Shall I let you in on a little secret? There's a thought that pops into my head on a daily basis. It’s more of a question really, and as a person working towards making a living as a creative, it fills me with dread.
What if I never write a song or story again? What if my creative output has peaked? What if I have writer’s block for the rest of my life?
Admittedly, these are three questions instead of one, but in my mind, they’re all variants of the same, all-important issue which expresses a deep fear that’s plagued me for years, the fear that I’d wake up one morning and find that I’m no longer creative. Maybe I’d pick up my guitar and attempt to write a new tune, but come up short. Maybe I’d sit at my desk and attempt to plot a new story, but the ideas wouldn't come. Maybe I’d attempt to write the next chapter of an ongoing manuscript but end up staring at a blank page on a screen. Maybe this existential block will manifest itself in some other way I can’t even begin to imagine. Regardless, you get the idea.
In trying to fight this, to mitigate the effects of a potential permanent creative block, I used to think of my creative output as finite elements I had to safeguard and protect. I’d get a new idea for a novel, song, or essay, and after fleshing out the idea, say plotting the novel, composing the song, or outlining the essay structure, I’d sit back and think, this is really good, but I’m not in a position to share it with the world yet. I'd tell myself I need to sit on it until I have a bigger audience, or a bigger stage, or a bigger platform, and only then would it be worth creating the work of art and sharing it with the world. This seems silly when I think about it now because I was essentially “hoarding” my creative output.
In my defence, my reasoning went something like this: what’s the point in writing and releasing a new novel if I don’t have the backing of a mega-publishing house with a massive marketing budget, and why should I release a rough-and-ready home recording of a song independently when I could wait until I have a record label deal with a – you guessed it – massive marketing budget?
I’m cringing in my seat as I write this now, not just because of how blatantly fallacious my reasoning was, but also because this reveals an underlying theme running through my erstwhile reasoning, the idea that my art, my work, my creative outputs aren’t worthy unless (or until) they reach a large audience.
On the one hand, I’m ashamed to air this all out, but on the other, these are the sorts of raw and honest thoughts that drove me to embark on this blogging practice in the first place. That said, I do have good news to report, which is that once I’d spotted this pattern and flaw in my reasoning, I decided to rectify it, simply by honouring ideas as they come. Admittedly, this is still a work in progress for me, but I’m pleased to say I no longer feel the need to hoard my ideas. When I get an idea for a new song, story, or essay, I flesh it out as soon as possible, and I honour it as much as I can, even given my limited resources.
What’s more, I thought it was just me who felt this way, but I’ve come to realise this is a common fear among creatives. A while ago I came across an excerpt from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, in which, referring to the art of writing, she states:
“...spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now…” – Annie Dillard
This sometimes goes against instinct. Sometimes I get what I consider to be a great idea and I’m tempted to save it for use as a verse in what I think will be a hit song or the backbones of a chapter in a successful novel. The idea that I should feel liberated to use it all now runs contrary to conventional wisdom, but that’s all the more reason why it is important. In times when I feel this internal conflict, I can fall back on Dillard’s advice, that when I’m tempted to save a “good” idea for later, I should consider that a signal telling me to deploy it now, because…
“...something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water…” – Annie Dillard
The well-water analogy resonates with me so much. It helps to think of creative ideas as flowing from a well. I grew up at a time and in a place where water wells were prevalent, I even witnessed the construction of a few. Water rises from the water table or aquifer beneath to a level high enough to scoop it from the surface for use in everyday activities. The more you draw water from the well, the more it gets replenished from below and the less likely it is to be stagnant, putrid and infested (with mosquito eggs, for example).
With the benefit of this analogy, I see now that in hoarding my creative ideas, I was content in watching my water well stagnate and putrefy, because I told myself I had to wait for a better use of the water in the well. But ever since I committed to drawing from the well regularly, I’ve realised that though the water level gets depleted momentarily, the well gets replenished with fresh water, and this regular churn ensures the water remains clean and clear, void of mud, infestations and pollutants.
So, in as much as we want our creative well (or source or muse or whatever metaphor you consider fitting) to continue to be replenished with fresh, clean water (or ideas, or again, whatever metaphor you consider fitting), the thing to do is to continue to draw from the well.
P.S.: My debut non-fiction book, Art Is The Way, and my middle-grade novella, A Hollade Christmas, are out everywhere now. You can get them in all good bookstores and from all major online vendors.