UGH.
There is certain thrill about starting a project. You get this great idea that seemed to have come from the great void called Nowhere. You start contemplating that idea, molding it and forming it into a more complex notion. It feels great in the moment that you begin to put that idea into reality. What a masterpiece! This can really go far!
Finishing said project is a whole other story. What do you mean I have to do this every day? I have no inspiration? No motivation? Like nothing? Writer's/art block? What is this "work" you're talking about? I'm too lazy? I'm too tired? I don't know what to do next? That all I had?
Now, do you understand the curse? You should all be nodding your heads because there is no way you haven't gone through this at some point of your life. I have about 15 million ideas/book/screenplays/graphic novels/podcasts that I'm "in the middle of writing," but I've been "in the middle" for a very long time. I always tell myself "Now you have to go through with this idea. You have to finish." It hasn't happened yet. For artists, it's what we call "WIP." No one has ever put a time limit on WIP's and I bet you have at least 3+ saved on your devices right now.
Finishing what you start is way more of a problem than we realize. It's literally a daily problem in our lives. There is just... just this thing (sorry fellow writers but I'm using thing) about motivation and finishing something that is near-impossible.
I'm not even just talking about writing motivation, I'm talking about motivation in general. It just isn't there some days, and I get that. I really do. It doesn't matter if you're writing, drawing, building or exercising — motivation is like that carrot (or a bone if you're into that) hanging right about our noses that we can't reach.
Maybe it's commitment issues. Maybe it's indecision. Maybe it's insecurity. Maybe it's just everything at once — whatever "everything" is. Picking something and sticking to it, is the hardest thing that human can accomplish. Um, hello, marriage? Relationships? Diets? Tumblr URLS?
But can I tell you a secret? I started this article with the word "ugh." That was literally all I had for a good 5 minutes. Then I found a gif (of course it's Howl, I've never related to a Studio Ghibli character so much in my entire 18 years of life). I add the gif, and then I wrote another word. Those words made up a sentence, and that sentence formed into a paragraph. Before I had realized it, I was writing. I had gotten back into that groove, and it wasn't because motivation was knocking on my chamber door (cause I'm telling you right now it still isn't). I'm just writing my thoughts, my feelings-I'm writing about something that I'm going through right now. And it feels GREAT. You guys can't even imagine my reaction when I ended that last paragraph, and realized... wait... I had written a FLIP-FLOPPIN PARAGRAPH.
Just like with everything else, it's not impossible it's just currently im-passible. No one ever said that life was going to be easy, and no one said that you had to finish anything this very second.
Here's my advice: start small. Just a simple small act to get the ball rolling. Get tired? Put it on hold: do something to get your mind working again. Go take a nap, eat a snack-something. Later on, look back on it and add/subtract something. Work on something else until something draws you back to that project. Little by little that nothing you started with will turn into something. I promise you, you will get an end result. There's always an end, whether you take that first project and mold it into a previous one, or completely dump the idea all together.
I started this article with the word "ugh," and now it's at 847 words (at this point before I went back and added). I may not have completed my original purpose because writing evolves as you go, but I said something that needed to be said. I completed something. And it feels AWESOME.
(actual footage of me at the moment)
Go work on that project, OK? I know the end is looking hazy and the work agonizing, but the end result... now that is something to break a few necks for.
