Stop Trying to Cram the Entire Creative Process Into One Sitting
Overthrowing the tyranny of the blank page
Every writer has experienced what has been called “the tyranny of the blank page (or screen).” You settle in to write, you load up a new document, and then… nothing.
What’s the hang-up? You’ve been creative before. You’ve had good ideas. You’ve written good pieces. Why isn’t it happening now?
The problem may be that you’re trying to cram your entire creative process into one sitting. You’re expecting yourself to, right here and now, do all of the following:
generate topic ideas
decide which topic to write about
actually write about that topic
All of these stages of the creative process can be done in one sitting: especially if you are brimming with creative brainpower and/or sheer willpower. But if you’re running low on either, each of those three stages can become what system designers call a “single point of failure.”
For example, at any given moment, you might be in a good head space for executing a writing idea, but not for generating one: or vice versa. This happens more often than we might suppose, because the two tasks require different modes of thinking to different degrees. Generating writing ideas demands more of what psychologists call “divergent thinking,” whereas forging an idea into publishable shape calls for more “convergent thinking.”
Sometimes you may be in a dreamy, visionary, divergent state of mind. Other times, you might be in more of an executive, problem-solving, convergent mental frame. If you’re fresh and nimble enough, you may be able to toggle between those two modes as necessary. But what if you’re not? By cramming the entire creative process in one sitting, you may be setting yourself up for failure.
To set yourself up for success instead, it can be helpful to distribute the stages of your creative process across separate sittings. I’ll explain how in my next post tomorrow.
Overthrowing the tyranny of the blank page may mean waging a campaign rather than a single battle.