Falling into creative paralysis
How we talk ourselves out of making things.
What if no one likes it?
What if I don’t like it?
What if it fails?
What if it succeeds?
What if I’m no good at it?
What’s the point of it?
What if I get slow-clapped off the face of the planet?
I stare at the blank google doc, hands poised over the keyboard. I have three draft articles ready to publish, but have fallen out of love with all of them. They seem trite. Overwritten. Even silly. What had I been thinking?
But then I write. Hours disappear. My back aches, but I ignore it. I’m in the zone. At a natural end point, I stand up, cracking my knuckles and my spine. I feel elated. I feel moved. I feel powerful. I have enjoyed myself, I admit. There is also the satisfaction of not wasting a day. I have felt. That is enough. That is success.
Indulgent self-serving success, the voice whispers.
I come back to my earlier written words and they’re awful. Embarrassing. Confused. There’s a lack of structure. It needs editing. The word count is too long. I’m not even sure what I was trying to say. Yes, okay – that bit is good. But what’s the point? What’s the point?
What is this piece worth? What do I hope to achieve with it? How much money, how many followers, how many likes, how many comments – how many data points will make this creation worthy? And, in turn, how many will make me worthy? How many will soothe my self-worth? How few will shatter it?
And if I fail, what does that say about me? Not what does it say about the piece, what does it say about me as a person?
How arrogant to try to insert myself into a space where I am not invited and am not welcome. Where everyone else knows what they are doing. Where they are secure and safe. Where they are meeting their own barometers for success, ensuring these metrics work for, rather than against them. Something I can’t seem to do, always feeling as though it’s not enough. Always feeling like I’ve missed the opportunity. That it’s too late now. That the praise is hollow, the criticism sharp. A lack of engagement damning. A thousand paper cuts.
But I’ve written books, I mutter, biting my nails, checking that ‘my shelf’ in my bookcase still exists. Proof.
Ah yes, the voice replies, but they were commissioned. A publisher told you they were worthy. You could hide behind the curtain of structural legitimacy. But creating with no brief? No guaranteed reward? For the sheer love of it? Just because you feel like it? Or, even worse, to explore yourself. To find yourself. Don’t make me laugh. Your entitlement baffles me. And don’t you dare say you’re creating for creation’s sake! Art is doing just fine without you. Who are you to spend time (and therefore money) on thoughts. Who wants to witness your interpretations? Do you truly believe that you have great revelations to reveal? I can assure you that you don’t. So to what end this folly?
To what end?
Oh, but to feel alive. To frighten and thrill ourselves with where our minds take us. To risk censure and misunderstanding, yes, but also to risk delight. To connect with art as a form of expression to which we are all entitled. To ignore the data. To ignore the algorithms. To ignore the ‘results’ columns. To make things because we have to. Because, if we don’t, those unsaid words, unpainted pictures, unwritten music, untaken photos, undesigned rooms, and unsewn clothes will taunt us from the dark places in our minds where our self-worth cowers.
To acknowledge our fear of failure, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, people pleasing and laziness and forgive ourselves. To believe that creating things for ourselves and for their own sake is enough. That it is worthy.
To accept that confidence, self-belief and self-worth are constantly moving targets, affected by personal, professional and global events. (Hell, they’re affected by the weather.) To commit to challenging ourselves despite that. To commit to being vulnerable. To commit to viewing vulnerability not as a weakness, but as an urgent strength. To know that not everyone will like us or what we make; that they may not enjoy how it makes them feel – or worse, will feel indifferent. But to trust that none of that matters if we like it. If we felt alive while making it. If we felt lost in it, if only for a moment.
Yes, how arrogant. How privileged. How unpractical.
But how vital. How extraordinary. To gift ourselves that space, that freedom and that possibility of connection. To make that choice. To feel it all. Even when it hurts. And, in doing so, to forget how the world has quantified beauty and destroyed nuance. To believe that it’s not the numbers that are brave. We are.
Just One More Thing…
We need art now more than ever. In a world where creative subsidies and budgets are being slashed, where art subjects are being undermined at school, and where artists don’t have the money or resources to create (leading to art becoming the preserve of the wealthy), please don’t also let creative fear inhibit you from making beautiful things. We’re all terrified and none of us know what the hell we’re doing – but that’s where the vivid colours live.
“I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
“I think a lot about the strangeness of ‘middle fear’. It’s *relatively* easy to feel fearless, or less fearful, when we are completely new. It’s when we’ve experienced some success and some failure that trying seems to become extra terrifying… I will die trying to untangle my sense of self-worth from my productivity/shiny certificate of Good Results. (But I suspect that untangling is a necessary and noble goal.)”
, author, friend, and maker of the Creative Confidence newsletter“In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one’s work caged in art’s great zoos – the Modern, the Met, the Louvre? I craved honesty, yet found dishonesty in myself. Why commit to art? For self-realisation, or for itself? It seemed indulgent to add to the glut unless one offered illumination.”
Patti Smith, Just Kids
love this, thank you for sharing succinctly what we all feel so deeply