Building a creative life is not for the faint of heart. There are so many ways we can invalidate ourselves or others can invalidate our efforts as we struggle to create something from nothing. There is one thing that is certain: There will be roadblocks to creativity. This month, I focus on how to carry on when you’re out of ideas, energy, or faith.

I want to write something about people re-building their world after a civilizational collapse, and I’d love to describe a lot of different ways different groups have come to organise themselves. Do you have any thoughts on how I can try to generate some surprising and interesting ideas?

This answer comes directly from Nalo Hopkinson, the 37th SFWA Grand Master and our week 1 instructor at Clarion West in 2001. Nalo represents many different identities, spanning different cultural backgrounds, geographic locations, and relationship structures. In her opening talk at Clarion West, she urged us to break out of binary structures and turn to the natural world for models of societies, reproduction, relationship, structure, etc. I would urge you to choose five different animals at random and read about how they live, where they live, how they reproduce, how they structure their communities, what other animals do they co-exist with, what ecosystems do they thrive in? And—having learned about these animals—use them as a basis for building diverse human communities with different species as the template.

I read a Bradbury quote that I should only be writing if it’s joyful.

“Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun at it. Ignore the authors who say, oh my god, what work, oh Jesus Christ, you know. No, to hell with that. It is not work. If it’s work, stop it, and do something else.”

I always think of this quote when it’s hard for me to write. I wonder: Is he right? Should I quit?

I think it’s beautiful that Bradbury had that relationship to writing. For the first decade of my writing career, writing was full of so much pleasure. Ideas excited me and drove me to write. I also started painting and was passionately connected to making visual art. This all changed after I had a child. Life’s demands surged aggressively and I lost the connection with my artmaking mojo. After many dark years, I determined that I had to take responsibility for my work. That beautiful, magical creative joy was no longer with me and I could either stop making art or find a new model for creativity.

Because the urge to write remained, I started to take steps to validate myself as an artist—not the artist I wanted be, not the artist I used to be, but the artist I was in the moment, the artist I am today. The fact is my artistry exists and it is an undeniable part of my identity. It exists when I am happy and when I am sad, when I am busy and when I have time, when my work is being validated and when it’s not.

I believe everyone’s art is valid—whether it’s hard to achieve, easy to achieve, or somewhere in-between. It is said that no two people are the same—if this is true, then no two artists are the same. We each have our own relationship with our work and we each have to make our own commitment to our artistry. The joy that Bradbury writes about still exists for me, but it is a very small percentage of my art-making time. As I wrote in this post about losing the ease, these days, I have to force myself to sit down and create art. Once I’m in, though, I often hit a sweet spot and find myself full of joy. It’s important to note that the joy is not what brings me back to writing—the pleasure of making art is not all consuming as it once was in my writing career, but that doesn’t make my artmaking any less valid or valuable. None of us needs to feel like our relationship to our work is wrong or less than someone else’s because we don’t experience the same emotions when creating. I do hope the magic returns for me one day, but until then, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to bring myself back into the creative space. Whatever it takes for me to support my work—and you to support your work—is worth it.

I’m dealing with some life challenges—health issues, relationship conflicts, an explosion of work responsibilities, and writer’s block. I know people recommend reading and rest when you’re faced with writing obstacles. Do you have a source of prompts that you use to exercise your writing muscles when your well runs dry?

I think we all have things that are easy for us to write. Whether it’s soapy romance or drawing cartoons or writing blog posts. I recommend keeping your writing time, but using it to do low-impact writing, writing that you don’t plan to perfect or publish. What I did to keep the channels open in the years that I couldn’t write was I wrote about writing. My blog about writing was the bulk of my writing output for 10 years. I didn’t realize it, but as I was writing those posts, I was soothing myself and honing my craft at the same time. I learned how to better structure my writing, how to edit my words, and how to identify themes. So that’s my advice—think of something that would be fun and easy to write: memories from childhood, a journal of your body talking to you, a soap opera, mythology made modern, taking commonly known phrases as the spark to short scenes, anything that will keep your pen moving. Even when you’re not engaged in “serious” writing, you are practicing craft. While you’re feeling low, try employing low-stakes writing to relieve the pressure on the Project of Being a Serious Writer—and trust that the magic will re-emerge.

I really love writing, but I don’t love the things that I write. I’m impatient with my efforts and I’m always wondering how I can be a better writer. I know I have to give myself time, but I wish I felt better about my writing.

I just got this passage of Agnes DeMille talking about a conversation she had with Martha Graham.

Agnes DeMille says, “[W]hen I see my work… I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”

Martha Graham replies, “no artist is pleased” and there is “[n]o satisfaction whatever at any time.”

Artmaking requires us to navigate a tricky balance of trust. On the one hand, we can’t trust our own opinions because we are frequently unable to see our own value. All humans see are the flaws in our bodies and the failure of our efforts. On the other hand, in order to create something out of nothing, we have to place supreme trust in our imagination, creativity and craft.

The fact is, we humans are strange creatures with inconsistent minds. We can’t believe half the crap running through our brains. Far too often, there’s a little voice in our heads telling us that our role as artists is to make stunning, amazing and perfect art. In actuality, we’re here to be—and to make art that reflects—our own unique selves.

Of course it will take time to develop the skills we need to achieve our best work. Unfortunately, we can’t control when we’ll reach the “peak” of our development. All we know is that if we keep writing, at some point, our best effort will converge with our clearest voice and we will create our version “perfection.” But the sad and hilarious truth is, even at that point, we won’t recognize it as perfection. We’ll never know our work as perfection, because for the artist “there is no satisfaction.”

Over time, I’ve learned to stop pushing for perfection. The goal of the artist is productivity, development, and expression. With that as the goal, the most valuable use of our minds is not to determine if the work is good, rather it is to discern when we’ve done enough. I never succeeded at writing a novel when I was trying to do “good work.” Now that my goal is productivity, I’ve got one novel at the printers and I’m halfway through the second novel. I take my work one step at a time. I’ve taken the question of “Is it good?” off the table and now I focus on is did I hit the goal of this draft (building the plot, revising the structure, editing the story, polishing the words). My question now, isn’t: is it perfect, my new question is: did I complete the task?

Ultimately, completion is a sustainable goal, perfection is not. If I could wave a magic wand, I would release art makers from the frenzy and disappointment that results from the quest for perfection. We have enough work to do in making our characters believable, making a plot that holds up to logic, and holding together a world for the length of a story or a novel.

Your opinion on your work is likely to change over time. Your mind is unreliable, and you may never be objective enough to authentically applaud your efforts. A more solid focal point is your writing practice. If you commit to consistency and productivity, then you are investing in your growth and possibility. With completion as your guiding light, every time you return to the page, you’ll find yourself building a more a powerful platform upon which you can climb to higher and higher creative heights.

Onward!