Oh how my creative debt grows
Deep within the labyrinths of my digital notebooks lies a page called Ideas. I open it occasionally, and each time it fills me with equal amounts of shame and hope. The contents of this page are simply a list of personal projects that I’d like to pursue someday, and as I write this, I am becoming aware that the word someday evokes a feeling of anxiety.
This page, you see, holds all my Creative Debt. Each time I write down an idea this debt grows, and as it stands now I think I may very well die a defaulter. I’ve reflected on this before. What is it about undertaking a creative project that so fills me with dread? Why am I conflicted, both excited and afraid?
It’s not just me. Every other creative I come across has the same problem. The thing that gives us joy, also threatens us with pain, the kind that foretells an enormous struggle. I want to build and at the same time, I cannot get myself to start, but then, I also don’t stop adding ideas to the page, and so, my creative debt grows.
This morning, I was reading an essay by George Orwell, titled Why I write, and I came across this passage towards the end.
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.”
This is common in the biographies of creatives. Here is Agatha Christie, speaking about what it is like to write a book.
“There is always, of course, that terrible three weeks, or a month, which you have to get through when you are trying to get started on a book… There is no agony like it. You sit in a room, biting pencils, looking at a typewriter, walking about, or casting yourself down on a sofa, feeling you want to cry your head off.”
Artistic Struggle it seems, is a real thing, so then, what causes it? Perhaps biology plays a role. There is a lot of interest in the correlation between mental illness and art, with some theories hypothesizing that being able to access both hemispheres of the brain, allows for faster and more novel associations. Some studies also show structural differences in the brains of artists (as opposed to non-artists).
The fucked up thing in all of this is, I write blog-posts the way an addict takes a hit. I want to keep the buzz going. I want the thrill of writing without the anxiety that comes with it. A short post like this one serves that need, without the terror of creating something substantial.
I’m settling for popcorn, when I could be pigging out at the buffet. Seen like this, creating art is a form of courage, which makes me feel like some form of coward.