For a long time, I’ve been suffering from writer’s block. It does feel funny to say that as someone who hasn’t written much. The more I avoid writing, the scarier it becomes and the less I feel able to do it. The further away I get from the last thing I wrote, the more it feels like whatever is produced next needs to be something sensational. The stakes become unnecessarily high and I attach all my self-worth to it.
I received a copy of The Artist’s Way for my birthday last year. I don’t know if it’s cliché to say that it impacted me greatly and perhaps even more cliché to say that I never quite got around to finishing it. Finishing it! That’s something that is difficult to do, isn’t it? That’s for later on though. Anyway, the most impactful thing that I took away from The Artist’s Way was the practice of morning pages. It is framed as something that might be hard for some — writing pages and pages of unstructured, unjudged and often repetitive thoughts. Perhaps even ruminations. I recently learnt the proper meaning of “ruminating” — I thought it held a similar meaning to mulling things over or being pensive. And then I realised that all I do is ruminate. I go through scenarios in my mind and replay them and then I make up the next part of the story. It often ends with me being angry at people for something that they didn’t even do. Once I manage to grip on to some sense of reality, I always think, “how did I just spend the whole day obsessing over this thing that didn’t happen, playing out and perfecting each line of dialogue but I can’t sit down for 20 minutes and write something?”
But now I’ve gone off on a tangent of unstructured and repetitive thoughts.
And that’s my whole point! I immediately latched onto morning pages because they gave me the sense that I was achieving something. At the end of the day, if I hadn’t written a single word towards a career, at least I had written three pages of absolute dribble. Procrastination masked as productivity.
When writing, I find the structuring and the ending the hardest part (after the starting and sticking to it part). This was another draw to morning pages — the fact that they never have to be completed or resolved. I can trail off in the middle of a thought.
The point is, I chose the safest thing to take away from a process that is meant to be challenging and uncomfortable. Procrastination is safe and consistent and therefore addictive.
This post is not saying anything revolutionary, I am aware. I am also aware that it is a bit of a self-indulgent rant but it is my attempt to enter an era of starting and finishing things. Starting something, finishing it and posting it onto a somewhat public platform that I hope nobody reads.
So, here’s to that.
(I want to be clear that I still think the practice of morning pages is fantastic when used for good and not as a means of self-sabotage)