Artistic Endurance

I stumbled upon the idea of artistic endurance today as I sat down to write and felt the emotional and physical exhaustion sink in. Since writing is as much, if not more, tedious work as it is expression, I felt so drained after the first hour that I found myself wanting to take a break. Partially because of the content of my current project being controversial and highly personal in nature, and partially because of the intense focus it takes to break through the interruption of unnecessary cognition, I found myself losing force much quicker than usual. BUT, instead of getting up and attending to the many things waiting for my attention, I sat there and practiced the art of building artistic endurance even in the face of exhaustion. I made a mess on the page, but accomplished much more than I would have if I allowed myself to withdraw and in essence in pushing past my tolerance level I made an opening for myself to sit even longer next round.

In the physical arts, such as dance, endurance is a critical part of training for obvious reasons of being able to physically withstand the demands of the artistic medium, but visual and literary arts need the same training to withstand the emotional exhaustion inherent in the process of creating meaningful work. Leaning how to train in building artistic endurance with a paintbrush or through key strokes only extends our breaking point to allow us to quit only when we feel we have given it our best. Even if the physical act of creating isn't tiresome, the process to infuse our creation with life is.