The Letdown, Part II

It's a lovely, but kind of dreary day in LA.

And I just finished another small rewrite of a play I submitted for this year's O'Neill National Playwrights Conference.  As you might remember from last week's blog post called "The Letdown", it's depressing when I finish a project.

I get sad.
I feel like I haven't accomplished anything.
I don't know where to put my energy.

Of course, the best thing to do is start on the next project.  Although, since I have used the birth analogy to describe the act of creation and this let down as a sort of postpartum depression, I don't know if you would say to someone who was depressed after giving birth,

"You should just work on your next one.  That'll get you out of your funk!"

So it's a flawed analogy.  Apologies.  Moving on.

But here I am again, having given birth (or re-birth) to my second (zombie) child in two weeks.  Part of me feels like I'm on a roll:

Two projects in two weeks.  
All right!  
Let's keep going!  
Your creative juices are flowing!  
The muscles are warm!

But then, of course, right behind are the negative voices:

How much energy do you have left?
You spent all of it working on these two projects.
It was a lot of work!
Maybe you need a break.
Don't you want to go outside?

Yes, I realize that the negative voices don't sound all that negative.  But that's how they're sneaky.  Because the subtext is that you can't keep going.  It's not coming from a Place of Yes or a Place of Abundance.  It's coming from a place of lack.  Like there's only a finite amount of creativity you're allowed at one given time.  These are the voices that it's hard to keep at bay because they aren't the extreme negative voices:

You're not talented.
You don't have good ideas.
You suck.
You don't deserve this!
Who do you think you are?

But they are just the Ivy League educated cousins of those extreme voices.  They're more clever and more insidious.  They know how to make bad stuff sound not so bad.  But they're still bad.  Bad is bad.  Crime is crime.  This is just the White Collar version.  The Blue Collar has less tact, but both are still crimes against creativity.

So I'm going to try to not let myself down this week.  I'm going to listen to my inner Pollyanna cheerleader.


Two projects in two weeks.  
All right!  
Let's keep going!  
Your creative juices are flowing!  
The muscles are warm!
You're amazing!
Wow, what an idea machine!
You're nice and loose, right in the pocket.

Yes, this is my inner Stuart Smiley as well as my inner Pollyanna cheerleader.  But sometimes I need Stuart to let me know that I've got to keep this train moving.  There's more to do.