Sometimes I craft a sentence that makes me think I could be a Great Writer. This is a curse.
Thinking that you could be great is not an inherently bad thing. It can be genuinely motivating. But it’s a slippery slope from there to thinking that you should be Great, and I’ve never been able to keep my footing on that particular hill. The first time I sense that I might be Great, I begin to assume it’s my right, and if I fail, it’s only because I’m not trying hard enough. This is incredibly self-defeating. Not only does it fail to allow for the kind of practice it takes to develop actual Greatness, it activates a really nasty self-critical part of your brain.
The burden of expectations is the anticipation of what you might feel if you don’t live up them. It’s fear of shame. That’s two negative emotions that are incredibly powerful. Fear almost always stimulates monitoring behaviors, where we attempt to instrument the danger we sense so we can regularly sample how bad it is. When this (perceived) danger is shame, that danger is the embarrassment we’d feel for producing inferior work. This creates a cycle of nasty self-criticism that hijacks our limbic system to aggressively block the inspiration we need to produce the results we want.
In other words: it’s performance anxiety. This fear–shame link can affect any kind of work. But I’d argue the more creative the task, or at least the more inspiration the task requires, the more it just blocks you from doing the task at all. Athletes experiencing performance anxiety may underperform, but they seldom fail to do sports because of their anxieties. Likewise, people talk about Writer’s Block, but not Tax Accountant’s Block. There’s a sense that a practiced tax accountant could probably just power through a period of intense internal criticism, but I’ve never tried to do tax accounting beyond the very basics, so I’m open to correction. If you’re a tax accountant and Accountant’s Block is a real thing, let me know!
One method I’ve always found helpful to frame these kinds of inner struggles is to picture the competing interests as different entities or personae in my own psyche. In this case, it’s a battle between a muse and a judge. Julia Cameron’s 1992 book The Artist’s Way identifies these entities as the inner artist and the critic, and describes this inner artist character as an often frightened, downtrodden child that needs to be fed and let out and set free to roam. And the book is a series of exercises meant to awaken this inner artist, and quiet the critic, and in so doing unleash a kind of child-like creativity that flows forth from a natural spirituality inherent to all people.
Now, I have my problems with this book—someday I will write about it, but suffice to say that it is self-indulgent, privileged, full of woo, and steeped in a very particular kind of new-age spirituality that I had almost forgotten existed in the latter quarter of the 20th century—but it contains some great advice on how to awaken one’s muse. And a lot of it just involves letting it out to play while you let the critic shut up.
It is hard to make that thing shut up though. I rely heavily on critical thinking and judgement to get me through my life, especially my work life. It feels very strange to quiet that part of my mind when it comes to just one area. But I can accept that it’s necessary. Inspiration is a sensitive waif, and fear is a feral child. Unleashing criticism on nascent ideas just startles them.
But how can you avoid turning on your criticism without sacrificing your judgement? Practice, I think. Lots of practice. And that starts with allowing yourself to produce work that is not up to your own standards, things you’d criticize in others, artifacts you’d rather discard. In other words, crap. You have to produce a lot of crap and get used to it before you can produce something good. Most folks go through this step at some point.
So, I’ve decided I’m going to write crap.
I’m going to fart out low effort baloney until I can get in the habit of writing regularly. I’m going to prove to myself that I’m the worst writer. My diction will be limited, my phrasing will be prosaic, my turns-of-phrases will be hackneyed, and my sentences will take meandering garden paths to nowhere. I will not make clear points. I will not use carefully selected sensory terms to make my writing stand out and pop.
I will not self-censor before I can manage to complete a sentence. Hell, I won’t even worry if my sentences are complete. Who cares? I’m writing blog posts in 2026. I’m late to the party. No one is going to read this.
I have precedent in my life for this. When I was 13, I decided I was going to play guitar. I was not a naturally gifted musician. People told me as much. I sang off-key and couldn’t clap to a song. Hell, even my parents suggested that God had given me other gifts. But I was determined. So I practiced constantly and stayed with it. And eventually I became pretty good. Not, like, get paid for it good, but good enough to hold my own in a band.
I managed this because I didn’t really have any expectations other than being able to play simple rhythm guitar patterns. Everything else I learned was a bonus. I also had lots of time on my hands. I don’t have that now, but I can carve out 20-30 minutes a day for a new skill I really want to develop. I’ve just got to give myself a year or two of grace where I’m allowed to really suck at it. Let me tell you, I sucked hard at guitar for a while. But I didn’t care. It gave me time to grow. By the time I started trying to play other instruments, I had too strong an idea of what good music was supposed to be and never gave myself the grace or the time to get good.
All this to say, I’m going to give myself the right to suck at writing. I’m going to suck at it every day for thirty minutes. And I’m going to post it on the internet. Once a week. What’s a few more shitposts anyways? It’s a drop in the bucket. Maybe one day I’ll be as good as I think I can be, or maybe I’ll just be some pretentious twat wasting digital ink. Doesn’t really matter. I’ll do it and I’ll have fun. My muse will thank me.