Mastering Creative Anxiety
Some years ago, when my son was small, he spent some time fixated on the cover of a book I was reading, Mastering Creative Anxiety, by Eric Maisel. After a long, pensive stare, my son finally said:
“Why would anyone ever want to get good at that?”
It was a great observation, simultaneously wry and innocent. A comment that only a nine-year old could muster with true authenticity because it was so spot on about the vagaries of the English language, the way words can cross and flip and sometimes mean what you think and other times not.
I explained to my uber-competitive son who was always trying to truly master—i.e get really good at— soccer and origami and FIFA video games, that in this case the word did not mean to get better or proficient at, but to manage, so that ultimately it—it being the creative anxiety— wouldn’t manage or control you.
So what exactly is creative anxiety? We’ve all felt it, right? It often manifests as procrastination—finding something—anything to do that isn’t writing
During the last eight weeks I just passed through one of the worst cases I’ve ever had. My spouse and I both got walloped with covid in November, which included a hospital stay for one of us. From there, we emerged into two family birthdays, hosting a family Thanksgiving and then a Chanukah party, followed by a Xmas trip to see family in New York City, and then, a frantic rush to catch up and prepare for facilitating an upcoming writing retreat. While there wasn’t much I could do about being flat on my back with fever and aches with covid, and the family responsibilities I’d committed to, the longer I was away from my writing the more anxious I started to feel:
Where the F@*K are all my notes for my novel revisions? What about that Q & A I promised the editor for early December? How on earth am I gonna get that done when I still need to take a nap every afternoon because of lingering covid fatigue? Do I even remember HOW to write a fricking sentence?
You’d think that after 25 years of being a writer that I would have tools in place to manage this sort of nonsense, this horrific anxiety buzzing at my brain. But the more I didn’t write, the worse it got, zizzing in my ears when I woke at four in the morning, reprimanding me that that if I didn’t get up and write, I was no longer allowed to call myself a writer. The self-harassment got so bad that I found myself in a downward spiral, attending to everything else but writing, until the thought of returning to writing was so anxiety producing that I decided that cleaning out 30 years of papers from my home office would be a good project because it would take me so long that I wouldn’t ever again have to confront this wretched creative anxiety consuming my brain.
That’s how it went for me. If you’re reading this post on this very topic, you’re probably familiar with how this plays out for you. Ever cleaned the bathroom to avoid going to the computer? Ever lost three hours watching cute cat videos on Instagram, cooking an apple pie, or rearranging your 50 writing books alphabetically just to avoid the writing? You get the idea. The very thought of sitting down to write can generate so much anxiety we’ll do anything to avoid it.
So, this is where Maisel’s book comes in. In the book he addresses not only what specifically creative anxiety is, but why we have it, and what can we do about it.
According to Maisel, all humans have an inherent contradiction when it comes to creativity. Creativity is how we express our potential, employ our intelligence and spend time doing what we love. Creating makes us feel “whole, useful and devoted.” At the same time, anxiety is part and parcel of our modern human condition. Back in the day when we were cave people, we didn’t have time to sit around wondering about the meaning of life or our own self-worth. But today we do, and nowhere is this more prevalent than when we sit down to create. In fact, as Maisel points out, anxiety can hit us at any stage of the creating process—and bad news alert: there are more than 20 possible stages!
It can start with our first spark of a creative idea, manifest as we choose and embrace a creative life, and even rear its ugly head again when we finish a project. In between those stages are mountains of anxiety ruts: ego bruising, rejection, not mattering, failing, and even the golden ring —success! All of this mess creates anxiety, of course. And, what Maisel declares to be our central dilemma:
“We want to create, but we also don’t want to create so as to spare us all the anxiety.”
Yikes. That is one fricking dilemma. No wonder it’s so hard.
How then, do we work our way out of this?
There’s no right answer, but for me, most important is to recognize and name the anxiety for what it is. When it speaks, I try to tell myself it’s just fear speaking, and fear has no place at the artist’s desk. Sometimes I even open the door and shepherd it out. Sometimes I say, “hello, I see that you’re here, I’m going to eat a cookie to feel better and then you can go away.”
Maisel has a helpful series of steps you can take to diminish anxiety.
Be decisive. Stop wavering, Believe in yourself and your art.
Work on shrugging away small comments and comments that are not helpful.
Be realistic. A rejection is not a personal rejection of you
Find healthy ways to diminish the anxiety such as walks, showers, exercise, reaching out to a friend.
Maisel also lists more therapy-oriented strategies including:
Teaching yourself to rethink how you see the world
Refusing to listen to the negative self talk
Reminding yourself it’s only your brain telling you negative ideas and they are not true.
Mindfulness, physical relaxation and guided imagery are all on his list too.
At the daily level, when it’s just a question of getting started, rituals can be really useful to transition into the writing space.
In “Times, Tools and Talismans,” Susan Whyche describes some of the truly odd rituals some famous writers have used.
Dame Edith Sitwell sought inspiration by lying in a coffin. George Sand wrote after making love. Friedrich Schiller sniffed rotten apples stashed under the lid of his desk. A hotel room furnished with a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards, and a bottle of sherry suit[ed] Maya Angelou. Fugitive writer Salman Rushdie carries a silver map of an unpartitioned India and Pakistan. Charles Dickens traveled with ceramic frogs.
Fun to read, but I imagine most of us have rituals that lean more toward what Whyche refers to as less bizarre practices:
…eating, drinking, pacing, rocking, sailing, driving a car, riding a bus or train, taking a hot bath or shower, burning incense, listening to music, staring out windows, cleaning house, or wearing lucky clothes.
For me, it’s a mishmash. Sometimes just writing in my journal about how fucking anxious I am— naming it and pinning it to the page—has a way of magically eating up some of the anxiety. I also like little ceremonies. I light a candle, sometimes incense. I always, always make sure I have eaten because being hungry makes me anxious, and I don’t need MORE anxiety. Speaking of food, in support of Schiller’s rotten apple sniffing habit—it turns out mature fruit gives off a gas that suppresses panic. Who knew?
Unfortunately, what also drives me is that the anxiety generated when I am NOT creating eventually outweighs the anxiety of creation, an emotional state I accept as my reality, but try to avoid at all costs because as I just wrote, and experienced, that downward spiral was really unhealthy for my head.
So, how did I break through my eight week wall of anxiety?
First, at New Year’s I bought a book called 365 days of Art. Each day since January first, I have been pushing myself to do a brief art activity. This morning I found myself five days behind, and the process of sitting by myself, away from my messy office, alone at home, with only music and a set of fun pencils, released some of the fear. Physically separating myself from the ceaseless vicissitudes of daily life and working in an artistic medium that was just for myself, helped me reconnect to that amazing part of self that gets to focus only on process, and not product.
That, and looking at the word “SUBSTACK” written over and over on my to do list pushed me to open up this draft. Once I did that, it didn’t look so scary. Everything I’d drafted before covid bit my ass was still here, waiting to be polished and sent out into the world. So for that, I thank you readers for subscribing and reminding me I have a job to do.
It was a good reminder that even when the anxiety feels huge, sometimes it’s only a little shove or shift needed to get things going again.
So, if you’re struggling at all with creative anxiety, I hope this post helped.
I’ll close with my favorite advice from Maisel:
“Always remember that what you are doing matters to you. It is your job to make meaning, even if no one else cares right now. “
Hard to remember, but oh so important.
Because if you keep at it, one day someone will most definitely care.