The Battle of the Blank Page: Creative Burnout Before It Begins
How do we take down the beast that is writer’s block, procrastination, and just not wanting to do it?
I consider myself a writer. But I haven’t actually written anything of note for months.
Well, to be exact, I’ve written some one-off stanzas for poems that have come to my mind at 3 AM in my Notes App; I’ve started and stopped many ideas for stories that I’ve had. And most importantly, I’ve stared a blank page awaiting something to flow from my fingertips to the screen in front of me. Yet, every time, nothing happens. Just a blinking line looking expectantly at me. What do you want me to do about it? I’ll tell myself. Why won’t you write anything?
You hear stories of creatives in “quarantine” — staying inside due to COVID-19 — writing novels, painting masterpieces, creating full concept albums, etc. Crafting their magnum opuses in the framework of an uncertain world — “I just gotta do what I gotta do,” they’ll say. And in a few weeks or so, they’ll have some of their best work because now they’ve got all the time in the world. No distractions, no disturbances — just the ability to be uber creative.
Me? Well… I’ve got really nothing to show in the past months. I did start exercising and eating healthier, but as for my creative side? It’s been suffering for a while — probably before quarantine happened. And to be honest, I feel like shit about it. Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself to write a novel but, even if not that — just anything. Anything at all.
I tried to think about why this is, and why I get so caught up in the first drafts (where nothing has to be perfect), the planning stages (where the blank page feels like it’s threatening me), and never finishing things I start (it feels like an inevitable end). Thus, at the core, I suffer from:
- 1) me being a perfectionist
- 2) me comparing myself to everyone else
- 3) me never being satisfied with any work that I do
To be frank, it’s fucking crippling. And it’s really hard to overcome even when you have the awareness that yes, this is what happens, and I’m totally trying to combat it but end up looking at what everyone else is doing in their life and then end up just feeling like shit. I may have a bunch of free time now, but it’s preoccupied with avoiding doing almost anything creative because I’m too busy with subconscious or fully conscious comparisons. Instead, I find myself watching YouTube videos and browsing social media until the sun is peeking its head through the windows. And then I know I fucked up.
So… what to do?
First, I wanted to go into depth about this cycle I constantly get into. Even in a world that wasn’t racked by COVID, I found myself in this cycle plenty of times. Once you identify what’s messing you up, it’s much easier to try and figure out how to combat it.
Even if it really, really sucks.
The Cycle of Comparisons & Self-Loathing
Now, clearly this doesn’t just apply to creatives. But, since creative things are often seen with a subjective lens, it’s easy to want to try and please everyone, as well as seeing other’s success and wondering “When will that happen to me?” Thus, we start to enter the cycle.
I remember a quote I saw a while back, something along the lines of “Write for only one person: yourself” or “Write for that one person that will like your work and forget about all the rest”. But all of this could just amount to the age-old adage of “it’s easier said than done.” Regardless, let’s dive in.
1.) The Blank Page & No Ideas
I’m constantly looking for a compelling story idea, so I’ll open up a blank Google Docs, or browse through my one-liners from years ago and wait for a strike of lightning to make my fingers type gold. If I force myself to write something (even stream of consciousness-type writings — which I do like, for the record) it’s usually like pulling teeth. Like my fingers are disgusted by each key I press.
2.) The Distractions
After a whole bunch of nothing (or at least nothing I feel is worthy), I’m feeling frustrated. So, what do you do? You look at people doing the thing you want to do, and doing it successfully — i.e. “inspiration.” Though in this case, it turns into something more along the lines of “distraction.” I get my inspiration from many places, like TV, video games, and books. And so…
3.) The Beginnings of Loathing
…watching or reading or playing these things makes me love how we can create phenomenal worlds and characters and art and everything that comes with being creative. And then that makes me pissed since I can’t do it at this very moment. For some reason, I just can’t churn it out like everyone else (seemingly) can.
4.) The Frustrations
Now that I’m properly pissed, I get up and close the tabs, devoid of any creative juices. This is the beginning of the full-on moping phase.
5.) The “Everyone Else is Better Than Me and I Suck” Mantra
It’s something that I’m sure we’ve all felt at one point in time. Essentially, it’s an inferiority complex. This one tastes uber bad to stomach because it’s inevitably self-deprecating and makes you feel like shit about yourself and your work. The comparisons run rampant; the what-ifs, the why-nots, the if-onlys are swimming together and laughing at me while we drown in them.
Once you get here, it’s hard to get out. If you weren’t happy with your stuff before, you’re really not happy with it now. Now I’m rethinking all my life choices, all the things that have brought me up to this point, and wondering to myself — Where did I go wrong? Why am I not like everyone else? Why can’t I just create the most amazing things that everyone else does? I’m a failure.
6) The Fear of Being Bad Before Even Trying
For a while, I’ll just give up altogether. I’m too scared to write anything because my only inclination is that it’s never going to be as good as the astronomically high level I’ve assigned it to. So, I just don’t.
Eventually, you do crawl out of this hole and make it back to the surface, perhaps armed with an idea that you want to create and explore, feeling ready to tackle. But, it’s as though there’s only a matter of time before we’re standing in front of a roundabout that looks like it wants to buck us off before we even begin.
