There used to be a time when I would accept nothing less than perfection. I still fight the frustration when I’m not completely perfect.

I’ve come to believe perfectionism it’s a disease. An infection that slowly eats away at your skin until it buries itself into your bone and spreads to every corner of your body like an angry cancer. The growing niggle questioning whether perfectionism is something to be strived for, or maybe, abhorred has become a raging monster, and now, a blog post…

As writers creative people we torture ourselves striving for something that deep down we all know is almost impossible to achieve. And if we somehow do achieve it, we spend our lives endlessly searching for that golden thread of genius within us so we can create another masterpiece. It’s like a drug, an addiction, a sought after high impossible to replicate.

But what is this blind search for perfectionism doing to our mental health and psyche? I talked about the shocking truth behind creativity recently, where there was an underlying point from Gilbert about depression in creative people.

Creative people in particular seem to suffer a high prevalence of depression, suicide and other mood disorders, including most frequently, bipolar disorder. Van Gogh was Bipolar and suffered tremendously until his suicide at 37. Syvia Plath, another sufferer with a mood disorder and eventually she committed suicide to at just 31. There are others, who vehemently argue against this trend of depression in creative people, and if you read enough research then like everything you can find enough studies that you end up sat on the fence completely befuddled.

I’m ignoring most of the science and am speaking from experience, with just a little science thrown in; from knowing many a creative person and seeing the effect of creativity gone awry, and from experiencing it myself.

My focus is on writers and one of the earliest studies of creativity and mood disorders focused on writers. It showed that 80% of writers had some variant of mood disorder. But why? Are we predisposed to mood disorders? Do we have hormone imbalances? Is it because we spend so long lost in our thoughts, pondering, reflecting, dissecting our every ideation and decision? Do we spend too long deliberating and judging ourselves? Does that lead the creative into a spiralling depression as we deconstruct ourselves and examine each tiny piece of us and our stories?

I know for me, boredom, and the restriction of my creativity is extremely bad for my mental state. I can end up in a very dark place if I am not allowed to thrive as a creative person. And yet equally, I can drive myself literally insane in the pursuit of that winning story, that character that makes someone cry, or laugh or fear for their safety. I can be so critical of myself its self destructive but especially for my sanity. I’m trying to pursue something I know I will never be able to achieve.

Despite constantly striving for perfection, I don’t believe it exists.

Will I ever be able to put the pen down, stop tweaking? Can you? I doubt it.

There’s just one more tweak? One tiny edit, a comma? A sentence? Sound familiar?

We grind ourselves down, wear down all our drive and pick and nag at our creative minds until we leave ourselves in a creative black hole. I think over striving for perfection gives us writers block and depression. If we pursue a concept that doesn’t exist we set ourselves up for constant failure.

Society is the same. Kids today think Barbi is perfection. (Yes that really is a real woman)

Kids think that plastic fantastic is acceptable and something to aim for. But sometimes when you get a little too hooked on achieving the impossible on too much plastic this happens:

Ok, maybe I’m being a little facetious but you see the point I’m making?

I wrote a poem last #1000speak, so this time I decided to share something personal. I have edited this, removed some of the bits that made me cringe, but it’s mostly intact. I wrote this piece when I was just coming out of a dark hole, it’s an odd piece of writing, more of a stream of consciousness rather than a story or anything much, but I think it makes the point, creative depression is not good by any standard:

Phantom Limb by Sacha Black

I am watching my life through his eyes, at his mercy.

My glass was always half empty, its why I never noticed the cracked cup, the leaking liquid. He didn’t arrive with the grandeur entrance I expected. He snuck quietly into my life like the silent thief, slyly changing the minutia, stealing my belongings until he consumed everything.

I can never see the world through those precious rose spectacles I used to have. The virgin eyes I owned are gone. Stolen. He took them for himself, replaced them with his dark and twisted ones. I didn’t even notice. Not until I was already exhausted from staring through his shadowy specs.

