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January 6, 2026 - Antimotive to create

It is one of my core beliefs that you cannot be truly happy without some sort of creative output. From what I can tell, this sentiment is widely shared. However, I think "you should start a project!" is thrown around as a careless blind remedy to whatever problems a person has. Because, many times over when I talk to someone, they start telling me what they want to make freely! Clearly, something is stopping them. Clearly something is stopping me, too, or else I wouldn't have managed to get off my ass during my unemployment period to write this.

I don't think that creating is a natural process for everyone. I think we sometimes compare ourselves to people who can naturally create, and come up with the idea that creating isn't for us. But we still need to, and we still seem to feel most happy when we create, so I want to figure out why this is. So, in order to understand the modern creative process, we will need to study in a modern way. Books? Scientific research? Notes of famous authors and artists? Fuck that. We are NOT creative geniuses, and this blog is not for creative geniuses. This blog is for you, a person who spends Saturday nights at their computer. To study this problem in a modern way, we need to learn from the modern people. Some of their works have been reproduced below.

Exhibit A:

Here, we see someone who has managed to start the process of learning and potentially creating, but is struggling with keeping motivation. There is an unanswered question, though: why is he giving up when facing difficulty? He feels the pain of doing this, and he is self aware of what he is doing, but he still gives up.

Exhibit B:

This features someone who has identified exactly what they want to make, but has already realized even before starting that they will not be able to finish their project. This one especially saddens me. This person has the want, and they have the idea! But the fact that this meme was created implies that they may not even get around to writing their design document! They have written a self fulfilling prophecy for themselves!

Exhibit C:

This exhibit shows the pain of a lack of creative output. This is made by someone who likely has no creative output, and sees the poor results of it. The girl is surrounded with cuteness and her favorite things, but she still has a sad, distant look in her eyes.

Exhibit D:

Oh, this one hurts. Here we see this person in a prison of their own making. This person simply feels the pain of wanting to create, but doesn't even seem to have decided what they want to make. They are controlled by their thought enough to be brought to tears while eating, but this unfocused pain leads to nothing happening at all. Of course, the cycle is doomed to repeat.

Exhibit E:

The person in this exhibit has made it further than others. They've managed to start! We can safely assume they've made at least a moderate amount of progress, but they're so overrun with ideas that they end up starting something else. But, again, we have the same unanswered question as A: Why are they not finishing the project?

Exhibit F:

This exhibit is my personal favorite. I should, I should! Look at the creative ideas flowing! This person just wants to create for the sake of creating, but is being stopped by something despite the clear drive! What is happening that's stopping them? Truly, what can we learn from these exhibits?

I see several recurring themes, so I am going to define stages of potential issues in the creative process. Do not confuse this with real creative process stages (which have been roughly determined by Graham Wallas in The Art of Thought). I am splitting it up this way because I suspect different issues crop up at these specific points. In other words: I am making this the fuck up.

Stage number one: deciding what to even do!

There's so much that someone can do! Deciding on a creative pursuit, project, or hobby is half of the fun. Unfortunately, the issues already begin here. From what I can tell, the main enemy of this stage is insecurity. Insecurity that the idea is stupid! Insecurity that it can't be executed well, and insecurity that this is an absolute waste of time!

Remember, to be cringe is to be free. To be bad at something and to do it with all your heart anyway is to really, truly be free.

If no one is interested in what you want to make, make it for yourself.

If your skills are too bad to make what you want, how else do you expect to learn?

If you feel as if your specific application of creativity is too stupid or juvenile (making clay foam dragons, writing fanfiction, making Vocaloid covers of your favorite songs), why are you keeping yourself from what you want to do? Do you judge others in this way?

Stage number two: motivating yourself to do the damn thing!

This stage is where you have decided exactly what to work on, but haven't been able to bring yourself to start. This is sort of hard to explain, because I have a feeling that this isn't really supposed to exist as a stage or be a problem in the first place. However, I seem to notice it all the time. It really is strange that motivation issues are touched on by four out of six exhibits, whether explicitly or implicitly.

I believe, at its core, that this stems from work ethic issues. I don't think it usually looks like this to the person suffering from it. It seems to manifest as the person believing that they don't have time for anything, or being too tired to think of anything fun. I think that work that means something to you is energizing, though, and that unless you are working 60 hour weeks, you will have time. If it means something to you for real, you will have time.

