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From time to time, my thoughts run wild with an idea. The feeling literally burns. I have to get the thoughts out, I have to put the words to paper. One, two, three pages. I write them on the fly. “This is my next big project,” I think to myself. There’s no sign of slowing down. The words keep flowing…
…until they don’t.
The writer’s high is a deceptive influx of inspiration coupled with a surge of motivation. In a single go, you may produce pages of content in an extremely short stretch of time, which might otherwise take hours, perhaps days of writing depending on your typical cadence. It is, as we in mathematics and science call it, the outlier (and should not be counted in your average data).
I myself experienced a writer’s high recently. I’ve always wanted to write a book highlighting the six points in my life that led me to creating my education nonprofit. Then, last week, on Sunday, August 4th, inspiration struck. Motivation surged. I produced exactly two pages, about 1,000 words, in the span of thirty minutes before going to refill my coffee.
Then I made breakfast.
Then I took a shower.
When I returned to the fledgling book, my brain had lost momentum gear. The inspiration waned, and the motivation trickled to a drip. I’ve since not touched the book, in part because I understand I cannot possibly take on another project at the current time.
I like to think of the writer’s high as a WIP graveyard. Countless projects, thrust into existence at the whims of sudden inspiration and motivation, now lie in files that have not been modified for months and years. I understand I will never touch most of them again, but I keep them around for two reasons:
- A few, I intend to return to when a block of time opens up, perhaps in the interim between publishing Book 5 in April 2025, and diving into the throes of Book 6 later that summer.
- As I suggested in last week’s blog post, I also treat WIPs born of a writer’s high as I do scraps; having them around allows me to glance at the past, gain inspiration for the future, and have access to content I may or may not use in a project down the line.
There is a darker side to the unfinished WIP, however: guilt. Writer’s highs feel good because our unnatural speed of creation releases dopamine. Coming off that high leaves us with an abandoned project. It never feels good to start a project and abandon it, start another and abandon it as well, and repeat ad infinitum. As a writer, as an artist, we yearn to create and see our projects through to the end. We may look back on a trail of unfinished projects with shame and a sense of incompetence. “What kind of artist am I,” we may ask, “if I cannot finish even one project?”
Let us remember it is not the completion of a project that defines our value as artists. The very fact that we yearn to create sights unseen, stories untold, sounds unheard – it is that quality which makes an artist. The stroke of a brush, the swerve of a pen, the tap of a key modifies, if in the smallest way, the reality we all share. Your addition to the world has forever changed it.
Alex
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