The Terror of Making
Why creatives stop creating
At the end of my junior year of high school, I decided I was no longer going to be creative. That was it for me. No more stories, no more writing, no more making movies with the dated DSLR I got for Christmas and whatever friends (and confused friends of siblings) I could wrangle together. I was going to stop being creative altogether, all at once.
So altogether, all at once, something essential was sealed. I can’t claim hindsight here; I knew — a part of me always knew — what I was doing.
Others knew what I was doing. When I told my film teacher of three years that I wouldn’t be signing up for her class again the next year, so as to focus on “academics,” I got a simple reply:
“You’re gonna miss it.”
She knew. I knew. I would miss it. I did miss it.
I didn’t always miss it in a big way, in fact I rarely did. Rather, it became a small way of missing something, which is just so much worse. If you miss something in a small way, it’s because missing it in a big way, missing it completely, would destroy you. So instead, you adopt a way of missing that sits in your heart and waits. Plant a flower tight between your ribs; it comes into bloom beautifully, all petals and thorns and an immense longing for the sweet touch of sunlight.
The small way of missing traps you like children playing at the beach are trapped in the path of an oncoming wave they haven’t decided to jump through or over yet. You can always step aside, you can always go out to meet the wave; it is in the waiting that you doom yourself. Because, right when you think you’ve got it figured for a jumper, the tide is pulled out from under your feet and you are swallowed in an instant — dashed against the patient shore.
And so I was trapped. I planted the flower. I waited for the wave. And I felt the water begin to rush out from around my feet. Now I’m here. So what does that mean? How can be creativity be snuffed out so thoroughly and rekindled so intensely?
In this essay, I want to break down exactly what lead me to abandon creative work. Starting with the feelings and ending with the process, I hope to draw out the pith of creative discontent.
Let’s start with a simple truth:
Creating is terrifying…
To go back a bit. I didn’t decide to stop being creative out of a teenage whim, and I assume most other creatives could never be so easily swayed to drop such an essential piece of themselves. What drives the kind of self-lobotomy I experienced, and motivates the phantom pain of that incomplete sense of self, is terror.
The terror of creating is the greatest enemy of the creative. It is the terror of being truly known. The terror that asks you to hold back, to be less and, by doing so, risk less. Because, when we create, more is risked than judgement — this is not a fear of criticism. In the end, no one can hurt you like yourself, and it is so easy to hurt yourself when creating.
…because you have to let it hurt you.
Creating is a soulful process; this is where it derives its potential for terror. Loving and forgiving are other soulful processes because they require every inch of the complete self to be done properly. You can’t love someone well, or forgive a wrong gracefully, or create something beautiful without exposing so much of your soul that the risk of destroying it becomes unavoidable.
All of these processes offer one trade-off: there is no joy to be found here without pain, no peace without terror. I’m planning on exploring this concept even further in a future essay, as it’s fundamental to how I think about creativity.
The pain, and from that the terror, of creating is defined by the space between what is realized by the process and what was envisioned beforehand. If the vision is failed, even a little, the soul feels suffocated, trapped in a poor translation. The creative either sits with the self-deception, shakes the cage in wrathful fear, or holds the pain and goes inward again.
All of these options hurt. There is no other way for a creative to be than constantly anticipating future failure. The future discomfort with being known and being vulnerable; the future horror of putting everything into your work and finding the exposed soul ugly and wanting. These are the waves you dive through. There are more waves on the other side. There will always be more waves, more diving, or jumping, or being tossed hard against the sand.
Accepting the struggle and the terror of the struggle is the choice that defines creativity. Creating good art is impossible if one does not understand the cost. Like love and forgiveness, this is all in.
So what was my problem?
I didn’t go all in. That’s easy to see. I infected my creativity with a persistent hesitancy that left me shackled to the shore, unable to meet the ocean. When I decided to stop being creative, I was simply confirming the lengthy process I had already undergone, that of becoming uninspired.
Start with the uninspired creative…
The creative in crisis always seeks to uninspire themselves. In essence, they are killing the flame and blaming the darkness for their dissatisfaction. Most creatives in the process of becoming uninspired are not aware of it — I know I wasn’t — because it is an unconscious response to the terror. We become uninspired to protect ourselves and, in doing so, forgo any peaks for fear of valleys.
Uninspiration — a bastard word I already love — can look like a lot of things. For me, it became a withdrawal from fiction and a practiced reimagining of myself that replaced creativity with analytical instincts. I didn’t read much or watch anime. I effectively convinced myself that I was more thoughtful than creative, more of an academic than an artist.
