I had a hard week. Nothing particularly challenging happened but I still found myself struggling. Struggling to create, that is. Even more broadly, I questioned the very value of my creativity. Whether all of this time I put into my craft is worthwhile. I’m usually able to push through these struggles; to make myself sit down at my desk, drag my pen’s ink across the page, and then finesse those scrawls into something a bit more coherent for you, dear reader. This week though, for whatever reason, I could not do that.
Of course, there is a part of me, perhaps even the majority of my being, that feels inadequate because of this fact. A part of me that has all kinds of deeply unkind thoughts about my inability to, at least for this week, create through whatever exactly it is that I’m going through. It also judges me for being unsure of the force that is getting me down.
This voice, however, is not the most reliable. In fact, I understand that it is one existing deep inside of me, perhaps deep inside of all of us, that is insatiable. It’s a voice that, even when I write a sprawling, thoughtful, 2000 word essay, remains unimpressed; instead, it will point out the places where I could have expanded my thoughts, the claims I could have backed up with empirical research, and the structures with which I could have experimented. Put another way, there is no satisfying this voice. As such, it is not a voice to be listened to too closely. Julia Cameron would refer to it as “The Censor.” I usually call it my lizard brain.
Therefore, instead of caving to my lizard brain and forcing myself to rush through the writing of a more fully-formed essay, I am choosing to accept where I was last week. A quote that helped with this process comes from 1000 Words, which is a great new book on writing by the fabulous Jami Attenberg. One of the essays within the book reads, “it’s simply a fact that our creativity is uneven from day to day… The unsuccessful day of writing isn’t a reflection of the quality of your brain or your commitment to your art. It is really, truly, just one bad day.”1 While I did have a tough, uneven week, that week is not necessarily a gloomy portention of the future. Instead, it is what it is: a tough week. I cannot do anything to change it after the fact; all I can do is show up this week and try again, which is exactly what I intend to do.
This week’s recommendations:
Love Lies Bleeding (2024), dir. Rose Glass
Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel
“Both Sides, Now,” both the 1969 version and the 2000 version, by Joni Mitchell
Attenberg, Jami. 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Stay Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. Simon Element, 2024.
Funny about Lizard Brain - I call it The Critic. I actually have a name for him, as I once met the human personification of him and it has helped me to have conversations with him and to tell him to fuck off. It's easier because he has an actual face in my mind, LOL.