I understand what numb is; to really feel nothing.

It’s infinite.

He took my feelings away one by one. Every happy thought tarnished by a rusty anesthetized memory.

I am left watching my life play out through him.

I am his phantom limb. I see my life, but I’m not really there. I used to be present, alive, able to breathe. But now I’m surrounded by a vast suffocating nothing.

He torments me with the life I could lead. I am ashamed of him. I am meant to be strong. Unbreakable. Instead I crumbled like an ash statue. He blew over my life, and I drifted apart piece by piece.

He is the dirty little secret I punish myself for.

I’m tired of being a phantom limb.

I will not do it any more.

No matter how foggy his spectacles get, I will smear the lenses until I can see the tunnel in the distance. I know there is a light at the end of it.

***

I’m not suggesting we should stop striving or aiming for the top. I’m saying sometimes we need to take a step back and remember, perfection is usually impossible. What we create may well be someone else’s idea of perfection. You will be someone’s favourite author. I highly doubt whatever I create, no matter how many drafts or how many edits I do, I will ever be truly happy with it. So why not accept that? And be kind to ourselves?

We need to start believing that just because ‘WE’ don’t think something is perfect, doesn’t mean somebody else won’t. There is no perfect – perfect is unobtainable because what you think is perfect, I won’t. No two concepts of perfect align. Our own concepts of perfectionism are dangerous, and unrealistic. Praise yourself, nurture yourself away from that pedestal. Perfection isn’t all that anyway, it’s boring, outdated. It’s the goody two shoes at the front of the class, the ‘know it all’ everyone sniggers at when they finally get a question wrong.

Isn’t that the point? Humanity is interesting because we are full of mistakes and problems. Aren’t the best characters the ones who fuck up, and make mistakes? Isn’t that why we secretly like the anti-hero?

Nurture yourself. Stop striving for the unachievable. No body likes Miss Perfect anyway.

But more important than anything, don’t forget…

The post Nurture Yourself in the Pursuit of Perfection #1000speak appeared first on Sacha Black.

***Warning*** Audience Participation Required!

What is it that makes us creative? I mean other than the obvious grey matter, neurological synapse firing and conscious and subconscious minds? 

What is it really? Where does it come from, and why does it leave us sometimes?

Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat.Pray.Love) has done an amazing TED talk, it’s in the top 10 list of must watch talks for writers and it’s even in the list of top 20 most popular TED talks ever. If you haven’t watched one before you really should, but particularly Elizabeth Gilbert’s. It would also help if you watch it before reading this post, although its not essential, I’ve tried to highlight the key bits.

She has done a lot of research into historical concepts of creativity muses, inspiration and genius. She talks particularly about the Greeks and Romans who labelled creativity and muses as ‘Daemons and ‘geniuses’. The fundamental point of this talk is that the Romans described this ‘genius’ was as a disembodied thing.

Rather than being a genius you either ‘have’ genius or you don’t. The ancients took responsibility away from us mere apes. A positive because when we are suffering writers block it is not our fault, our ‘genius’ has literally and physically disappeared. What I find particularly fascinating is the notion that we as humans and writers don’t/can’t or shouldn’t be a genius ourselves. Meaning we can’t be our own muse – we only have those moments of genius inspiration when our ‘genius’ is physically with us. Gilbert goes on to explain that putting the ‘font of all creativity’ on a tiny human brain is a huge responsibility and that as lowly humans this pressure is what causes so much depression in creative people. – I can see her point. What creative person hasn’t suffered at the hands of depression, or block?

During the talks Gilbert mentions one particular poet who sees poems flying at her from the horizon barrelling towards her like a pipe of air and they literally pass through her body. If she can’t reach a pen and paper quick enough the poems disappear unless she can literally grab its tale and pull it back into her body. At which point the poem would come out word perfect but backwards.

