It’s obviously a fairly incendiary title for a blog post, but one that I feel is for the most part true. My thoughts on this were sparked by a blog post by Brad Guigar over on Webcomics.com called Writer’s Block: It’s a Myth where Brad muses in a straightforward way that writer’s block is not an excuse for an artist’s inability to create something.

Some ideas are good, some are mediocre and others are brilliant. But they’re all nearly equal. Why? Because art — all art — isn’t ideas.

Art is the execution of an idea.

Look back on any time you’ve experienced what others call writer’s block. I’ll guarantee you that you had ideas in your head, but yet you were unable to move forward. You were unable to move forward because you lacked confidence in any of your ideas.

I’m in nearly full agreement with Brad on this issue. Any time I’ve had “writer’s block” in the past, it hasn’t been for a lack of ideas. Ideas are easy. It’s in selecting the right idea and moving forward that stills your hand and chills your spine. There’s a certain level of fear inherent there, I think. What if I pick the wrong idea? What if the entire concept falls flat because I chose poorly? What if? What if? And the cascade of “what if” scenarios form into a wall of trepidation that we commonly refer to as “writer’s block”. One commenter on the Webcomics.com discussion really nailed it on the head. Writer’s block is really a problem of perfectionism.

Consider a sculptor. He’s worked hours on completing a sculpture of a person. He gets 95% of the way through and gets to the face. And he doesn’t know what to do with it. The problem here isn’t an external blockage of creative flow. It’s the fact that that sculptor knows whatever he does to that face will affect the quality of the rest of the sculpture. If he makes a mistake, he might feel compelled to ditch the entire thing and start over. Perfectionism is causing him to lose confidence in his abilities.

In reality, when faced with those situations, we need to push through and just get it done. If you’re writing, put words on the page. Painting? Put some color on that canvas. Sculpting? Chisel out those last details in any way you can. It may not be your best work, but it will get done. Then you assess the completed work, and either start over from scratch, or call it good and move on to the next project.

NaNoWriMo is a perfect example of this. Write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Don’t worry about how well it comes together, don’t nitpick over details or obsess about the tone and pacing. Just write. Write like you’re on a deadline, because you are. And someday, when you become the amazing author you hope to be, you will be under an actual deadline. You don’t have time for mythical beasts such as “writer’s block” to get in your way, because you have a work to complete and an editor that wants it done now.

We as a society love to think of art as INSPIRATION and BEAUTY and PASSION and HEART. And don’t get me wrong, it absolutely is. But there are those that think any artist should be able to throw paint on a canvas and have art simply appear from the midst of chaos. Unfortunately, creative efforts are seldom like that at all. Let us not forget the old motto, which holds true today just as well as it did when Thomas Edison said it back in the early 20th century: “Success is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration.” There’s a flash of GENIUS, a spark of INNOVATION, and then nothing but WORK and TOIL and PAIN and EFFORT until your piece is completed.

Art is work and writer’s block is a myth.

The idea here isn’t to suggest that all artists that claim to have experienced some sort of creative block are lazy or weak-willed. Absolutely not. What I’m suggesting is that collectively we within the artistic community need to work diligently to pound the concept of creative block into submission. If it isn’t a myth to you already, you need to make it a myth. It needs to be the stuff of legend, locked away in an ancient tome to be discovered by archeologists centuries from now who pore over the script and interpret all of the myriad ways in which our society chose to build up imaginary barriers to our ability to create magnificent works of artistic appeal.

Don’t make writer’s block the bogeyman that comes to steal your precious artistic talent. It isn’t there, it doesn’t exist. There is only you and your art, and nothing can stop you from creating something unique, powerful, emotional, and beautiful except for you. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It simply has to be. It isn’t going to be the last thing you ever create, so don’t act like the world rests on it being absolutely flawless.

Just. Create.