Like many people, I have difficulty doing any sort of creative writing in a deliberate fashion. If I’m not able to immediately put my fingers on a keyboard at the moment inspiration strikes, the passion will miss me and the moment will pass. 

In an attempt to get around this I got a notebook to write down ideas in the hopes that I’d then be able to recall this inspiration at a more convenient time and place. But it doesn’t work that way. 

by gr33nt4u (more behind than ever!)

In the moment I will get excited. Ideas and words will rush through me, everything seems brilliant, important, and essential. I jot something down and then go about my business. I get home, look in the notebook and see “yell out stupid shit”. No word of a lie. That’s in there. And I’m not sure what it means.

So rather than being this repository of my genius, it’s a record of my dementia. It’s a written analogy of the situation where pot smokers record their conversations thinking they’re profound in the moment, and then realizing afterward that maybe their thoughts on the subjectivity of existence are not that novel. In fact I seem to remember that topic already being covered by someone else a little while ago.

by @BB

And even in the event that the thought was recorded accurately and actually seems to have some sort of substance to it, I find it hard to rekindle the enthusiasm I may have had not but 2 hours before. It just doesn’t seem important anymore, not worth the effort.

If I try to force the issue, insist to myself that it’s crucial this thought be shared with the world, I only get something garbled and lacking passion. I get the facts but not the feeling. Suddenly what I wanted to be an impassioned rant on the public’s perception of their security in a modern world becomes this dry recitation of the capabilities RFID technology. And no one get excited about RFID technology.

by bre pettis

But enough introspection already. The point of all of this is that I’m beginning to see that the mark of a successful writer is someone who not only writes when they feel it, but also when they don’t. 

So what keeps me from writing? That’s one area where I think almost everyone is the same. It’s a combination of procrastination and a fear of inadequacy that feed back on one another. I don’t write because I’m tired, then because I haven’t written in awhile I don’t write because I feel I’ve lost my audience and don’t have anything worth saying.

Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine refers to negative voice in his head as the little hater that fuels the feedback cycle of laziness to self-doubt to more laziness. My little hater makes it difficult to justify my own voice when it seems that there are so many genius’s out there doing what I already do, but better.

by ɹǝɟɹnsןןıɥ sɐxǝʇ — WW Tribe Wanderer

And that’s the where a new kind of thinking is needed. In her TED talk Elizabeth Gilbert refers to genius not as any specific special kind of person, but as something that could potentially happen to anyone who is already engaged in a creative process. This is a critical distinction. 

If you believe genius is an inherent quality then you may decline to create something because you fear you are not the genius that others may be. But if you force yourself to think of genius as a condition, as something that happens to someone who is dedicated, then there is no barrier to entry and the only way you’ll succeed is by frequently putting yourself in a position where that genius can find you and act through you.

To paraphrase her, if you show up for your part of the job often enough, sooner or later the genius will show up too.

by Nicholas Gray