by As anyone that has ever embarked upon any creative endeavor knows, all of us, at one time or another, will run into the widely known, and greatly feared “writer’s block”. This is the first in a series of posts in which I hope to explore, and ultimately deal with, an almost 15-year old case of writer’s block. I also hope that my experiences will help others in the same situation.
I won’t bore you (at least not during this post) with details of my past writing. Let’s just say, there was a time when things came easily to me, and whether or not any of the stuff I wrote in the past was any good, is not of any concern to me, as I was writing, and I was happy doing it. Starting in 1996, the ability to write went away. I’m not sure what happened when I turned 20, but the flow stopped. Writing music and lyrics up to that point had been simply an exercise in sitting down, and turning on the faucet. It required no tricks to get myself into a creative mindset, and no forced or contrived methods of getting my message out of my head. It simply happened. That’s not to say the writing wasn’t hard work. It was emotionally draining, and required quite a bit to translate the emotions and thoughts into something in the physical world. However, it was never difficult. I was able to just let things happen.
Since then, nothing. I mean sure, I’ve had some great ideas musically and lyrically since then. I’ve written one song that is complete musically, and I have multiple gigabytes of unfinished works on my laptop. Lyrically, the flow is almost completely dead. Everything sounds cheesy, contrived, and forced, even if the lyrics are truly representing real feelings I have.
I don’t have a solution to this today. I do think I’ve identified the problem. I think the problem is that I’ve become too much of an adult. I’m hypercritical of myself, because I want my creations to be good. Being hypercritical of one’s self is like trying to turn on a rusted faucet. It’s hard, if not impossible, to turn. And by the time you get it to turn a little bit, you give up and move on.
I’m giving up too early. How do I keep moving forward?