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The Art Of Managing Discomfort & To Create Your Art Even When Nobody Gives A Sh*t

Where’s the applause when you need it? There’ll be bad days & no recognition but make your art or do your work anyway

Gaurav Krishnan

Nov 22

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The aim of art is to showcase not just the imperfection, but the entirety of life & our experience of the human condition, encapsulated within a few verses, a book, a song, a movie or that scribbled comic you felt compelled to put out but didn’t.

Discomfort kills more art & artists than failure ever could. When we get that “big idea,” what Joseph Nguyen calls “divine inspiration” in his book Don’t Believe Everything You Think, he suggests you feel like it’s a “calling” and something you feel “compelled” to do, not forced to do like a work task in your 9-to-5.

There are several stages to creating art, starting with the idea & then comes the process of revision or repetition.

This is the meat of the process.

When you’re creating art, you have to revise & repeat considerably until you get to that final take or final cut or final draft that you’re somewhat happy with, until you finally have the courage to put it out there into the world.

Now, art doesn’t have to be perfect.

But the artist striving for perfection is a common example of every artist there ever was or will be.

Art can be imperfect & still strike chords with someone, somewhere in some part of the world, where they resonate with your work, admire the imperfection, or even barely notice it & relate to it, and it moves them.

That’s the power of art. It moves people. It resonates with them. They feel something. And that’s powerful.

But as artists, we’re already under the cosh, not just because of a lack of income or toxic ecosystems like in the case of musicians (like me) and the appalling state of the music industry because of streaming platforms like Spotify.

But it’s discomfort & fear of the unknown & the lack of perfection in the final product of our art that kills the piece of work even before it’s born.

Many artists will allude to how much time it took them to hone their craft.

This process doesn’t just happen overnight.

It takes tireless practice for a guitarist to perfect his instrument, it takes several drafts of a book before an acceptable draft is created, and it takes years of making short films & experimenting with the art form of film before a director can hit the big time.

And it’s in this process that a lot of great art gets killed because the artists give up too easily.

They don’t push through the discomfort.

“Art requires that we throw ourselves into the unknown. It means climbing that mountain with an uncertain path. It means getting to the top and realising you’re at the smallest peak of a much larger mountain range.”
“So let’s say that good discomfort feels less like a challenge and more like curiosity, because curiosity means we have to tolerate the possibility that we’re going to encounter things that don’t feel good in pursuit of discovery.”
“It’s jumping into the cold mountain lake, bracing, surprising, very different from easing into a nice warm bath.”
“Yes, there is discomfort in the repetition of training, but compare that to the discomfort that an athlete experiences when they dare to attempt a new skill. Which is scarier, which requires embracing the unknown.”
“That daring, that is the discomfort that creativity requires. And to live without it? It means you’re just climbing the same mountain again and again. You’re being challenged. You’re getting stronger. You’re getting faster, but you’re never going to see beyond that first peak.”
“You can be comfortable, but can you be creative?”
“So if we understand the discomfort is necessary to art, and probably to being a human being..”
“Anything that requires creativity, requires hundreds, if not thousands of moments of discomfort. Because each moment of discomfort is embodied by a question.”
“I have to answer all of these questions to move forward, and I don’t know if I’m making the right choice. I don’t know if I’m moving up that mountain or if I’m going to have to backtrack,” says Leigh Bardugo.

Discomfort & fear of the unknown is a commonplace feeling for most artists, because when you aim to create art, there are so many questions & self-doubts that creep in.

But the lack of perseverance from that phase kills almost all the great art that could be made.

However, Leigh Bardugo suggests that we need to pivot from that kind of thinking and embrace the discomfort in the process of creating art.

Essentially, it’s not viewing discomfort as a red flag, but a necessary stepping stone to our final finished art.

“All right, so now that we know this, how do we make discomfort work for us? How do we make it a tool in our arsenal?”
“Now there’s no amount of outlining, or craft, or preparation that I can teach you that will spare you the discomfort of creativity. That’s not possible.”
“But what we can start to do is to stop thinking of discomfort as a red flag. And instead, think of discomfort as a compass needle.”
“It’s going to point you towards something bigger and more difficult and more worthwhile than you’ve ever attempted before.”
“So now I know that when I get that feeling, when I have an idea and I think: “Oh, I don’t know how to do that”, instead of stepping back, I should move forward because that squirming, uncomfortable feeling in my gut it’s telling me there’s a challenge ahead. I won’t know what’s coming, but I might be onto something good.”
“If we want to make art and make it consistently, if we want it to be our job and not just something we dabble in, then we have to cultivate and recognise these moments of discomfort. We have to learn to welcome the bad days,” says Bardugo.

