Last night I had a discussion with a five-year-old about an imaginary world he’s busily creating. Having just finished a three week writing residency, this felt like a very natural role for me as the guest in his home. Artie keeps track of this project in a notebook full of drawings, maps, portraits, diagrams, etc which he then present to his dad, who adds annotations and notes based on Artie’s explanations. Apparently he’s only been working on this project for a week, but it’s surprisingly complex.
I love how unselfconscious children can be about things they make. They put pen to paper simply because they want to, and there’s no reason not to do it. And yes, it’s true that kids generally don’t have emails, or bills, or their own children, or jobs to worry about, but kids do have to go to school, and they have to go to bed early, and they generally have very little agency in their lives. If you think about it, it’s kind of amazing how fully a child will throw themselves into creativity with even the most meager supplies and limited time. That tells you something about the latent capacity we all have to be so unquestioningly engaged.
As adults, however, we will almost actively seek out situations, mind-sets, or habits that will stop us from even sitting down to just try to do the things we want to do, despite our autonomy. And while there could be many different reasons why your motivation flags at certain point, here are a few ways to stop yourself from giving up on a novel or any other creative pursuit when it gets hard (or before you’ve even really begun).
The first tip is not the most spiritually evolved path to personal motivation, but I think most people could get some traction out of it, while the last item on this list is the one I think is the most universally helpful.
1. “If that asshole can do it, I can do it.”
This idea works best as a response to low self-esteem or simply overwhelm at how much work or time it might take to complete any given project.
One of the first novelists I ever met, long before I ever had intentions to write a novel, was a complete and total idiot. I don’t say this out of malice; it is simply true. It took me a few years to finally comprehend his lack of intelligence (emotional or otherwise), at which point I knew that if he could write a novel, I could definitely write one, and a better one.
Now that we have so much social media, you don’t have to personally know any novelists to use this tip. Look around you— there are idiots everywhere, all over the world, who are doing the things you’d like to do. If you ever fear you don’t have the capacity to keep going, just remember you’re not dumber than any of them.