“The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you didn’t write.” – Unknown
In your creative pursuits, sooner or later you’re sure to run up against writer’s block. It’s not a malady exclusively reserved for novelists – as a musician, artist, writer, athlete, student or thinker you are going to occasionally “hit the wall”. The words don’t come, the ideas don’t flow. You can’t see your next move and are uncertain of where to begin. You misstart, abandon efforts, do-over. It’s a frustrating situation with no discernable path to take.
A lot of times it’s the curse of excellence. Maybe you feel under pressure to live up to your last effort, or to match the achievements of someone else. Maybe you’ve relied on a very active muse that fails to show up now. Maybe your last efforts were so focused, you’ve literally exhausted your sources and the well seems a little dry.
The best advice I’ve ever received on beating this situation is simply to do. Write, or play, or think. It doesn’t matter if it seems mundane, or if it’s not your best effort. It doesn’t matter if it turns out to be something you’d be ashamed to let see the light of day. The very act of creating is the greatest impetus to tapping your creative spirit. Even a bad effort can be later edited to something acceptable. It can produce mistakes you learn from and occasionally award you with a little direction. It gets unclear ideas out on the playing field where they can be refined. Best of all, it defeats the desire to stand still, to slack off. You never learn or grow from NOT doing.
I struggle with this problem a lot in songwriting. It never ceases to amaze me how I can write volumes about nothing with no effort and create songs practically on the fly, but manage to choke up when it comes to putting a “serious” song together. The pressure to do better, to live up to a standard I set for myself is often suffocating. So when I start to choke, I write. Silly songs about everyday details, or about utter nonsense. And it always helps. Nine times out of ten, whatever I do finds a home. The music gets refined, the lyrics rewritten and before you know it, there’s something I can live with.
So don’t choke. Just do.
