By Kenji CroslandOne of the most common cures for writer’s block that you’re likely to come across is to focus on the creative process while giving no thought to the outcome. Thinking too much about whether or not your writing will be well received pulls you away from the present moment, away from the flow of writing itself. When you’re out of the flow, writing becomes a chore, and the words seem to have less life in them as a result.
But focusing on the process is easier said than done. When we tell ourselves not to focus on the final draft, all we can think about is the final draft. It’s like the old phrase “don’t think about elephants.” The moment the words are spoken, you’ve got a snorting, stamping pachyderm knocking over tables in your head. I personally have tried to focus on the process only, to “just write” and not worry about the outcome, but I wasn’t able shake the habit of thinking about what other people would think. It was only when I began to realize just how futile this was that I started to change.
I changed because the outcomes continued to defy my expectations. The writing I had done that I had personally found weak or lacking was often the most well received by the readers. Conversely, the writing that I considered to be my best work, a “shining example of my genius”, was often subject to lukewarm or even negative reviews. When my results ran contrary to my hopes and expectations, I was naturally disappointed.
I won’t go into all the details here, but recently an ambitious project that I had spent the better part of a year working on did not take off the way that I had imagined it would. I had imagined great success and fanfare following its release, and had spent so much of the living on that imagined success. When it finally came time to release what I had created to the world, however, my product did not launch as I had expected it to. It sputtered.
I was devastated. I must admit that I seriously considered giving up creative pursuits altogether. Why do it if disappointment was all I got in return?
What I didn’t realize, however, was that my disappointment was actually a gift. It helped me come to terms with the fact that all the hoping and fretting in the world would never change the reception that my writing (or any of my creative endeavors), would get--so I stopped. I decided from that point on to focus only on the process. I can’t say that I don’t think about outcomes from time to time, but it happens much less now than it used to.
My sincere hope is that you don’t need to have a huge failure or big disappointment to gain creative freedom. I hope that after reading this post you can recognize that thinking about how your writing will be received will not only impede the flow of your writing, but also affect its quality. But, like toddlers who need to touch fire to fully understand the pain of being burned, so too must we must understand the emotional pain linked to thinking too much about how our work will be received before learning to avoid it.
So, when you find yourself disappointed that your efforts in writing don’t meet your expectations, don’t do what so many writers do and abandon the pursuit of creativity altogether. Rather, take advantage of the moment. Realize the consequences that attachment to the outcome of your writing has brought you and use that realization to sever the link between expectation and disappointment. Once that link is broken, you can focus more fully on the joy of writing itself.
Today’s guest post was written by Kenji Crosland, a writer for TeachStreet. TeachStreet is website dedicated to providing online and local classes as well as writing courses.
Interested in contributing a guest blog post of your own? Check out the guest blogger guidelines.Flickr photo courtesy of Brave Heart