Sometimes, it also looks like the person is scared of their work ethic being so bad in the first place. They know that they will drop the project, just like they've dropped many projects in the past, and so they don't bother starting this one either to save themselves the trouble and embarrassment of another dropped project. But working on something is work ethic training, and it gives skills for future projects! You can't let a lack of skill stop you from doing anything, or else you'll never gain the skill in the first place!

Stage number three: starting and getting past the hill of pain!

The insecurity monsters and the work ethic monsters have been tamed enough to start working! Oh, how exciting this is! Imagine the creative equivalent of a few brush strokes or two sentences in whatever medium you would like. A healthy and normal person will keep outlining or drafting until they have a rough draft, and then try to iterate on that. An unhealthy person will look at their few lines and fall into a death spiral, or delete everything, or open up Steam, or whatever else they can do to distract themselves.

A year (or two (or maybe three)) ago, I read something that explained why the creative process is so miserable. Forgive me, because I can't find the link again, but it went something like this: there is a huge gap between what you can create and your taste. When you sit down to create something, you hold your prime example and your inspiration high in your head. I want to make something like this! I want it to be as riveting as that, and I want it to be as intelligent as this! You keep it in your head as you work, and you think of the best parts of it as you work. When you look at your rough draft after a few hours of work, it doesn't remotely compare to what you set out to make. At this point, the insecurity monster starts swinging its head around and begging you to get rid of everything.

This is brutal! You can envision what you want exactly, but your skills simply haven't caught up yet. Which is okay! Of course, all you can do to get past this is keep practicing.

I believe in you. You are STRONG. THE ROUGH DRAFT CAN BE SHIT. Rather than bullying yourself into making something wonderful on the first try, you will have an easier time accepting that it might be bad (even VERY bad), but it is not the final product and does not speak poorly of your future potential.

Stage number four: steady, continuous effort until the end!

The first draft is done, or the worst groundwork has been set, or the hardest new skills have been more or less learned. And now here lies the most difficult and brutal stretch: finishing the damn thing you started. Look at exhibits A and E!

You know the theme by now! The monsters coming to stop you are very familiar to you by now. Work ethic! Insecurity! Work ethic and insecurity combining themselves into a horrible two-headed monster that you need to fight every day! And every day, they wear a new face! One day, the insecurity issues will look like wanting to scrap and redo the whole project because a cherry picked flaw seems impossible to fix. Another day, the work ethic monster will tell you that another idea seems better, and then add that this is because the other idea seems easier, shorter, and more achievable.

Worse, they wear all the faces of the previous issues. If someone was insecure about their pursuit being juvenile when starting it, this fear will now make itself very known to them the second they have a bad day or were otherwise insulted. A tiring day at work will make it hellish to continue work, and will break the work streak that someone has so lovingly built up.

The real problem with this stage is how long it lasts, but do consider this: even if projects get continuously dropped in this stage, it all counts as practice on how to survive all the way to stage four. If you can hold on to a project a little bit longer this time before dropping it, it means you'll be able to keep working on the next project for even longer.

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Writing this should make it obvious that I have serious issues with sticking with projects. But! I am happy to report that I can now mostly make it to stage four before issues start appearing. I have recently had luck by forcing myself to write 100 words a day in whatever project I would like. If I'm having a good day, writing 100 words leads to writing a thousand more. If I'm having a bad day, I can still force myself to write 100 words, since it won't take longer than 10 minutes.

I must admit that I made the most progress when I decided to try making a game and to ignore common sense like "you've literally never used Godot in your life" or "probably more than 95% of games are dropped before they're even finished" or even "you have the art skills of a five year old". Simply pushing myself to go through with it anyway showed me what can happen if I ignore insecurities and logic. It doesn't matter that the game got dropped, because it showed me how much I was capable of under the right circumstances. I hope you are able to learn your circumstances, and that you are able to identify what might be breaking in your creative process.

In order to motivate you, I would like to send you off with two more works of modern art. First, you must try:

And second, never forget:

Extra notes

- I would like to note that I suspect that major work ethic issues come from video games. Video games trick your sense of accomplishment like nothing else does. Grinding a level or something similar can entirely fulfill your need to be "productive" in the moment, and you only really realize your mistake after you've closed the game.
- If work ethic issues continue no matter what, consider temporarily turning off your router or unplugging your Ethernet cable.
- Here is a link to The Art of Thought. I didn't really read much of it, but just in case you're curious.
- I genuinely wonder how modern the insecurity problems are. Has it always been this hard? Are we fighting different problems than before due to the fear of how public your bad work can become, and how creative work isn't necessarily the standard anymore?