This is all lovely, but that means I can never be a genius, but then I suppose I am also not responsible for my failure either. Does this mean only the lucky few who have the genius can ever write well and be successful? Maybe that’s why we have just a few best sellers and so many that aren’t

The thing is I’m not sure I like the idea of this. In fact, I really don’t like it. It’s too bitter a pill to swallow. I refuse to accept it. I’m not a control freak but the idea that my own failure isn’t my own but equally my success isn’t my own either just the consequence of being lucky and having a genius is not one I appreciate. Is that not more damaging to our psyches then a bout of writers block?

I want to know that my struggles, my failures and therefore any successes are the result of my own hard work, not because a muse was ‘with’ me. Don’t the struggles and failures make any success that bit sweeter?

My questions to you:

• What does creativity feel like to you?
• What does it feel like when you get that moment of inspiration?
• How and when does it hit you?

But What Does ‘Having’ A Genius Feel Like?

For me, I am nothing like the poet. I can’t see or watch inspiration or my genius coming. Ideas don’t usually brew consciously in my mind. They just ‘pop’ out of nowhere. I liken my experience to the light bulb flash. Ideas appear, both suddenly and surprisingly. Don’t get me wrong, not always.

I can think about an idea, work on it, smush it about a bit, pull it apart and rebuild. I can trawl through pinterest shaping, looking, staring at images and words. I can bash out an idea in a conversation with a friend, or by doodling. I can grow things in my mind just like the rest of you.

But I’m not talking about those ideas I am talking about ‘THE’ ideas, those magical special ones… the really really good ones, those flashes of inspiration that lead to an amazing story, or a spectacular project… the ones that lead to a bestseller.

When this happens my ideas appear either completely formed or 80% formed and the other 20% is right around the corner.

It’s hard to explain my light bulb moment physically, but normally it’s in the car, or somewhere in appropriate when I definitely don’t have access to a pen (so frustrating). When it happens, its like an actualy pop, in my mind, something squeezed inbetween a few grey cells ‘POP’ there is it. My eyes always bug out of my face and a sense of electric excitement and anxiety take over my brain. Excitement of having an amazing idea, and anxiety that I might lose it if I cant get it down on time – that bit I suppose is like the poet. I definitely get flustered and mildly panicked if I cant write down whatever is it that has appeared.

So I will ask you again:

• What does creativity feel like to you?
• What does it feel like when you get that moment of inspiration?
• How and when does it hit you?

And one more question for good luck:

What do you think about the concept of Gilberts ‘genius’?

The post The Shocking Truth About Creativity appeared first on Sacha Black.

When I say I got over myself, I mean I found a muse that inspired me enough to pull my head out my backside and see the light. A muse that made me realise: the piling emails lain untouched in my inbox, the 4000 word assignment still unwritten, the untouched 52K of my baby and my now week long hiatus of my blog, was, in sum, unacceptable.

I appeared to have momentarily tipped into an abyss of self loathing and depression. I do that sometimes… Actually quite regularly. But then I think a lot of writers fight depression or if not then a creative slump or whatever.

This particular slump is connected to a lot of other things I shall try not to elaborate on too much. My dear friend who is a hypnotherapist has agreed to treat me. I am extremely hopeful that she can help me work through whatever crap is going on in my head thats causing my absolute lack of self worth. Anyway…

This muse in particular happens to be a song. I stumbled upon it quite by mistake. I was given a voucher for iTunes for christmas and happened to be browsing the iTunes store and came across this beauty which has been on repeat ever since! Now I must caveat this song with a little explanation of me and music.

I don’t hear lyrics. Like, at all. I constantly sing the wrong words, its a rare occasion I can tell you what a song is actually about. I only hear how the music makes me feel. I hear melody, and tune, and rhythm and beat, but never do I hear lyrics. So I don’t have a scoobies what this song is about either! But I sure do like the way it makes me feel. For the first time this year I felt motivated.

The song is ‘Warrior’ by Imagine Dragons

Has anyone else found a new muse this year? What is it?

The post 2015's First Muse appeared first on Sacha Black.