Performative Creativity

It’s why I quit writing.

Performative Creativity is not an official term with a definition. I basically just made it up because it fits what I’ve been doing and what keeps me from making things.

Judith Butler first used the term performativity in connection with gender. I understand her argument to mean that gender is not a true identity but a range of behaviors we enact to show our belonging to a societal gender construct.

In other words, doing shit that doesn’t express who we are, but that signifies a certain societal label we claim.

I’m not a student of feminist theory, and this analogy will fall apart in a sec, but it helps me express an inconvenient truth about my struggle with creativity: Sometimes, I express a real part of myself, and sometimes I perform an idea of what it means to be a writer.

Whether you’re a writer or another kind of maker or creator, maybe you can relate to what I mean by performative creativity.

Performative Creativity:

• Making a thing, not for the sake of making it or the pleasure of the process, but for the sole purpose of offering it for consumption.
• Desiring validation not only for the thing made but for myself as a person.
• Making the thing not to express myself, but to maximize audience validation.
• Focusing less on the making, and more on the perceived status or label of being a maker/creator/artist.

The last time I wrote and published anything was over three months ago. Since then, I’ve thought about writing and didn’t. All the reasons why can be traced back to this idea of performative creativity that just gently tapped me on the shoulder this morning: Hey, you’re doing it again.

Making a thing, not for the sake of making it or the pleasure of the process, but for the sole purpose of offering it for consumption.

I concern myself less with the thing I need to write and instead start worrying too much about what I’ll do with the thing (that’s not even made yet), and how I’ll get it in front of enough of the right people. I come up with all kinds of shit to procrastinate doing the actual creative work.

Here’s how this goes. I sit down to write, stare at my blinking cursor, sigh, go pee, get more coffee, sit back down, open Google…

All of a sudden, I’m looking at photographers because I’ve never had professional headshots taken, and I definitely need those right now for my website. People won’t take my writing seriously if my website features a grainy vacation picture of me. I pay for a subscription service to plan, create and schedule social media posts. I use it one time but keep paying for it another 10 months. I buy into the idea that writers need to build a social media audience even though I one-thousand percent know social media is anti-creative for me. It’s all consumption, all the time. I run a boosted post/ad campaign to build my audience, but all it does is attract trolls and waste money. I do this because I’ve bought into the idea that there aren’t enough people who like long-form content that takes effort to write and read. We’re all fruit flies and goldfish with ten-second attention spans and memories! If I can’t bite-size myself, I’ll never make it as a writer!

All this does is make me anxious and depressed. The solution, of course, is not to go back to writing, but to figure out how to outsource all the marketing, sales, communication, branding, and social media stuff to someone else, so I can then focus on my creative work. I meet with a friend who is also a marketing genius to talk about my bad website and my non-existent social media presence, and whether I need to become a personal brand (ew) to make money off my writing. Because she is a true friend, she kindly tells me — over soggy sandwiches and lukewarm coffee — to get my head out of my ass and focus on writing (instead of what to do with the writing). Based on this conversation, I:

• Cancel my subscription to the social media scheduling tool
• Stop my half-ass ad campaign
• Start a list of the publications I want to write for and their publishing guidelines
• Put in more effort to connect with fellow writers, explore writer groups and networks, read more books on writing, and read/comment on other writers’ work
• Actually start writing again

Desiring validation not only for the thing I made but for myself as a person.

Being a person who puts out words in public while also struggling with extreme people-pleasing is a mind-fuck. Separating myself from the words I write feels impossible. I don’t know how to let go of expectations and outcomes once I put a thing out in the world.

If I write something and nobody cares about it, reads it, or responds to it — I don’t worry that my writing wasn’t interesting. I worry that I’m not interesting. That I have nothing valuable to say.

If I write something and people hate it, troll me, and leave insults in the comments — I don’t feel like an argument I made was questionable, or maybe the commenter is projecting their own issues. I feel like I’m stupid, a bad person, or a terrible parent.

If I write something and readers like it, even love it — I don’t think it’s just about the topic or my style of writing. I think these strangers are validating me as a person.

No matter what I write and what the response is, my personality and background are such that all scenarios pose their own problems. Dealing with all of them requires a strong identity that I have never had. I am only now starting to build (or unearth) this quiet, resting core. It’s a slow, painstaking process that never keeps up with my writing life.

Because I use writing to figure myself out, it’s difficult for me to stay grounded and not pay too much attention to negative or positive feedback. Writing already questions what I believe about myself and the world, and sometimes the responses to these fragile bits of knowledge and insight can be overwhelming. While negative responses make me feel the worst about myself, it’s positive responses that I consider my biggest problem. It’s so tempting sometimes to write what I know will give me the validation I crave — which brings us to my next point…

Making the thing not to express myself, but to maximize audience validation.

