Sitting here, knowing I should be working on at least one of the things I think of as things I enjoy and want to do, I am working on an art piece for the living room of a really nice woman I met when I went for blood tests the other day with some stabbing pains in my belly. The results of the blood test show I don't have appendicitis, and given I am eating as much as ever, I reckon the conclusion must be that I am pregnant.
I should probably point out that I am a man-human at this point if you were not aware, for all the reference to birthing I make. It may be worth mentioning as well that I am a dad, one who very literally watched his son come into this world. It's why I connect creativity with birth.
As an analogue for the creative process, it works well enough. See, I don't want another kid. Not because I don't like the one I have, no, in that respect I am a pretty standard parent in that I think he is the most amazing thing to happen to the world, and you can stop thanking me now world, it is my pleasure for having been instrumental in his existing.
The reason I don't want another one is because I don't want to go through the process and risk the new one being a bit rubbish by comparison, and it is hard for me to picture that not being the case, because again, I really do think the one we already did is pretty much the cat's, as it were, whiskers.
This is something I am sure happens to all of us with our creative projects, or at least I really hope it does. You work on something, perhaps you are writing, and maybe you write a really good couple of pages, you are very chuffed with it, but you have to go do something else now and can't wait to get back to this because you have really found the tone and style for this book, and your jokes were only outmatched by your fiendishly clever use of the word 'congealed' and finally all is right with the world!
When you come back to the book, you read all this wander and so forth, and yes, it's still really good. You really like it. You scroll to the bottom to continue, and you suddenly realize that in fact every single other thing in the universe requires your immediate attention, so you will just have to sacrifice finishing this book until you have solved the immediate problems of world hunger and overstocked bars.
You will never touch that book again.
This same phenomena applies to any creative endeavor. I would say it is not my intention to offer solutions to this problem, but honestly, I am just not in the mood, so if you are struggling with this sort of thing, specifically with writing, click the link at the bottom for a brilliant resource on these sort of writing challenges.
The point I do want to address is that when this is what you do, what you want to make your life's work, rather than being a creative in more of the hobbyist capacity, this creative block, or rather subset of many little creative blocks, becomes magnified to the point where it could easily sink you. For that I do have a bit of advice.
1 - Learn to be ok with your work being 'ok' sometimes, rather than drown in failed attempts of self regulated notions of perfection. Consider television, more or less everything on it is shit and it has survived being shit, if not in fact prospered for it.
2 - Be really, really careful about getting involved in other projects that are not really related to
what you are doing or the direct success of what you are doing. It's fine to do other stuff, but if
something is giving you a sense of accomplishment, that is pure gold for paying off your conciounce for not doing what you know you should be, ie, your own work. Even when your boss is you, you will still try to trick him/her into letting you off the hook.
3 - Keep doing it. And when you fail to do so, keep working on things that bring you back to it,
smaller projects, writing in comment sections, just still writing or creating in your medium in
some way.
'Ah!' says you, 'but did you not say something once about professional standards etc?'. Well, I probably did, I don't know, I don't possess the sort of memory that actually works. I am not saying throw out rough drafts as finished works or anything that fun either. Just let it be, when you are in a rough spot, rather produce below your standards than not at all
Above all, remember to check whether or not you are happy, because if you are building a life on your own terms, building a career of your own creative passions, and you are unhappy, something has gone horribly wrong somewhere and you need to figure it out.
As always, thanks for reading.
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