Embracing Writer's Block, Part 3: The Creative Test of Faith

I used to believe that I shouldn’t sit down to write unless I had a compelling vision of what I’d say. Unfortunately, this attitude was the reason why, for many years, I didn’t do any creative writing. Sure, I wrote a lot, but only when somebody else (1) gave me a subject to write about and (2) was willing to pay me a bunch of money or give me a good grade.

Eventually, I started taking a look at why I had this mindset. Why was I reluctant to just sit down and see whether any interesting ideas came up?

What I ultimately saw was that I lacked faith in my creativity. I was assuming that, if I tried to write without an airtight plan, I’d squander hours at my desk, and end up with nothing but frustration to show for it.

My Emptiness Experiment

Armed with this knowledge, I decided to experiment with simply sitting, and trusting that inspiration would arise. I committed to myself that, if necessary, I’d sit there all night. I’d only give up if I woke up facedown on my desk in front of an empty computer screen.

My prediction that I’d get frustrated proved to be right. I labored mightily to fill the blank screen with words, but none of my ideas or sentences seemed to satisfy me. My shoulders grew painfully rigid, as if I were trying to physically push the emptiness away.

After an hour or two of helpless thrashing, it dawned on me that I wasn’t following the spirit of my experiment. Instead of having faith that my creative energies would emerge on their own timetable, I was trying to force them to work.

Dropping The Need To “Just Do It”

I began making progress only when I dropped the struggle. I sighed deeply, let my shoulders relax, erased the words I’d written just to fill space, and simply stared into the creative vacuum on my monitor.

In the moment when my flailing ceased, the emptiness in my mind, and on the screen, began to dissipate. Effortlessly, fluidly, another article began taking shape. Within twenty minutes, the new piece was ready for editing.

As it turned out, the physical act of typing the article wasn’t the hard part of the writing process. The difficult part was trusting that, eventually, my creativity would come out to play — letting go of my need to fill the emptiness, and having faith that it would pass away on its own.

In other words, I see the emptiness we encounter when we’re writing, or doing some other creative pursuit, as a test of our faith in ourselves. We pass the test when we end our thrashing and trust that, in its own time, and in its own unpredictable way, inspiration will show up.

Many people see writing as a matter of “just doing it” — of forcing ourselves to write something, no matter how much pushing, fighting or flailing it takes. This “beat yourself into submission” strategy seems to work for some people. But if it’s wearing thin for you, I invite you to try simply sitting, relaxing, and waiting on your muse.