You know that little voice in your head that keeps telling you that you haven’t really accomplished anything, and maybe it’s just time to admit it and give up? Admit it, you have that voice. We all do.
It is a constant struggle for creatives, to keep moving ahead, to keep trying, to keep creating, even when that little voice becomes a shout. And especially when you reach “a certain age,” where another voice may join in and tell you that you’ve “earned a rest.”
In the warts-and-all department, as I promised in the very beginning of this column, I am forced to admit I have been listening to those voices. I have been buying into the narrative, telling myself that I am just resting, getting over the years of driving myself to do as much as possible, taking a breather after decades of a full-time job, family and household responsibilities, and trying to create in the cracks of time between obligations.
The bigger problem is that when we buy into this narrative we devalue what we have created, and that leads to devaluing that which we will - or at least could - create. We devalue that creative urge, procrastinate giving ourselves time to create, and flatten our creative selves.
I am trying to fight back against that stagnation, finding positive ways to move forward. I have talked about using one creative outlet to feed another, filling the well by consuming the output of other creators, and being kind to ourselves.
Just recently my friend Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote “Reading and Writing,” about the need for writers to read for pleasure, to dive deeply into the work of another writer and to read for the sheer enjoyment of the story. She knows what she’s talking about, and I highly recommend you read her thoughts.
One other thing happened this week, and it has been a powerful tool in fighting the feeling that I haven’t accomplished anything.
In the course of putting in the new rug, and moving the bookcases in the living room (I may recover from that someday…), we tidied up what we writers lovingly refer to as our Brag Shelf. Now I freely admit that not all the books on that shelf are mine; some are my husband’s, and some are books where one or the other (or both) of us shares a Table of Contents with other writers - like the anthologies to which we have contributed.
When you put all those books, magazines, computer games, and videos together, it gets pretty impressive. This is the "nothing" my little voice is talking about. (Hint: that little voice is a big liar.)
Once we got the bookcase straightened up, with the duplicate copies tucked into the bottom shelf, it was a visual reminder of what we have accomplished, and it isn’t the “nothing” that the little voice kept telling me it was.
My husband, as we were working on this project, summed it up perfectly: “What you didn’t do today, doesn’t negate what you did do yesterday.”
Don’t let that little voice take away the value of what you did do yesterday - and don’t let it keep you from what you will do tomorrow.