Creative Block Rehab

Trying to write a story, trying to sit still.

Suck Creek near Chattanooga.

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve started reading The Artist’s Way. For the uninitiated, it’s a self-help book that teaches recovery from creative block.

Most of my life I’ve fluctuated between struggle and ease with my visual art practice, and I wish I had found this book in high school or college when I encountered some of my lowest moments. It says a lot of the things I needed to hear as an insecure and fearful young artist.

Luckily, I got through it without the book, because I ended up going to a psychodynamic therapist when I was 23. I sought her out in large part because I recognized that my self-esteem issues were preventing me from making art.

Emma, my therapist, did not specialize in art-related issues, but she turned out to be exactly the person I needed over the next two years of treatment. I learned how my social phobia, perfectionism, and dependance on external authority had all congealed to plug the well of creativity I thought had run dry. By the time I aged out of my health insurance coverage and stopped seeing Emma, I had started my current and most “successful” body of artwork, which I can’t imagine would have happened if I didn’t seek out help.

While I’m incredibly happy to have my voice again for visual art, this isn’t the only area where I’ve experienced creative block.

For a large part of my childhood, I actually thought I would to grow up to be a writer; not an artist. I knew I was precociously skilled at drawing, but I was never compelled to make art the way I was excited to write as a kid. In those early formative years, I was a homeschooler who loved the library, and for every story I read, I typed out another one out on the family computer.

I wrote a lot of fantasy and sci-fi in elementary and middle school, usually blatantly appropriating plot points from The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. I don’t remember my writing being “good;” I don’t think I was particularly proud of it at the time, but I had confidence knowing I was still a kid and I would improve as I got older. I put in the hours, and the stories poured out of me in a trance-like state.

At some point in my early teens, writing got a lot harder. I’m sure it had to do with developing a more critical taste as I aged into more complex reading. I attended a real middle school in Pennsylvania and took a Literature class, where I learned what good writing was, and suddenly making my own stories good felt intimidating.

The jump from homeschool to a classroom was also when my ADHD began to present. My grades plummeted and my confidence went with them. I found myself “locked up” a lot of the time—staring at an empty worksheet, a blank word document, not knowing how to will myself to start writing anything.

I stopped reading as often, which left me with less inspiration. I felt like I was aging out of the Young Adult section, but there wasn’t a logical next step for me at the library. The Adult shelves were vast and intimidating. The books got fatter while my attention span shrank. Images helped me focus, so I went to graphic novels for a while, but those books didn’t inspire me to write. Eventually I just stopped going, feeling too demoralized by checking out books and returning them unfinished.

In seventh grade, I managed to finish my last piece of long-form writing: a fantasy draft over 100 pages long. The story had something to do with a medieval heroine tracking down and curing her dark-magic-possessed friend. It ended up getting lost almost immediately when our family computer bricked.

After that story was gone, I completely lost touch with the flow of writing that used to come easily. I made many attempts to start a fresh page. I would manage to get a few sentences out, then strain to continue, then get frustrated and start over again. The feeling was agonizing, like pulling out my own teeth; there was just no spark in the story that hooked me enough to follow and write through it.

Now, fiction writing feels to me like art-making did during the roughest points of my late teens and early twenties. I don’t remember what it’s like to be inside a story anymore. I only encounter them from the outside. I read finished, polished, published stories, and I listen to the opinions of people I respect on the stories they read. When I sit down to write, I feel like I’m on a hopeless mission of reverse-engineering a story from one of those perspectives.

I miss being able to surrender to the chaotic whims of a story and not feel afraid of where it’s going to take me, or what other people will think. I miss writing what I know is utter trash and getting excited about it anyway.

Lately, I manage to get a short story out on paper every year or two. Going on a stimulant for ADHD has made this a little easier. The pieces I’ve written lately are unsatisfying. They very much felt like pulling teeth, and I don’t find the results compelling in any way. But I still feel a strong desire to keep trying.

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Suck Creek near Chattanooga.

So, this is where I’m at: starting The Artist’s Way and hoping it helps me dislodge roughly 15 years of writing block. It’s a big ask, but the book makes big promises to its readers, so I’m trying to stay optimistic. The author’s philosophy verges on woo-woo, because Cameron believes creativity comes from a divine spiritual origin, and she interweaves this spiritualism with more practical therapeutic tasks. There’s a lot of “God” in the book, not necessarily the “God” of my Protestant youth, but the most useful metaphor for the great mystery that is creativity.

The foundational practice of the book—the morning pages—have me writing long-form entries at the start of each day. I can’t remember the last time I wrote so much and so consistently. It’s mostly tedious and mindless things, but it reminds me that my head isn’t empty. There’s a lot percolating inside, even or especially when I don’t give myself an outlet for it.

I don’t want to reveal many of my early revelations, because it’s a very vulnerable and personal journey, and sharing too much too soon could actually set me back.

But, so far, I’ve become aware of the things I do every day to purposely dampen my observations and thoughts about the world. By extension, I’m blunting my creativity. Being fully present in my body is exhausting and unpredictable, so instead of taking in the world and processing it all the time, I choose to stare into the controlled stimulation on my phone. If I’m driving or showering or washing dishes, I fill my ears with podcasts and music. Even drinking or smoking is dulling my experience on some level.

I thought I found screens and devices addictive because they’re the biggest and easiest dopamine reward. But lately, I’m thinking that I actually use them to avoid the sensory experience of life.

As a result, I’m trying to invite more empty space into my day. I wonder what I’m hiding from when I spend hours watching TV or blast music in my headphones in public. Yes, the world is full of uncertainty, but there’s also a lot of good that I’m missing when I drown it out.

Yesterday morning I found myself at a Quaker Friends meeting. While I was writing my pages I had the sudden urge to check it out, so I summoned all my courage and drove over. The Quaker “service,” if you haven’t been, is just an hour of sitting in silence. Occasionally, a person might feel moved to stand up and briefly speak, but most of the experience is about encountering God in collective stillness.

I’m not sure if I encountered God yesterday. I’m not sure I’m sitting at the Friends meeting right, or doing the morning pages right, or writing my stories right. But I’m going to keep sitting still until something happens.

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Labor Intensive Recommendations

• The Wicker Man (1973) - I’ve been watching folk horror recently and, listen… I thought I liked Midsommar. But it honestly feels like a cheap imitation now that I’ve seen this movie! Which is also basically a musical! Just a great time all around.

• The Housekeeper and the Professor — I really liked Ogawa’s The Memory Police and so far this is just as compelling, though a little more lighthearted, I think?

• Lung - I saw this Cincinnati-based band open for Screaming Females last week. I really loved the moments of plain vocal harmonizing interspersed throughout their music. I haven’t been going to see live music recently and I’m really glad I spontaneously rolled up to this one.