A Creator who Can't Create

Recently, I have developed a nearly crippling fear of creating.

As a creative, that could pose kind of a problem.

Picture a painter without their brush.  A singer with no voice.  An actor who fails to find a stage.

For the artist, such impotence is a stranglehold.  Oxygen cut off, until the brain and ultimately the soul simply cease to be.

It’s like writer’s block where the issue isn’t an inability to come up with the right words, but rather being rendered powerless to press the keys needed to produce them.  Fingertips hovering, hesitating, halting just short of something profound.  The space between filled with but one thing.  Fear.

Is this good enough?  Am I good enough? Will anyone care about the things I have to say?  Do I care about the things I have to say?

Spending minutes to hours second guessing every word, every letter, every action, until the art has become engineered.  Methodical, calculated.  Broken down to the framework, the rules taught in books, with nothing of the artist left to build from there.

This is my art.  A faded tapestry of lessons, held together with the tenuous threads of doubt.

Anymore, it seems the only time I’m able to put my mind to the grindstone is when there’s a visible payoff, or rather a payout.  A cash prize at the end.  I’ve somehow sold out while barely being paid.

And while I’m fed by incentive, I find my heart still seems hungry.  Growing more and more empty as the cash comes in.  Every dollar I make seems to set my imagination to cinders.  Processing projects for clients, never producing passion for myself.

The desire is still there.  The need to create is actually all encompassing.  I feel it with my entire being, and every day that I sit and stare at a screen, watching the works of others, I know I’ve lost something of myself.  And how much can one lose before there is nothing left to give.

No thoughts left to pour onto the page.  No dreams left to shoot for the screen.  Nothing left but to feed on the fantasies of those few who found their voice.

Even now, I’m contemplating whether it’s worth it to attempt finish this.

Another idea, begging for completion, while rotting inside my tired mind.  It would fall to dust amongst the corpses of hundreds of others.  A mortuary within my imagination, every tenant a tragic loss, or so I tell myself.  But in another minute, I’ll believe they might have met the right fate.

Death to every dumb idea.

Nothing that I think warrants being made.  It’s not worth the time, the effort.  None of this means anything.  Do I mean anything?

It will be judged.  Or worse yet, no one will even care.  No one will notice this outpouring of self, my soul displayed.  It doesn’t matter.

I am my work.  My work is me.

I don’t matter…

The fear always finds me before I can finish. 

Perhaps, just once I’ll fight it off.  Just one time, I’ll create my vision.  I’ll cut through this dark shroud, and illuminate the universe with the wondrous world inside my head.  I have to do it.  I need to do it.

I can’t let fear stop me before---

The End.

Reviews

[JR]

This is some great introspection, and I think all creative people can identify with this. I think fear of failure is universal, and every time we create, we are putting ourselves out there to be judged... or even worse, ignored. There is always the temptation to stay within the comfortable lines we learned in school, but real art is being able to use our personal experience to cross those lines and make something new. You did that with this piece, I think. I could really connect with it.

[Coyote Poetry]

We must keep our hope and our vision my friend.
"Perhaps, just once I’ll fight it off. Just one time, I’ll create my vision. I’ll cut through this dark shroud, and illuminate the universe with the wondrous world inside my head. I have to do it. I need to do it.
I can’t let fear stop me before---
The End."
I understand the above lines. My work and life keep me from my real dreams. I keep reaching for my old dreams. Always good to read your work and I hope you are doing okay.
Coyote