The assimilation phase

A friend who has decided to spend her summer writing a romance novel wrote this morning to say she seems to be stalled and is feeling discouraged. Boy, isn't THAT a phase we all know well!

Robert Fritz, in Path of Least Resistance, says creativity comes in three phases -- Generation, Assimilation, and Completion. My guess is my friend's at the assimilation stage, which definitely seems to be the trickiest one. Here's what Fritz has to say about it:

"One reason the assimilation stage is so little understood is that during this stage progress in growth and development remains invisible for a time. For long periods it may look as if nothing of significance is happening or being learned. A common experience during the early steps of assimilation is for no change whatever to take place... and people often give up the pursuit of their desired result. This is the point when beginning music students give up studying their musical instruments, when most people who enter exercise or fitness programs stop going...

The emotional experiences common to this crucial stage in the creative cycle are discomfort, frustration, and disappointment. ... This period of assimilation naturally includes much trial, error and experimentation. But the outcomes of such experiments teach you what you need to learn in order to have the result you want....

Fritz seems to see assimilation as a time between -- kind of like the quiet winter between the glorious colors of fall and the growth and promise of spring -- a time for things to germinate in the groundwork of promises already laid.

"New forms emerge from the disintegration of old ones. It would never occur to a New Englander to try to hold on to the foliage season. The leaves are not saved for their color; instead they are collected an burned in small bonfires. No one climbs a ladder and staples the leaves back on the branches. Yet we do not always translate this same wisdom and respect for the forces of nature into the rest of our lives. We have the human trait of holding on, past the seasons and cycles of our lives...We fear endings, resent change, and ignore those seasons and cycles.”

Take this image, for example. The original piece has been sitting in my folder a while; I look at it, wander off, and come back. Finally today I decided to play -- which consisted mostly of lots of failed experiments. This one may be another failed experiment, for all I know; I'm not sure I'm done with it yet. But the important thing is I didn't throw it back on the heap; I kept playing. And the reason I can do that now is because of all the previous assimilation periods: I've learned what it feels like to be on the right path, to be close to getting at this thing I can't really visualize when I start.

And, most importantly, I've learned there's always a certain amount of experimentation and failure, and that sometimes when you get to the other side the end result is just WONDERFUL and worth all the struggle. So I'm willing to keep pushing through, just like I'm willing to keep blogging even though some days I haven't a clue I've anything worth saying.

Now if I were only as assiduous about dieting as I am about creativity... But I'm working on that. I did it once, lost 30 pounds in about a month and half and kept most of it off for about 5 years. Now the weight is creeping back up -- something about having kids in the house (and all that SNACK FOOD!!!). I just need to bite the bullet and cut back.

So how's that workin' for ya? (I hear my husband saying.) Not great just yet, but I'm still in the assimilation phase...