When The Going Gets Tough

Image by helloimnick

A while ago, someone told me, “when you lose motivation, you’ve forgotten what you’re fighting for”.

I think about that a lot. In some situations, it’s completely true. Sometimes, it’s a lot more complicated. When it comes to writing, lack of motivation usually means one thing: I think I’m not good enough.

It’s not lack of motivation, it’s lack of confidence in myself and my abilities. My inner critic, whom I’ve named Jeff, is an amalgamation of all those people who made fun of me or my writing. Interestingly, this seems confined to writing. Tell me I’m terrible at maths and I will agree with you. Tell me my house looks like a cyclone hit and I’ll laugh with you. But my writing? That’s sacred, hands off.

Of course, I don’t expect everyone to like my work. Even if I’m your favourite author, you’re not going to like everything I write. And that is perfectly ok.

My inner critic Jeff is a jerk. He knows it and I know it. “You’re not good enough to pull this off,” Jeff says. Then Jeffs laughs at me. Sometimes, Jeff is too loud. Sometimes, he retreats into the dark burrows of my mind, tail between legs, ready to pounce next time.

The best writing advice I ever got was, just write. Even if your own Jeff says it’s shit. Even if you actually know it’s shit. Even if you don’t know what to write. Just write. There’s no perfect inspiration, no motivational pep talk, no magic formula. Just write.

A 12-step program for struggling creatives

Recently, I came across Julia Cameron in three separate mentions. Usually when things happen in threes, I take that as a sign. So I bought a copy of her seminal work, The Artist’s Way, and began the task known as Morning Pages. These pages are three handwritten pages of stuff. Stream of consciousness, unedited and raw. If you can’t think of anything to write, you write “I can’t think of anything to write” for three pages. Write that you forgot to get dog food or your fingers are cold or you have a headache or you don’t want to do this. Just write.

The purpose of these pages is to explore your creative block. For me, the first few days poured onto the page a plethora of self-sabotaging thoughts and how much I hated where I was, creatively speaking. I’ve been struggling to finish the last couple of chapters in my novel. I stopped writing altogether. Morning Pages showed me why.

I’m not good enough.

The mantra rattled around my brain until I gave in. I can’t write. I’m kidding myself. Those people who like my novel? They’re just being nice. I’m a fraud. A failure. Untalented. Lost in the sea of actual talent.

With the help of Morning Pages, I began to write again. I challenged myself to write a short story for an e-magazine. Telling myself this particular publication is a low bar; the editor accepts pretty much everything as long as all the words are spelled correctly. But the editor didn’t get back to me for two days. Two days. Was I wrong about the low bar? Did my story actually suck? Was Jeff right all along? My story did get accepted and will be published in the June edition.

Next, I challenged myself to enter another writing competition, called Literary Taxidermy. They give you the first and last lines of a famous story or poem, and you fill in an original story seamlessly joining these two lines. I entered last year and had a ton of fun writing about insurance fraud. This year, I started with an idea, and four drafts later, it’s still just an idea. As Julia Cameron says, creative recovery takes time.

I shall keep writing and rewriting this particular short story until I have something I’m happy with. How will that come about? Just write.

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