Anxiety management is crucial to a successful artistic life. One of the best series of books on the subject is written by California-based Dr. Eric Maisel, who writes extensively on the subject of creativity in all of the arts.
I like his books because they are well written, thoughtful, and extremely practical. They contain many useful tips for any artist stalled at any point in the process of creation.
Do you have trouble choosing what to paint? Do you procrastinate about starting a painting? Do you dive in with enthusiasm but get bored and want to quit halfway through it? Do you hate finishing your work? And what happens when you hate your work?
What happens when you want to take a day off work? Do you beat yourself up for not painting? What if you've taken too many days away from the canvas, are you anxious about getting back to work?
I have two of Dr. Maisel's books in front of me:
Fearless Creating and
A Life in the Arts. Here's a quote from
Fearless Creating:
Remember that ultimately you must proceed to work even if you don't know whether your idea is right or not. You can't have the clarity or certainty you want. Remember that. Do not use as an excuse for not working the suspicion that your idea might not be vivacious enough. Even if you can't choose it with certainty, you can and must choose to work wholeheartedly. A Rembrandt does not find reasons not to draw. A Bach does not find reasons not to compose. Do not use this notion - that the rightness of an idea may be valuably be examined beforehand - as an excuse for not working.
He goes on to say, however, that you do need to examine your ideas before you begin, and gives one a way to test ideas.
Even if you eschew self-help books as being too warm and fuzzy, I recommend these books for the interesting quotes by people in the arts that are scattered throughout the margins. Here's one by the poet Stephen Spender:
The problem of creative writing is essentially one of concentration, and the supposed eccentricities of poets are usually due to mechanical habits or rituals developed in order to concentrate.
(An aside: it's probably pretty obvious that the subject of cross-fertilization of the arts interests me as its own topic. It seems to me that John Updike has written about this.)
Dr. Maisel also has a website and addresses many issues for the blocked, despairing, depressed, troubled, or even the flushed-with-success artist.
http://www.ericmaisel.com/
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