So discomfort is the first part of the battle in creating meaningful art. But the second comes after we’ve finished the process. After we’ve made something out of nothing, i.e. the after phase.

Of course, the beauty of the process is essentially why artists make art, but the gauntlet of recognition & the applause that all artists desire & crave to a certain degree can weigh heavily on an artist, especially if it takes time.

Now, I’ve encountered this personally in my art as well. My music, as a producer, singer-songwriter & film composer & my writing, whether it’s my books or even sometimes these articles I write on Medium & Substack; at times I feel like I don’t get the recognition & applause I would like & that can be pretty disheartening.

You can find my work on my professional website linked here.

But the key is to push through & make your art anyway.

The joy of making art is in the process & the journey & the overcoming of discomfort & the testing of uncharted waters. In trying, failing, creating something, ripping apart parts of it, rewriting & rewiring/repainting it, the experimentation, the trying of different approaches, etc.

That’s the reason you do it.

And if nobody gives a sh*t about your art(which I’ve encountered with my poor streaming numbers & lack of social media following), make more art anyway.

Make more art anyway, despite no recognition or reward or applause. That can be immensely liberating.

“You must be prepared to work always without applause” — Ernest Hemingway

You have to always be prepared to create your art without recognition or reward. And if you do get rewarded & praised & lauded for it somewhere down the line, then it can be greatly satisfying.

But even if you don’t, just keep making more art anyway.

That kind of impervious attitude to creating art can be powerful and can propel you to explore any kind of uncharted territories, which Rick Rubin also stipulates in his book The Creative Act: A Way Of Being, wherein he talks about the “beginner’s mind” and not worrying about the end “results” & the “fame” and “recognition”.

I just keep putting my art out there. Whether it’s my music, books, or posts on Instagram or these articles here.

Even if nobody gives a sh*t, even if I get zero likes or comments or follows or even someone saying they liked it. I do it anyway.

Although that does happen intermittently, that’s not why I make art, i.e. for the end result of recognition or whatever.

It’s the process & journey; a note in the “diary” of my work, where I’m at a certain point in time in life & a little footnote in the story of my life, (which Rick Rubin explores again in his book).

“In the age of likes and follows, we have confused the reward of creating with the reward of being praised for creating.”
“And why wouldn’t we?”
“Our culture has never celebrated aspiring. Our culture celebrates markers of success.”
“You meet an actor at a party: “Oh, would I have seen you in anything? ”
“When we could ask: “What’s your dream role? ” “Who would you love to work with?”
“We meet a writer: “Oh. Have you ever been published?” When we could ask: “what are the stories that inspire you? What is the story you most want to tell?”
“So we have to stop doing that.”
“We have to rewire the way we talk about art, the way we think about artists. We do it for others and then we do it for ourselves. The job of the artist is not to skip to the good part.”
“The job of the artist is to make art when no one gives a damn, when no one likes or follows, when we are not being comforted by compliments and praise.”
“There are going to be days when the project or the story just unfurls in front of you. When you lose track of time and worry and you feel like a genius.”
“But if art always felt good, everyone would do it.”
“The bad days are just as important, if not more important, than the good days.”
“Because those days and how we choose to treat them, whether we deny them or embrace them those are the difference between the amateur and the professional; the difference between the fantasy of being an artist and the act of making art.”
“So the next time you pick up that project to noodle on the song, the sketch, the story, I hope it’s a good day. I hope you feel like a genius.”
“But if it isn’t, if it’s a bad day, don’t turn away. Don’t pick up your phone, don’t decide you have to clean out your closet.”
“Recognize that discomfort.”
“Greet it, acknowledge it, and remember that that unwanted arrival should be treated as a welcome guest, because it means you are that much closer to making something extraordinary.” — Leigh Bardugo

This is not just for artists but can be applied to any creative pursuit or line of work where you just have to push through the discomfort.

In her TED Talk called “The art of discomfort,” writer Leigh Bardugo explores discomfort in the process of creating art in detail, with examples from her own life’s work as an author & provides inspiration and a framework for creating meaningful art by pushing through the discomfort and bad days & by creating art even if nobody acknowledges it.

This article was originally published on my Medium.

If you enjoyed this article consider buying my book Make Your Own Waves, which comprises 45 thought-provoking perspectives on life, which you can buy at the link: https://amzn.eu/d/dZaX8Dr

If you’re in India, you can buy it here: https://amzn.in/d/fA4iDgb

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