The Creative Process

I haven't felt like creating lately - not at all. The popular myth holds that all artists should strive to produce something - anything - all the time, just to do it. That is complete bullshit; I call that "spinning tires" and it's detrimental to my overall health as well as this creative process I am discussing. That it works for others matters not at all; it does not work for me.

The problem is that, because this myth is so ubiquitous and persistent, I feel pressured to spin those tires just for the sake of spinning them. This pressure stifles my creative process. Further, admitting that sounds like an excuse even though it isn't; that's just the way things are - again, for me, not for everyone and not in general - and knowing that others feel this is "just an excuse" adds even more pressure to the whole thing.

I do not understand my personal creative process but I am familiar with it: I soak in a lot of stuff over a span of time and at some point, things just fall into place - something "clicks" or "jibes" and I hit upon an idea or concept I want to pursue. I sometimes nurture that thing and eventually bring it to fruition though, more often than not, I start on a project based on that premise and fail to follow through on it. This is a problem I have faced for most of my life and despite wanting desperately to change it, I haven't been able to just yet. But I'm still working on it.

Couple this pressure to produce something - anything - despite the fact that I feel absolutely no passion for whatever that might be with the personal problems I've faced lately and my crippling poverty and disabilities (a source of most of my problems in general) and what sounds like a lot of excuses to others is just the stuff that's clogging my creativity lately. I threw my back out about a week ago in fact and am going to the doctor to have it looked at later this week, so I've really wanted to do nothing more than lie around the last several days.

Few people understand the creative process, period - science certainly doesn't - but, at least for me, a lot of downtime is necessary to producing anything, even if what I produce is just mediocre or moderately interesting. I don't want to foist moderately interesting material onto a barely interested audience, so I'd rather let the whole thing work its way through on its own time than try to force mediocrity simply because people who, again, do not understand this process feel I should (or, more specifically, because I feel they think I should when most people probably couldn't care less what I do or when). In fact, this damning pressure to just do something all the time is a big reason I abandon so many projects: I start them just to be doing something but never finish them because I had no real passion for these projects in the first place.

Over the last year, I have worked on a few unrelated things in the hopes of bringing them to a larger, paying, market and none of them have worked out quite like I'd hoped. One project in particular has been a podcast that has just never gone anywhere. I've tried a few different variations on this concept several times over the last few years and have gained absolutely no traction. I'm not a good interviewer and am not interested in interviewing anyone anyway, plus the people with whom I've tried to put together any sort of podcast have no broadcasting, journalism, performance, or artistic training in any field, so it hasn't gone anywhere - but I have tried several times. I also have a few scripts I've been hammering away at infrequently.

These failures bring their own downtime. After all, it may be a popular notion that you should "just get back on that horse" but in reality, you have to take a few moments to dust yourself off and let the pain subside. It's disheartening when projects fall through or fail to launch and carrying that lingering disappointment over to another project isn't the attitude to have going into anything new.

I wish I were more prolific, I really do, but I'm not. And forcing myself to work just for the sake of saying I'm working results in nothing but frustration with the entire process. I burn myself out trying so hard and producing nothing and fall into depression. That's where I find myself right now after several failed attempts at writing something interesting enough to submit to paying markets or develop an interesting podcast that people might actually want to hear.

So, I am licking my wounds and soaking in all that I can from the world around me and letting it all just gel - feeding my weird creative process. I just haven't gotten to that point where anything has come from it yet. So, I gave in to the pressure to "just do something - anything" by blogging about my writers' block. And that's about all I'm worth right this moment...

© C Harris Lynn, 2012