The only exception to this cycle I’ve found is at the first step. At times, I’ll have a burst of energy for an idea, and get so excited to write it. But once I start to map it out, I can’t seem to get it to be where I want it to be and end up abandoning it in the recesses of my folders. Therefore, I’m not battling a blank page, but rather, an idea that won’t take form.
So now that we’ve figured out how this cycle begins and ends — what’s the strategy to flat-out destroy it?
The Process is A Destructive, Beautiful, and Necessary Evil
As I mentioned prior, something I often get told is I put too much pressure on myself. As a notorious perfectionist, this is to be expected. But that doesn’t mean that it’s OK.
Looking at this cycle that I’ve set up for myself, and that I’ve found myself in countless times, I realize how debilitating it is. I mean, I literally have a draft on Medium from two years ago where I tried to write about writer’s block and failed. I never finished it. But, since I’ve brought it up, here’s a stream of consciousness snippet from it:
I sit down, open a word document, and stare at the blank page.
It stares back at me. Then, it says:
“Well? Are you gonna do anything?”
First, I’m shocked that it even responded to me. I must really be hallucinating.
“You’re not. You’re just procrastinating. Wrong gerund. Or verb. Whatever it is. I’m not the writer. Aren’t you?”
Oh? Procrastinating? That’s funny. I’m here now, right? I’m writing this very thing, and someone is going to read it in their little head voice. Even if the words mean nothing, they’ll still appear in their head, in their own imagination. Somehow.
“So? If you don’t write things of substance, what’s the point?”
Substance. Hm. Maybe that’s the issue? I have all these ideas, but I feel like they don’t mean anything.
Maybe we’ve cracked a bit of the code. Thanks, internal me. You really pulled one out there. Now why can’t you just do that normally?
The easy approach is to beat myself up about never finishing this, and everything along the way that I’ve abandoned.
The hard approach is facing these faults head-on and recognizing when that cycle begins to rear its ugly head again. Because the battle against creative burnout, writer’s block, all that — it doesn’t just go away. It’s something we have to constantly fight the urge to fall into.
The truth is, we’re not machines — even if they are making AIs write scripts and books and whatever else they deem acceptable. But I am not a machine. I am not a robot. And expecting myself to write a perfect first draft that’s going to be the greatest work of art anyone’s ever known is just setting myself up for failure.
That’s why that cycle is so seductive. It’s so much harder to admit that hey, maybe this first draft isn’t the best — but you know what is? The fact that you tried to do it and still kept going, and are actively working on silencing those nefarious little psychological jabs. Because most of the time, the person whose work you’re using to make yourself feel like crap thinks their own work is just as crappy. (Or maybe not. Some creatives have big egos. But you get my point.)
You never want to get to the point where you become disillusioned with the thing you’ve loved. That’s why it’s OK to take time to not do anything. It’s OK to not be creative sometimes. It’s OK if you’d rather watch movies or go for walks or do anything but writing and being creative. Because we often forget that doing creative things is work. It takes a lot of effort to make sense of what is in your head and turn it into words or a painting or a song. When we beat ourselves up before we can even see a finish line, we’re not stopping to think about the process, and how beautiful it can be. And we’re definitely not patting ourselves on the back for it.
We Can Do This The Hard Way… or The Hard Way
So, there’s no easy answer. There’s no easy solution or an easy way to create anything. I would wish there was, but I don’t think we’d feel anything towards the final product. Someone who programs an AI to write a movie script wouldn’t feel attached to it as much as they would if they wrote the script themselves and went through the grueling process, would they?
At times, I’m afraid of the process. I don’t want to deal with it; I don’t want to do it; I want to just become a machine and produce endless works of art. But I know that’s not practical, and simply not doable. In reality, it’s OK for me to take my time and more importantly, to ask for help. It’s easy to think we’re in this by ourselves, because of the inclination of letting those inferior thoughts creep in again, or not knowing where to turn, but the beauty of the process is working with and getting help from others when you need it.
Creation can be a very internal thing, and we become obsessed with the end goal without thinking about the road to getting there. Taking a step back and asking questions is a start. But the most important thing is that it’s OK. It’s simply just OK. It’s OK to feel burnt out and not productive like everyone else, because you’re not everyone else. You’re you, and that’s all you need to be. And if you don’t feel like being creative now, it’s OK. Don’t force yourself. You’re always going to lose against that pesky blank page or blank canvas if you’re giving yourself an ultimatum as strict as your idea of perfection.
And now I sound like a stale self-help book. But it truly helped me to restructure my thinking in this way. When I acknowledge my faults and realize that hey, maybe my work isn’t so bad, and even if it is, who cares because I did something — I feel better about my creative prowess. It’s always going to be a battle, but you don’t have to make it super-ultra-extreme hard. In my mind, I think we all take a bit of our own hero’s journey for each work we attempt. And you know how good it feels to watch that denouement, don’t you?
Be nicer to yourself and you’ll be able to take on more than you think. It’s OK.