Becoming uninspired is a tragic kind of undoing. It leaves you safe but listless, carving the space deep in your chest for the seed to grow. It is the first loss I experienced in distancing myself from my creativity, and the so it became the first thing I had to regain when I came back. But more on that later.
…and add an overwhelming fear of failure.
Abandoning creativity requires uninspiration; however, uninspiration does not in itself preclude such a massive decision. Any creative struggling with their work may seek to become uninspired. I’m sure many of the creatives reading this have dealt with moments of uninspiration. It’s a necessary part of the struggle.
Only when the uninspired creative becomes truly overwhelmed by the terror of their work do people make a decision like I did.
Junior year, I completed my first feature-length screenplay. It was decent work for someone my age, but not as honest as it could’ve been. (I’ll be expanding on the link between honesty and art in a later blog.) Still, it was the most honest thing I’d ever written, meaning that it had far too much of my soul to touch the eyes of others.
So I let it be written, read once or twice, edited once or twice, sent out and sent back. It was not the rejection that hurt nearly as much as knowing that I had put a piece of myself into something so incomplete. In a hurried, childish way I had shoved this work together that needed more of me than I could offer to become beautiful. I pushed all of its pieces into one heap of words and scenes and characters, called it a story and moved on. It was pure self-destruction.
That screenplay ended up being one of the last truly creative things I did for the next few years. Now, it is firmly back to being a work-in-progress — where it always belonged.
While I would not say it was this project specifically that pushed me to stop being creative, it certainly opened the door that I later walked out of. It introduced me, for one of the first times in my life, to the terror of making. Exposed to this terror, overwhelmed by the totality of the struggle I was becoming a part of, I chose safety. I chose to avoid the terror altogether and embrace a new terror — a small terror that came slowly instead of all at once.
Where do we go from here?
The abandoned creative is at an undeniable low. No matter how easy it is to forget, to brush off the small fears that come in silence, there is a constant knowing involved. The whole time I wasn’t creating, I knew that this was worse. The fact that it took me so long to get back here speaks to how hard it is to face that terror and move forward.
Before I get into what it took to make that happen, which I’ll be doing in next week’s blog, I want to go over the essentials of my experience. Every creative risks losing their spark; it takes an introspective vigilance to keep that battle going. So, in hopes of helping any others with the same feelings, here are some truths I’ve come to know:
Losing creativity begins with uninspiration.
In recoiling from the terror, we risk distancing ourselves from the very things that give us the strength to withstand it. When we are away from those lights, the darkness becomes an easy excuse to give up. The little things, the shows and books and walks, are what save us.
Staying creative means embracing the struggle of being creative.
You cannot be creative, in little or big ways, without accepting the chance that this will hurt. Creating half-way, holding back the soul, is so much more painful than what you might be protecting yourself from.
It is worse to miss something in a small way than a big way.
When I chose to not be creative anymore, I was choosing the small pain over the big pain. Instead of meeting the waves, I stood frozen in their shadow. In the end, it is better to take the pain on your terms than be consumed by your own shapeless yearning.
And, lastly, grow with yourself.
Even now, I hesitate to say my decision was completely unwarranted. There’s nothing wrong with saying that doing what you truly love is scary — it’s just true.
As I’ve come back to creating, I’ve kept the knowledge of that terror with me. I’ve also taken new lessons from the person I was over the last two years or so. This was the person who came to college as a political science and economics major. The person who went head-first into international affairs, adored economic theory, and became a part of Model UN. The person who switched over to journalism and then advertising, who found a natural place for themselves among marketers and directors and producers, who gained the organizational edge they had always neglected.
If I became uncreative altogether, all at once, I couldn’t become creative again in the same way. The flower in your chest has to be killed slowly, in pieces and stages. Like a tree grows over a wound, a person can only grow with themselves, not against.
So I grew with myself. I took the person I had become and I added to them. It was a long process, at times bitter, beautiful, and oddly boring. It’s also an unfinished process, as all creative processes must be. Nothing beautiful comes into being altogether, all at once; they are forged in struggle and earned in triumph over the terror of the struggle.
And so, in my struggle, I have found the beautiful, growing, changing thing that meets the waves with a catastrophic grace. It is to be here, writing this, knowing that it is the beginning of the real work.
There’s a lot more left to say here. I’ll break down exactly what it took to get back to being creative in another essay publishing next Tuesday.
In the meantime, if you like what you read, a like or a share would be pretty cool! As someone with a lot of ideas and a love for sharing them with you, knowing that people are reading and appreciating my work means so much.
I’ll be publishing essays like this every Tuesday, as well as serialized fiction every Saturday. My first fiction piece is coming out this week, but there might be some smaller projects to read between now and then. See you next time!
