Sometimes I wish writers still used quills and parchment. Acting frustrated over a blank word document just isn’t as dramatic an image. You end up looking less like an artist struggling with his vision and more like a dude who is slightly uncomfortable with his game of spider solitaire. I say this because the last two weeks have been brutal for my creativity. At first it was because I was sick, but now I feel like being sick somehow burnt out the part of my brain that converts ideas to words. There is nothing more frustrating to me than having ideas but not being happy with how they are being conveyed. One of the reasons I picked up video game journalism was because I needed a creative outlet for when my mind wouldn’t let me get any writing done and, as the moderate success I’ve had with that whole deal shows, it has been a pretty good formula. Recently however, I have found myself with an increasingly strong desire to do more with what little talent I actually possess. Yet I haven’t been happy with a single thing I’ve put to text in a month. I seemed to accidentally disengage the part of me that does video game journalism from the part of me that wants to make word-art. This isn’t to say I don’t like writing about games, I love it, and I still think my reviews and style are creative and original within the industry, but it is no longer filling my artistic coffers. I need to write- really write- more. I have pages upon pages of ideas I think are fantastic, and I have even more swirling around in my brain, but I just have no motivation/muse/morale and am having the hardest time getting things down.

My brain is weird though. When I’m in a creative lull like this and the artistic process isn’t coming easy to me, I get incredibly jealous of people with artistic ability they can convey in more visually and aurally pleasing ways. Painters, musicians, photographers, et al. Maybe it is just because I’m a basket case about my writing, with my hangups and superstitions and all, but I get jealous because in typical “grass is always greener” fashion it just seems easier for musicians or performance artists to get feedback on their work. Which, in turn, makes it easier to create it. It isn’t necessarily a confidence thing, I know my writing is good, but it just seems more frustrating for a writer. Hell, I’ve had people even say that I can’t call myself an artist because artists “draw or paint” which just struck me as so offensive. I always feel an artist is someone with a desire to create, regardless of what medium they use. I understand where those people come from though, because a painter or a musician can make art that appeals to people at a base level. A good painter creates a painting that people can look at and discuss easily. A performance artist puts themselves into a piece and people can view it and be moved by it. A musician plays a song and people hear it and acknowledge it. They do this with amazing visuals or pleasing audio. What I do looks like a bank statement no matter what. The only people that see beauty in words are other writers.

That is why I wish we used parchment and quill pens still. That was the only time a writers plight could be made a visual and easily understandable thing. If I visit a friend who plays an instrument and they are having a hard time doing something, it is noticeable. You can commiserate easily. Same with an “real” artist who like draws or paints. Go to their house during a creatively frustrating time and see crumpled sketches, half-finished canvas, and eraser shavings sprinkled on their desk like snow. Back in the day it would be the same thing with a writer. The mental image of a struggling writer with paper strewn about and their head hanging in their hands is a powerful one, and one that kind of gets lost nowadays. When I get frustrated with my writing what do I do? I hit backspace a bunch of times or open up a new word document. There simply isn’t enough dramatics there for me. I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, but it goes back to that comment about writers “not being real artists” that bothered me so much.

Luckily my jealousy of other artists is only a superficial jealousy. Because the irony is that I find people who do express their vision and do it uncompromisingly to be the most stabelizing thing during times like this. It seems that anytime I have trouble creating I tend to find inspiration in other artists. I can kind of track my creative periods by this. For example, when I finished my first still unpublished novel I did it during a time when I got into the incredibly underrated Ryan Armand’s comics- especially minus which you may have seen me talk about here before. I use inspiration here in a different sense then usually expected though. The novel I finished during that creative high point didn’t reflect his work at all. It was just the sheer fact that someone as talented as him was doing what he wanted and making a living by following his creative vision. You can always tell the difference between somebody that does something because they want to make money doing it, and somebody who does something whether or not they make money doing it at all. It is that latter category that helps give me inspiration. So I’ve found that usually when my respect for an artist reaches its peak is when I’m most motivated and find it easiest to focus on conveying things. The positive of this is that I’ve recently rediscovered Amanda Fucking Palmer. I say rediscovered because I think it is a prerequisite that every artsy current/ex-goth kid in the North East have at least a passing enjoyment of The Dresden Dolls. But after they went on their hiatus, I kind of put them out of memory. Then last year I got a copy of Who Killed Amanda Palmer and never really gave it more than a cursory listen, it was enjoyable but didn’t really register for various inexplicable reasons. Now that I’m in a creative lull, however, I had been churning through my Neil Gaiman collection (another thing I do when I am lacking motivation/inspiration/focus) and checked to see if anything new was coming down the pipeline. This lead me to reading something about him getting engaged to Miss Amanda Palmer. I figured, hey, if my authorial idol, one of the most brilliant writers in existence, fell in love with the broad the least I could do is listen to her album again.

So as I warm up and realize what a creative powerhouse she is, and more importantly how dedicated to her art she is, maybe a switch will go off in my head like it did when I first discovered minus or the first time I picked up a Sandman comic and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life. If so I guess I’ll send her a fruit basket.