Thursday! 3-4: What to Do When You're Not Doing

V3, I4

I don’t know quite how to begin Thursday! this week. At some point, perhaps a month ago, my creativity packed its bags and left. It’s come to visit once or twice but it never stays. Most of the writing advice I’ve read on what to do when this happens says to just keep on writing and the love for writing will come back, all will be well, and happy little birdies will sing happy little songs from their happy little perches in the happy little trees.

Well, I’ve looked around, and there aren’t any birds, happy or otherwise.

There isn’t any love for writing either.

In fact, today — at this very moment — I hate being a writer. I’d rather be anything else that could earn me a decent living and leave me feeling good about myself and my abilities. I’d rather be coding a computer program or…I don’t know. Anything but writing, which tends to put me to bed with the feeling like I’m not all that good at what I allegedly do best.

Of course, I can’t stop writing either. Writing is in my bones and I feel utterly horrible when I can’t write something at least halfway decent. Since I’ve not done anything like that in a month or so, I’ve not felt all that great.

Though…that’s not exactly true. I’ve written a couple decent newsletters lately and the little freelance tidbits I’ve done have made my editor happy. But no stories. No poems. No…well, that’s all I write, really. None of that has shown up, no matter how often I sit down with pen and paper and start scrawling. I hate those evenings — the ones where I sit alone and stare as a blank sheet of paper that, over the course of an hour or so, becomes a sheet of paper full of scratch-outs and scribbled hot mess and eventually becomes a wadded-up wasted evening on the top of the trash can.

Yet, here I am, writing Thursday! and hoping beyond hope that tomorrow will be the day I get something decent on paper. I’m not an optimist, as you’ve probably guessed by now. I’m not a pessimist either, which might come as a bit of a surprise. I’m just some guy stuck with a bone-deep desire to write cool stories and poems who can’t figure out how to do what he wants most.

So. Where does that leave me? What do you do when you hit something like the creative doldrums where I now live? You find your other creative friends, get them to show you what they’re doing, and you root for them like they’re running for Supreme Ruler of the Universe. That’s what I’ve been doing recently and, I have to tell you, it’s kept me out of a pretty bad bout of depression. See, encouraging someone else openly and eagerly is not just good for the other person. It’s very, very good for you. One of the biggest benefits — and I can attest to this myself — is when you read outside yourself to root for someone else, you aren’t focused inwards. You’re less likely to get deeply depressed and your darker moods don’t last as long. Or course, I’m not therapist and your mileage certainly will vary, but we humans are built to face outwards. We are most definitely not made to regard ourselves deeply for long periods of time.

I have wonderful, creative friends and I’ve done what I can to build them up. I love what they do. Their art makes me happy and impresses me and I make sure they know it.

See, I may not be a great artist myself, but I’ve surrounded myself with some simply amazing people who make simply amazing things. That will do me just fine. It might even work for you, too, right? There will be days when you can’t abide your own art, when you are convinced you stink worse than any writer or poet or singer or musician has ever stunk before. You will see yourself as a stench that rises to the highest heights of Heaven and you’ll wonder why you even thought you were an artist in the first place.

I’ll tell you, you might be right. You might just stink to highest Heaven. Probably, though, you don’t. Probably, though, you’re in a temporary bad patch caused by something that doesn’t have a darned thing to do with your artistic side. Probably, you’ll get out of it. In fact, I’d bet you will¹, in time.

Until then, go find one of your artist friends who is working on something you think is cool and show them some love². Remind them they are still a creative machine whose gears are just a little slipped right now. Those gears will mesh again and they'll start turning. The love for what they do will come back³.

Then, you turn will come. Your creativity will come more easily. Whatever’s blocking you will clear up, the harder days will pass, and you’ll get going again.

You will. I know it.

Maybe I will, too.

[I’d love for you to jump into my Patreon. Just $2, $5, or $20 a month! Heck, you can even name your own amount if you like!]

1. I mean, there’s a chance I’m wrong. It happens quite a lot! But what are the chances, really, that God Almighty put in you the desire to create beautiful things and the ability to create beautiful things, then snatched it away from you without warning nor reason? Pretty slim, I’d say.

2. Not literally. Though…who am I to say, really! I won’t judge.

3. Or at least they won’t hate it like they do right now. And by “they”, I mean “me”. And by “me”, I mean I’m definitely not fishing for sympathy here. In fact, it’d be very cool if a hundred artists heard from all of you wonderful readers and got all the encouragement they could stand!