My creativity has been feeling incredibly stagnant lately. I’ve been uninspired. At a loss as to how I move forward. Unmotivated. The rhythm and routine I’d had for many months no longer filled me with joy.
Obviously, I just felt like I was being lazy, any chance I had of being mean to myself I took it, but I knew there was a real issue going on. I had a horrible feeling that everything that I’d carefully built up over the last two years was about to come crashing down. I couldn’t cope with what I’d created. I’d already made a big change and closed the membership club I was running at the end of 2022 and now it looked like I wasn’t handling what I’d built up in its place.
Creating videos on YouTube was no longer giving me the dopamine fix I’d enjoyed for so long. Frustratingly so, because I gained a lot from making videos. Now instead of the process giving me joy and motivation I felt completely depleted just from thinking about it.
This meant my writing suffered. Particularly on Substack. And normally when this happens I write about it, I use it as a way of digging myself out of whatever was blocking me. This time, it didn’t appear to be working. And I began to become despondent.
What was happening to me?
It’s hard writing about your progress or lack of it on a public forum like Substack. I’m weighing up every word I write here in case I give the wrong impression. I’m not burned out. I’m not depressed. I just feel like something has been happening that I struggle to explain - but I intend to give it a jolly good go.
Last week, inspired by friends, I watched a film I hadn’t seen before. American Fiction. It was Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut and, as my friend’s son pointed out, he’s making his debut in his forties so there’s a chance for us yet.
What this film made me realise, either through its message or because it gave me an escape from my creative anxieties and enabled me to refill my creative well, was that I was stuck.
Subconsciously I was telling myself that I’d already reached where I was going to end up in life. That this was as good as it was going to get.
I hadn’t realised this was happening because on the surface I was still talking about writing a book, numerous books in fact, but underneath my little feet had stopped pedalling. I’d put the brake on.
I was too old, I’d left it too late, this creative business is only for young people, I don’t have the right skills, I’m not the right sort of person, who’d want to employ me, I was a novice - I knew nothing. I didn’t finish projects. Why would they take a chance on me when there were far more talented people out there?
What made it worse was that I was comparing myself to teenagers. My daughter, in fact. She’s the singer and songwriter in a band. I might be biased but she is amazing, utterly incredible. She alternates between rock, emotional unplugged solos and duets and the choir soprano. With her in the band is a sixteen-year-old incredibly talented drummer who has a fabulous stage presence, and a young unassuming lad of just thirteen who plays the guitar like a rock star. The guitarist’s brother, the same age as my daughter, is learning to play the bass, writes scripts amongst other projects and knows more about films than I ever will.
The talent is almost intimidating. And I think, for a short while, I’d felt it was only people like them - young and talented - who deserved to make it in this creative world. I felt like a wannabe. That I’d missed the boat. I felt envious of their creativity. The ease with which they could play a Foo Fighters song, putting their own spin on it was brilliant but also a reminder that I’ll never be able to do that. Just last week we watched them create a song right there in front of us. My daughter typing the lyrics out quickly as they tumbled out of her brain onto her phone. The guitarist and drummer completely in sync with each other. Then pulling it all together like a real song as though it was always meant to be.
I admired them and wished I could be them. I wished I had a creative life like them.
Wait, what the hell?
What was I talking about? What was I thinking?
I do have a creative life. I am a writer.
[What an arse, as my daughter would say.]
My brain, which had been constantly drip-feeding me these lies, could almost be heard coming to a screeching halt. All the false narratives I’d been believing, almost religiously and without question, rose to the surface like bubbles and were popping all over the place.
I’m not too old.
I’ve not left it too late.
I do know things.
Creativity doesn’t discriminate. (The creative business might do but that shouldn’t stop me trying.)
So, I’m forty-eight. So what? My life isn’t over outside of my creativity so why did I believe it was inside it?
My brain must have relaxed at that point. Because that’s when something unthinkable happened.
I HAD A CREATIVE IDEA.
Not only did I have an idea but I also wrote down some character names. It was only two pages of notes in my writing journal but that doesn’t matter. It was a start. I also Googled a course to help me write what I would like to write.
Why hadn’t I considered this project before? Because of all the lies I’d told myself, that had become entrenched in my mind and actions and seen as fact.
But also because my head was so full of stuff (worries, anxieties, wanting to help others, lists, what I needed to pay/renew, dates, times, exams) that it just didn’t have a chance to think clearly. It was easier to accept the lies as facts rather than to try and dismantle them. I didn’t have the space to dismantle them. I didn’t have the energy.
In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron waxes lyrical about writing Morning Pages and taking yourself on Artist’s Dates. I’ve been writing Morning Pages since the end of December and it’s been a journey of ups and downs (lots of downs and only a few ups) but I’ve stuck with it. However, in the past month, my regular two pages of A4 had become a reluctant and grouchily tired couple of paragraphs. After watching the film as my Artist’s Date - my first one in a long time, feeling rather guilty I might add for doing nothing but watch a film during the day, I picked up writing two pages of A4 again for my morning pages and wow, did it make a difference.
Humdrum thoughts were no longer tumbling around and around my head with no place to escape to. They’d been slapped down on a piece of lined paper and been forcibly removed from my head. Which created space for new thoughts. Creative thoughts. Exciting thoughts. I could do this thoughts.
And watching the film, crying and laughing as I did so, refilled me with the creative motivation and inspiration that I’d been lacking for so long.
It’s tempting when we’re uninspired and lack motivation, to keep pushing because this is the way we think we have to be. We think we’re being lazy or stupid so have to keep persevering. The harder we try the more difficult it seems to become.
The answer may very well lie in taking a step back. Through rest, through emptying our heads, and through dismantling the little lies we tell ourselves.
Great post! I haven't read the relevant chapters of the Artist's Way, done morning pages, or any writing, for about three weeks due to Easter holidays, life, to do lists, everything you described. But I started again this morning and plan to catch up with the chapters.
Helen thank you for writing this ... So much of this I was like yes! Me too! My next Substack is all about self - compassion and was born from feeling stuck myself .. maybe this is all part of The Artist's Way ? Or perhaps like you said we just needed a little break ... and self - compassion 🙏💞 also I loved American Fiction! Great movie !