The Artist's Way

careers.
A successful creative career is always built on successful
creative failures. The trick is to survive them. It helps to
remember that even our most illustrious artists have taken
creative U-turns in their time.
Blake Edwards has directed some of the funniest and
most successful comedy of the past three decades.
Nonetheless, he spent seven years in self-imposed exile in
Switzerland because a script that he felt was his best was
taken away from him in preproduction when his take on the
material differed from that of the star the studio had
acquired to enhance it.
Fired from his own project, Edwards sat on the sidelines
watching as his beloved film was made by others and
botched badly. Like a wounded panther, Edwards retired to
the Alps to nurse his wounds. He wound up back directing
seven long years later—when he concluded that creativity,
not time, would best heal his creative wounds. Sticking to
this philosophy, he has been aggressively productive every
since. Talking about this time-out to me, he was rueful, and
pained, about the time it cost him.
Have compassion. Creative U-turns are always born from
fear—fear of success or fear of failure. It doesn’t really
matter which. The net result is the same.
To recover from a creative U-turn, or a pattern involving
many creative U-turns, we must first admit that it exists.
Yes, I did react negatively to fear and pain. Yes, I do need
help.