, and NaNoWriMo 2010 is now just a memory in the rear view mirror.  Whether you reached 50,000 words, whether you reached your own personal goal, or whether you said, "Forget this whole NaNoWriMo nonsense -- I'm going to do something else creative," you have, nonetheless, created something over the past month.  It may be good.  It may be bad.  It is likely too early to tell, but whether your creation is good or bad, you certainly have some feeling about it: loving, loathing, apathy, fondness, disgust ...  The list goes on and on.

And now comes one of the most pernicious perils that can affect a creative: resting on your laurels.

What exactly does this mean?  Well, let's face it -- odds are you created something this past month, and it was more than likely a fair bit of work and effort.  Do you deserve a bit of a break?  Absolutely.

Creating anything, especially something as monumental as the rough draft of a novel -- but even something as simple as a good recipe or cute pencil sketch -- is an achievement, and one it's only natural to take some pride in.  Don't you deserve to bask in the glow of your accomplishment, celebrate a little?  Oh, you betcha!

Resting on your laurels is a hard one because it feels so natural: you do deserve a bit of a break and a bit of time for celebrating.  The problem comes when we rest for too long, celebrate one accomplishment for too long a stretch of days.  A two day celebration turns into three, then four, then a week.  A week becomes two, then a month, and before you know it, time has passed.

In lieu of a cute little bulleted list today, I'm going to share some stories from my own creative life.  Of all the missteps I've taken on my decade-long journey as an adult and as a creative, this misstep is my biggest regret.

I graduated from college in 2000, and not long after, I started doing a bit of composing -- nothing terribly targeted, just writing whatever I felt like.  I'd work for a bit, dabble, and finally finish a piece.  I didn't finish many pieces, which was all right at the time.

Some of these pieces, I'd enter into contests.  I'd enter a piece in a contest ... and then write nothing else until I heard back about the outcome of the contest.  Sometimes this would be two months, sometimes four or six or more.  That meant I could go a half a year without composing a single new note.

Around 2002 or 2003, I started dabbling in some choral music.  Our director at church was supportive, so I used his support and guidance and got a couple of pieces together, which he then sent out on my behalf to various publishers.  And what did I do while that music was making the rounds?  You guessed it -- nothing.  I waited, and that only made the time seem like longer.

Flash forward to 2006.  I had written a couple of handbell pieces -- this time at the behest of our handbell director at church -- and finally in early June of that year, my wife made me package some up and send them off.  I did so, and about a month later, I got a reply from Bill Griffin at Beckenhorst -- they'd accepted my arrangement of Il Est Ne.  My wife was at the grocery at the time and I called her on the cell phone to tell her the news.  She brought back a fancy cheese dip and we celebrated.

And then ... well, I had a piece of music published!  That had to mean that everything was easy from here on out, right?

No, not right, but I wasn't to know it at that time -- I was too drunk on the high of being a Published Arranger.  Did I celebrate for a day or two and then get back to the keyboard?  No.  It took me another couple of months before I started writing anything again, and another year before I had a second piece accepted for publication.

Now, as time went on, I started to realize that getting a piece published ought to allow me an evening's celebration ... and then I needed to get back to work the next morning.  It was a hard lesson to learn, but I've learned it better over time.  To see how long it took me to learn it, though, here's a chart of the number of pieces I had in publication at the end of each calendar year:

• 2007 -- 1 piece
• 2008 -- 6 pieces
• 2009 -- 12 pieces
• 2010 -- 27 pieces

It's hard to say how many will be in publication by the end of 2011, but I have a total of 49 pieces published or accepted at various publishers as of right now, so the number is likely to be close to that.

This is what can happen if you don't rest on your laurels.  It took me seven or eight years to finally learn this lesson, but now that I have, it's become my most cherished lesson.  It's all right to be happy, rejoice, and have a sense of accomplishment when you finish a creative project or have some other sort of creative triumph.  But the warm sun of that accomplishment will eventually set, leaving you in the cold and dark unless you keep working, creating the works that will cause another warm sun to rise on your creative efforts.

My challenge to you is this -- as soon as you finish this post, give yourself one last mental high-five on a job well done, then start -- today, right now -- on another creative project, even if it's only creating a blank document or setting your sketch pad out on your desk.  You have many, many more creations in you, waiting to burst forth.  Let them live.