How My Mindset Affects My Creativity

Root 1 - Why I write, and why I've struggled with writing.

Intro/outro sound is Prime Light Harp Melody 165 BPM.mp3 by snikpohneb — https://freesound.org/s/173463/ — License: Attribution 3.0

---

Let me begin by telling you a little about myself.

I decided I wanted to be a cartoon animator when I was seven years old. I drew page after page of story, the premise of the world a complete rip-off of the world of Pokemon, which is, of course, what inspired my interest in cartoon animation. I drew and drew, until I had a stack of papers that (to my eyes) seemed a foot tall. I realized I’d lost track of where I’d started and where I was going with the story. So I read through it all. It was, in fact, quite meandering. I decided to write a summary of the story I wanted to draw, in order to keep track of it. But then, as the words came, I realized this was what I really wanted to be doing. Forget the drawing. Writing was invigorating.

Sketch by Lorelei Jonason.

I decided I wanted to be an author when I was eight years old. I wrote and wrote, so much that I developed a bruise on the first knuckle of my middle finger. This bruise lasted for months before it became a callus. I wrote and wrote for years and years. It was carefree when I was a kid; I never doubted that I would be an author, that I would be great.

This belief in my own talent kept me chugging strong through my early twenties, despite doubts my then-husband had about my abilities and ideas. Then something knocked me off my pedestal. I self-published a book, to poor reception. After that, when my then-husband trashed my ideas, I listened. I let his doubts seep and creep their way into becoming my own self-doubt. I started having trouble bringing myself to write. I started hating everything I ever wrote. When I decided to organize and downsize a bunch of old papers, I labeled a box “Old Bad Writing” and put most of everything I’d written into that box. I felt like the creative, brilliant part of myself that wrote had withered up and died.

Today (the day of writing, not the day of posting), I went to that box, crossed out “Old Bad Writing,” and wrote “Artifacts from Learning How to Write” instead.

While it’s true that my ex created a lot of roadblocks for my writing, since the separation I kept up his work, creating plenty of roadblocks for myself. I kept telling myself I was no good, I’d never be good, that the best I could hope to produce was pulp fiction. And I couldn’t even produce that because I couldn’t produce anything, because I was lazy and a failure.

What a waste of brainpower.

I decided I wanted to be an author when I was eight. The only reason I’m not one now, at 31, is because I decided I can’t be one. That changes now. I can come up with a plan to get back into it. I can change my habits. I can write stories.

---

Have you ever let anyone tell you that you were no good at something you were passionate about? How did you, or how would you like to, get over this mental block? Thanks for reading.