Captain Obvious was always my favourite superhero...
Lately there have been a lot of things I've been involved with that have required me to write. Scientifically, informally, reviewing books, writing video scripts... and blogging. But I keep hitting a creative wall. A very big wall. Made out of cobblestone and lava and it has spiky things sticking out of it that keep me at a safe distance.
"Bad guy at a safe distance... BAD GUY AT AN UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE DISTANCE!!!"
What I've realised though is that the wall is no longer a physical lavastone brick monster. It's me being insecure about what I write, film, create. I get too preoccupied with being perfect and I don't allow myself to click publish on anything that's below my own expectations for fear of someone thinking it's rubbish.
The problem with this though, is that without publishing the less than spectacular posts, without the practice and the peer reviewing, and the people telling me that everything I make is shite, I can't improve. I need to get over this fear of inadequacy... because I'm going to be inadequate at a lot of things, and quite possibly it's going to be for a while, so I should stop being scared of something I can change. Or at least get used to.
So I'm going to push through it. Whether it be a blog post, a book review, a video or a creative tumblr post. I'm going to try and post something every day. It's hardly ever going to be good, I expect that now, but the aim is to stop feeling as though everything needs to be perfect to be "published". My aim is not to rush things, though. There will be days when I will write three lines on a blog post, but so long as I've put some thought into them and they are somewhat creative, I will have met my goal.
So, uh, more posts in the fewtcha. I apologise in advance, but it's something I have to do.
The problem with this though, is that without publishing the less than spectacular posts, without the practice and the peer reviewing, and the people telling me that everything I make is shite, I can't improve. I need to get over this fear of inadequacy... because I'm going to be inadequate at a lot of things, and quite possibly it's going to be for a while, so I should stop being scared of something I can change. Or at least get used to.
So I'm going to push through it. Whether it be a blog post, a book review, a video or a creative tumblr post. I'm going to try and post something every day. It's hardly ever going to be good, I expect that now, but the aim is to stop feeling as though everything needs to be perfect to be "published". My aim is not to rush things, though. There will be days when I will write three lines on a blog post, but so long as I've put some thought into them and they are somewhat creative, I will have met my goal.
So, uh, more posts in the fewtcha. I apologise in advance, but it's something I have to do.
* A quick side note: "creating" something doesn't mean that what I'm "creating" is particularly "creative" it could mean, for the next week and again next year, creating something scientific as part of an assignment or anything. Those sorts of things count.
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