Brick Walls & Breakthroughs

Ever have this happen? You’re writing a story, working on a song, a painting, whatever. You’re in your office, your bedroom, your creative place. Inspiration has struck. You’ve been cruising along at breakneck speed like a methed up trucker doing ninety on the interstate. The juices are finally flowing, you’ve caught your groove and you are on a roll. And then, BAM: Brick wall. The trucker’s smashed into a sanctuary and hundreds of exotic animals have escaped. Bad day for everyone. The trucker’s in deep shit and you are left with an empty head. The inspiration is gone as quickly as it came. Your well has dried up and you can’t remember what you were after. Were we going to paint glasses on the cat or…? It’s like someone hit you with the mind eraser from Men In Black. “Look here, please,” they point to the tip of the little metal rod that we all know is some weird alien dildo. Listen, everyone is thinking it.

Anyway, back on track: Creative blocks are a real thing. No one is immune. Not even god (I think that’s why the DMV is a thing). The question I get asked for more often than anything else (yes, even more than “what’s your favorite tattoo?”) is, “how do I deal with writer’s block?”

In the past, at least when it comes to music, I’ve always told people to step away. Go do something else. Come back to it later. I’d given this advice because I’ve always thought of myself as someone who rides waves of inspiration, never forcing anything, letting it come naturally. But, I think I’ve figured something important out.

While writing this novel, I realized that creativity is about 90% refinement and 10% inspiration. My ratios may be off here, but my point remains: Creating something out of nothing is hard no matter what form you put it into. Chasing perfection on the first go around is the same as entering a strongman competition while never having lifted weights. In regards to music, the reason I’ve always waited for inspiration is because that’s when I write at my best. Most other things that get worked on is junk. Filler stuff that I know is going to get trashed, anyway. So, why bother?

I read a story recently: A professor gave two sets of students a task. Group A was to write as many short stories as they could over the course of thirty days. Didn’t matter how awful the stories were, they just had to write as many as possible. Group B was tasked with writing one story to the absolute best of their ability. At the end of the thirty days the professor found that the students who’d written multiple stories had not only greatly improved in their craft, but had significantly better stories than the group tasked with writing just one. As a matter of fact, the students in Group B, the ones who only had to write one story, most of them didn’t even finish the assignment. The professor surmised that this was because the pressure of creating the perfect thing had stopped many of them from ever starting to begin with. Most, he found, ended up getting caught up in theory, structure, character arcs, etc.

I think this story is important because we put so much pressure on ourselves to create the perfect thing that 1. it sucks the fun out of it, and 2. it makes it overwhelming. Where do we even get started? This story also illustrates the fact that simply doing something over and over again will make you better at it.

Which brings me back to my novel: I’m an edit as I go type guy. Always have been. However, the task of writing a lump sum of sixty thousands words dedicated to one story was a mountain to climb. I decided that no matter how bad it got, I’d keep going. Because it was more important for me to finish the story than anything else. After all, you can edit a badly written sentence, chapter or paragraph. You can’t edit nothing. And, let me tell you, there were some times were I’d finish a paragraph and think, “holy shit, this is so bad. So, so bad.” But, you know what? I did it. I finished. I hammered it out. However, I’ve not gone back to it yet, because I want to let it simmer so I can look at it with fresh eyes. Then, I will tear it apart and turn the same story into something completely new. Something better than it ever could have been, had I edited as I went. Actually, I’d probably still be working on it now if I’d gone that route. And probably well into the summer, too.

I didn’t want to turn the lights out, throw my legs up and say, “well, that’s that. Guess I’ll pound sand for a while.” So I decided to keep writing. I’d keep my same schedule: Make coffee, write until lunch. Write whatever I wanted. Short story, blog post, whatever, as long as I was still writing. The very next day I started working on a new story. Something completely different. A small nugget of an idea with no clue where it was going, who my characters were, anything. Just a simple premise.

Here was the real eye opener for me: Every single bit of prose I was writing was so much better than anything I’d written in the first draft of the novel, that it was noticeable enough to make me go, “whoa.” Writing so much in a short period of time without judgement (for the most part) allowed to me to actually finish something that not a lot of people are able to. And, I think, made me better along the way.

Anyway, the point here is that first drafts of anything: a song, a painting, etc, are going to be bad. In fact, expect them to be bad. Because most of the work is done by refining. And, like I said before, you can’t refine nothing. In Matt Bell’s, “Refuse to Be Done,” he likens writing a novel to chiseling a sculpture. A rough draft is barely skimming the surface. It’s only after hours and hours of refinement that the shapes and grooves of fingers and eyes begin to take shape. It’s only in staying committed to something that the “perfect” we’re all expecting can shine through in the way we’ve always seen or heard in our heads.

So, what does this mean for writers block? Well, for one, don’t worry if it sucks because you’re just going to change it later. Do it anyway. Force yourself to get in a habit of coming up with something, even if you know it’s bad. Put a place-holder in it’s spot, if you have to, until you can come back to it. Doing this will help you figure out what works and what doesn’t, and may even lead you down some creative paths that you didn’t initially think of.

I guess that’s enough lecturing for me, today. Hopefully this inspires at least one of you to finish that last little bit of a song, that final paragraph, those last couple details on the glasses of your cat, or whatever you’re painting.

Remember: If you wait for inspiration, chances are you’ll never finish. Do it now so you can come back later and polish it into perfection.