The Cumulative Effect and How Delayed Judgement Helps Creative Endeavors

As I've written before, I too struggled with creative blocks for a long time. I always felt something inside me yearning to break free, but for a long while, I had no idea what form it would take in the physical world. Whatever I tried, nothing turned out as beautiful or enjoyable as I imagined it to be.

My drawing teacher constantly told me my drawings were bad. When I sang, my parents would just say it was “quite good” (which meant I better not pursue it), and when I danced, I felt that although I wasn't bad, I wasn't a world champion either. My poems... well, I was never a Heine or Yeats. In short, I couldn't find the right form of self-expression.

It didn't help that I inherited the belief from the adults around me that truly talented people are discovered in their childhood, like Mozart, and that only the top five or ten people in the world can make a living from art in any given field.

Since then, I've realized that a child's talent needs to be recognized by their immediate environment. If a family is not open to someone becoming an artist, then that child can wait forever to be discovered. In a lucky case, they might meet a teacher, coach, or someone else who notices their talent. But this can only happen if the parents are at least open to the child showing them their first, somewhat clumsy, drawings, singing their first songs, even a bit out of tune, or performing their favorite dance somewhat awkwardly. If a young child learns at home that these activities excite no one, they will retreat into themselves and not show this side to teachers, coaches, or others.

Secondly, I realized that many writers, musicians, poets, sculptors, painters, etc., make a living from their work, not just 5-10 people per field.

Thirdly, I understood that no dancer, composer, journalist, ceramist, or anyone else starts their career by creating perfection. Only after years and years of practice and learning, thousands of hours, are they able to perform perfectly. So an “okay” performance can become excellent over time with dedication and hard work. It's worth trying!

After realizing this, I started experimenting. I began drawing, painting, and spent hours stitching gobelins. Initially, my projects remained unfinished because I didn't feel they were good enough to complete. However, being a Type A personality, I eventually took a deep breath and decided that I couldn't leave things unfinished, so I completed one. After investing many hours into a drawing of a ficus, I realized it didn't look bad. It wasn't perfect, but as each detail found its place, the picture came together. The same happened with my gobelins. The many stitches formed a detailed and harmonious image. That's when I understood the power of cumulative effect and delayed judgment.

Every creative project looks bad at the beginning. If we start sketching a pattern on the edge of a paper, outlining a car, writing a poem, or putting together a choreography, the elements certainly won't look or sound as impressive as the finished work. When we start the creative process, what we see, hear, feel in our minds, and try to shape and create in the physical world differs greatly from how things look at the first steps, the first few pages, the initial building blocks. At this stage, one might feel they can't 'bring down' or birth the image, energy, sound they want, leading to doubt and blockage. In my experience, the most effective method at this point is to delay judgment. Simply command our ego, which suggests all sorts of negative things, to wait because we are going to finish this gobelin, sew this dress, dance through this song, put this poem on paper, create this flower bed, even if it turns out to be a waste of time, paper, thread, or whatever else. Once we make this decision, we can move forward more easily. It is also important not to expose ourselves to others’ judgment either at this stage of the process. Let ourselves just create for a while before we stand in front of our critics!

And if we manage to progress, we can see the cumulative effect in action. The more energy, the more undivided attention we devote to something, the deeper we immerse ourselves without thoughts, the more we enter the state of Flow (for those interested in flow, I recommend reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book on it, it's very enlightening). Heartfelt creation, free from obstructive thoughts, always comes together in the end. From the many stitches, the gobelin's image forms; from individual, awkward dance moves comes a striking choreography; from sketched, jagged lines emerges the elegant shape of a car; from the churned, chaotic-looking bed comes a beautiful, colorful butterfly-attracting garden, and the list goes on. A single line of stitching looks like nothing, a drawing detail impresses no one, a few planted seedlings don't inspire awe, a few lines of a poem don't amaze, but if we don't allow room for judgment and complete all the stitches, finish the drawing, plant all the flowers, follow through with the thought in the poem, we might be surprised at the end by what we were capable of. Because of the cumulative effect, as the details fall into place, the creation itself becomes much more wondrous than merely the sum of its parts. And if this happens once, twice, even three times, then we will have the experience to know not to judge any of our creative projects until they are complete, but to let the elements accumulate and we will create increasingly beautiful works with more joy and creative freedom.

In my experience, it's worth making a deal with our ego to only express its opinion at the very end of the creative process. While we're creating, let it sit quietly in the corner and wait patiently. Give ourselves a chance to express ourselves freely, without our harshest critic lurking around us!

– Eszter

---

---

Home | Notes | Articles | Eszter’s Magic | Literary Bonbons | Short Stories and Guides | Beyond the Book | EWE Issues | Archive | About