A few years ago, I came across a YouTube video by the screenwriter Jeff Bollow. The video's title immediately drew me to watch it: Writer's Block Instant Cure. Although I usually don't trust such over-the-top titles, I allowed myself this time to go in and take a look. Already in the first few seconds of the video, I heard from Bollow the sentence that forever changed my perspective on writer’s block: Give yourself permission to write garbage. It’s that simple.
A writer’s block is happening because we don't give ourselves permission to write garbage. We feel that if we do not write something perfectly on the first attempt, we're just bad writers. Giving yourself permission to write something that isn't perfect the first time demolishes the writer’s block altogether.
However, after I finish writing despite the fear and the words are right there on the page, a new problem arises: how do I deal with this "garbage"?
Shadow of a doubt
The greatest antagonist of the poet is the doubt. Doubt is a paralyzing, terrifying, truly monstrous force. It ridicules any virtue, and through the doubt, every word turns into shards of glass that cut through your heart. The doubt makes us fear publishing our poems; it makes us hide our creations, throw our poems in the trash, and think our poems are never really ready. It sits inside our skull and laughs at our faces. Doubt is like a giant shadow that keeps us in the dark.
However, sometimes the doubt is totally justified. Sometimes our poems need improvement, Sometimes they’re not perfect, and sometimes they totally suck. If anyone could write a masterpiece, no creation would be a masterpiece. The doubt is a force of gravity that keeps our feet on the ground. It prevents us from getting lost in our own fantasy.
I know many writers and authors with different and varied relationships with doubt: some simply ignore it and publish right after they finish writing (Fried Chicken Poets), others suffer from a tremendous amount of pressure and anxiety and publish only a poem or two a year, and others stay somewhere in the middle, sometimes publishing and sometimes don’t, all depending on their gut feeling.
Where are you standing on this spectrum?
Self-criticism, not self-flagellation.
Like many things in life, here, too, it is all a matter of balance. Self-criticism is a great tool, and it is vital for the self-editing process. Without self-criticism, there is no possibility of improvement because we are sure everything we write is perfect. Doubt opens the door for us to know the best version of ourselves.
Everyone criticizes us all the time: our friends, our colleagues, our spouses, our family. Sometimes, people criticize us in a terrible way, like a friend who constantly judges us on every word that comes out of our mouth, and sometimes in a gentle way, like a mother gently reminding us that we forgot to clear the plate from the table after dinner.
Therefore, it is crucial to mend our self-criticism. There will always be people who think your poetry is not good enough. There’s no reason for you to join them. Literary critics, readers, friends, family, there will always be those who think your poetry is terrible. Sometimes, it will stem from jealousy. Other times, it might stem from personal taste or general willingness to help you improve. The trick is to show compassion towards ourselves, to allow us to do self-criticism, not self-flagellation.
Hand in hand with the inner critic
The doubt accompanies us all the time. As I have shared in other posts, I have poems I have edited for a year or two before I published them. I'm not intimidated by keeping a poem in a drawer for five or ten years if I think it needs improvement because I've learned to trust my inner critic. I know I'm not judging myself too harshly because I continue to publish poetry all the time and don't let it stifle my work.
Leonardo da Vinci once said, "Art is never finished, but only abandoned." I agree. At the end of the day, after you have set the stage for the doubt, listened attentively to the inner critic, edited, deleted, and reworked your poem, now comes the time to "abandon the work" and simply release it. I also have some published poems that I would have written differently nowadays. You will always feel this way.
Don't drag your self-critic after you, and don't let it drag you after itself, either. Walk hand in hand with it, and it will bring you as far as possible.
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