What does it mean to “trust the process” of art-making, or image-making, or writing, or creating anything new in the world?

“Trust the process.” Sounds suspicious. Sounds unfocused. Definitely over-used. But trite clichés invariably have truth embedded under the dusty surface.

I keep notes and doodles in sketchbooks/journals, have a stack of books going back years and years, and every few months when I clean the office/studio space (yesterday), I glance through these notes and see the ebb and flow of ideas, the rise and fall of enthusiasms and interests. Some ideas come to fruition, some simmer in the background for months, and some dissipate and vanish.

Always, I have to remind myself to approach any creative process with the view of an outsider, a bystander, looking over my shoulder. What matters is the commitment to see most things to the end while continually starting down new paths.

A few guidelines help me. And if I can check off just a few of these while creating anything — images, paragraphs, a new wall in the house — I know the process can be trusted to reveal some fine results at some future date.

• Picking up where I left off the day before without judging the previous day’s work (often hard for me)
• Making enough work so that “good” and “bad” can be defined and separated, but only after just sitting with the work for weeks or months (or years)
• Knowing when to be loose and fluid, and when to be precise and ruthless
• Continually “detaching” from the pre-formed visions in my head
• Striving (lightly) to remain a beginner with a beginner’s sense of excitement and wonder
• Allowing the process to flex and grow with the flow of the work
• Approaching each “task” with attention and appreciation
• And remembering that the process and my sense of “self” are separate. I am not the work — never have been. Work is only a trail behind me.