Day 173: Some Thoughts on Creativity (An Argument with Myself)

Warning: There’s about to be a lot of whining. Feel free to skip ahead to the next thing you were going to do to fill these days of endless nothing.

I speak as someone that has to stay home because I am not a doctor, nurse, gas station or grocery store employee (I know there are more essential workers out there; sorry if I did not mention you). I speak as someone that takes an identity as a writer, and a writer that has taken on the task of writing something creative every day for an entire year.

Yes, professional writers write every day. And if my bachelor's degree dictates what I should be pursuing, it is that. But professional writers have stories, subjects that they find in the world (journalists) or subjects that they choose to write about for an extended period of time (novelists). Neither of which (or at least no author that I know of) write a new piece every day with a different subject that they've created on their own.

I chose to pursue this project because of its uniqueness — its “go big or go home” kind of quality. I also chose to do this to break through an internal fear of an audience. I believe that fear still exists at different levels on different days.

On a typical day, I will write in the latter half of the day. This is due to a combination of other interests, procrastination, and the hope that something will inspire me. During normal days, where I am teaching, driving, interacting with more than three other human beings and two dogs, I tend to find that writing at the end of the day is not particularly difficult because there were many ideas flowing through my head all day. But when there is very little going on, I find that the mind follows suit. I find it difficult to come up with a unique topic that will, hopefully, pique the interest of some of my family and friends.

As I stated before, there is still a fear that exists. Or perhaps it’s just self-criticism. Either way, I try to make every piece of writing unique and varied from the previous day. Lately, and probably for the past month, I have noticed that I have written a lot of poetry. That, in itself, is not a bad thing. But I want to change up the format every few days, at least. I am finding that in the midst of this pandemic that my motivation and creativity for this project and writing, in general, is waning.

There are some days where I would like not to be productive at all. Yet, I find ways to keep my mind busy. I started learning the piano again. I have been reading a dense book. And, as most of you know, I have been putting together puzzles. But the passion that I once had for this project is quickly becoming a chore rather than a pleasure.

Honestly, I think I’m just too hard on myself and set the bar high to build my stamina and writing skills. Albeit, good reasons to set a bar high. This may have been another unrealistic goal.

The question every day is Why? Why should I be writing this? Is this interesting to me? Are other people going to find it interesting? I highly appreciate the ten to twenty people that are consistently reading these posts or at least clicking on the link. As an author, I want to entertain my audience. And I want my words to be something worth reading.

I’ve quit a lot of things in my life. Most of it was for a good reason. But this is one thing that I will not be quitting. I will crawl over that finish line with bloody knees if I have to. In this case, my fingers will be bleeding. There were many reasons that I started this project and all those reasons are still valid. There is still a healthy amount of fear and 192 days to go. Creative or not, interesting or not, I will find a way to make it. You may have to read a lot more poetry, but that’s okay. Maybe by the end, I’ll have a book’s worth of poems that I can self publish. Maybe this whole project is worth something to someone besides my family and friends. That’d be something.

What I must keep in mind is that I am my hardest critic. I am building my skills. I am chipping away at a very big goal. Hopefully, it will all be training for the next big novel.

Nothing else to do except keep on trucking. Catch ya on the flip side.

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Author’s Note #1: Thanks for reading this rant.

Author’s Note #2: I still haven’t done an all Author’s Note post. I’m saving that one.

Author’s Note #3: All great things come in threes. I have no scientific evidence to back that up. This is taking up my puzzling time.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay