Self-Doubt is Creativity Flu

I am an author.

I AM an author.

I am an AUTHOR.

Not so much a classy mantra but one that gets me to and keeps me at the keyboard. And there are times when it is employed to over-ride crushing self-doubt. Yes, would you believe it, I have creator’s plague…self-doubt.

It starts with minor symptoms like a tendency to stare at the screen and re-write perfectly good sentences several times only to return to the first version. This may be accompanied by verbalisation of a negative sort. My personal favourites include what are you doing, oh for God’s sake and well that’s a load of shite isn’t it.  And even these beauties are no match for the internal shellacking that starts with you are not an author, you’re not fooling anyone. The sky’s the limit when my mind starts hacking in.

I’m never sure what comes first in developing self-doubt. Is it the dose of writer’s block or a generalised sense that nothing you put on the page makes any sense or that fabulous feedback that is a written version of a serious eye roll. I do know how it progresses because as the fever sets in you are on the crazy train to imposter syndrome. (Fear that your incompetence will be recognised despite evidence of your ability). On arrival you may utter your mantra till the cows come home but it is not budging you off the platform upon which you have arrived.

How to find the cure?  Your comrades in creativity will make supportive statements and insist that everyone of them has self-doubt…apparently it is what makes the work good. It’s a bit like a broken leg which apparently is stronger once in heals. It’s just a pity that it is incredibly painful and takes months to get to that strengthened state. You know ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ is often said when one is literally and metaphorically broken.

Self-doubt is a bone crushing, soul breaking pain that is hard to locate. It feels like it’s in the gut, or one’s heart and simultaneously the head. It’s imagination influenza. Everything hurts. Shakespeare made self-doubt one of his tragic flaws which contributed to a character’s downfall. It’s a serious situation if Will has used it!

But just like a bout of the flu, one can recover from self-doubt. Despite the weight of it and the sense that your frontal cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia and default mode network are entombed in concrete it is possible to chip your way out of self-doubt. (areas of the brain responsible for creativity). It does not necessarily require a chisel. It does require a bit of work because the cure for self-doubt is actually productivity. Doesn't even have to be good productivity.

As a teacher when kids said I don’t know what to write about or I can’t write a story I’d tell them to write a shopping list. A literal shopping list. Of food they’d like to buy, toys or games or with great hopefulness on my part, books they’d like to read. Even places they wanted to visit. Clothes, music, concerts, decorations, furniture…anything that could form a list. It wasn’t on task, but it was writing…productivity. Words on a page, thinking, daydreaming, neural wandering as I call it, become the methods for chipping away the concrete boots encasing our creativity. Eventually the rigidity of doubt would loses its grip. It loosened up and even if it didn’t dissipate completely at least a space for a tiny smidge of confidence was made.

Self-doubt is, allegedly better than over-confidence, in the creativity sphere. Doubt is a motivator for improvement, a sense of adjusting and moulding our creations to be better. Over-confidence smacks of a reckless belief in oneself and one’s work, no improvement required. So I'm telling myself!

So, imagine if you will the near paralysing virus that has driven me to write this, the pretender hunched over her keyboard, willing the final words to appear which will bring the current project to fruition. (It’s literally a chapter or two away from completion). See me at work with the tools of construction or in this case deconstruction, whittling away the encasement that is holding my writing hostage. Think of the lists I’m making! See me silencing that nagging voice in my head that keeps derailing the efforts to accept that this new book The Aphorism Club is good. Or okay. Or at least in dark lighting might masquerade as something with a vague resemblance of a book! Damn self-doubt!!

When I’ve finished fighting with myself and beaten the self-doubt lurgy, I’ll let you all know about the new book by releasing a synopsis. That may or may not make any sense!! Damn it!

                                    The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

                                                                                   Sylvia Plath