Last week I went to a local dance performance. In those two and a half hours, I saw one act that combined skill with stage presence and meaning, and a handful of dancers who had recognizable training and any sort of rhythm or timing. I grew up in a dance studio, safe in the rigidity of classical ballet until repeated knee dislocations ended that passion. I deeply appreciate the talent and skill of professional dancers.

These dancers on a community stage in homemade costumes ranged widely in age, size, and skill level. They missed their cues and bumped into each other. Music and movements rarely matched up.

They weren’t “good,” but they loved every minute of it.

One number reminded me of my teenage self. I teared up, Rob grabbing my hand in the dark, because he knew. Suddenly, all those memories of moving to the piano, forgetting everything, just swimming in the notes, came rushing back. The adrenaline of backstage, the costume changes in the wings, the smell of thick makeup, the scratch of tulle, the swish of soft leather shoes. I remembered crowded changing rooms with my best friend, zipping each other into costumes and crossing our fingers, and giving each other a ‘you got this’ nod from behind the curtain.

Of course, any sort of creation needs someone to behold it. It’s not that it’s worthless without an audience, but the true magic only happens if there’s a reciprocal exchange, a communion, a negotiation of meaning.

Creativity is not synonymous with beauty, but with expression. That includes expressing anger and sadness and envy and contempt and helplessness and chaos. I like the art that is beautiful and calming and hopeful, but I love the art that challenges me. It’s much riskier to make or behold, so when I need to feel safe (which is often), I’m too scared to engage with the risky things.

In those moments, I fail to express my insides, because what I’m craving is validation not challenge, applause not pushback. The less I express myself, the more I judge others for expressing themselves, although I will be defensive about it and give you 17 reasons why my criticism is valid. Only if I consistently exercise the courage to express a true thing myself, do I remember how vulnerable and scary it feels, which makes me more accepting of everyone else.

In that state, I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed the show a lot more.

Focusing less on the making, and more on the perceived status or label of being a maker/creator/artist.

Three of my personal friends and acquaintances just published their books within the last month. I was genuinely happy for them and deeply envious at the same time. While they posted unboxing shots of themselves with their book babies, I hadn’t written a damn thing in months. While they felt the fear and exhilaration of putting themselves out into the world in book form, I ghostwrote someone else’s book.

I can’t be entirely sure, but I think I would have felt less jealous if I’d at least been writing my own thing while seeing these three women put out their work. When I’m writing, it doesn’t matter so much what anyone else is doing. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t have that sense of missing out, of comparing myself and falling short. I don’t even care that other people are “better” or further along in their work. As long as I’m writing, I know I’m on my path, wherever it will lead. But when I stop, when that space is no longer filled with my own work, it creates too much room for envy and judgment.

I start critiquing other people’s skills and creative choices. I compare myself to them. This results in being angry or hopeless or both. Angry if I feel I’m a “better” writer and therefore deserve the attention or accolades someone else is getting. Hopeless if I feel I’m a “worse” writer and should just give up and never write again.

I know the solution to the comparison trap is writing, yet it’s the comparing itself that makes it so much harder to write, because it sucks all the juice out of me. And then I blink and it’s been three months and I’m stuck in a shit swirl of envy and self-doubt.

I ask myself: Do I want to write to write, or do I want to write to get published? I think those purists who pretend they don’t give a fuck about getting published are lying. True writers only care about the craft itself…what BS. Unless you’re exclusively journaling with no intention of writing for an audience outside yourself, you probably want others to read your writing. Part of the writing is having someone else engage with your words, stories, and ideas. That’s more likely to happen if you’re “published.”

Wanting to claim the label of writer or wanting to be published or wanting an audience is not wrong, although I’ve felt ashamed sometimes to say it out loud. It feels self-indulgent and needy. Instead of convincing myself that it’s not, that I truly write because I altruistically want to help others, I’ve tried to accept the truth. It is a bit indulgent. I do have a very strong need to connect and to belong. I’m not writing primarily to help you, but to help myself.

However, I need to be aware of the precarious balance. The writing itself must be the priority, rather than the perceived status of being a person who writes.

Writing makes me feel less lonely, and that is why I continue to do it, even though it also fucks with my head in all the ways.

And now I’m crying, because I just realized that what I thought was anger for three months was actually loneliness.

So, in an effort deal with that hot burning shame that sent me into the loneliness, and maybe connect with someone out there who’s experienced the same, this is why I quit writing three months ago:

I didn’t follow through with a thing I said I would do.

My essay Proof of Life, the last thing I wrote before my three months dry spell, included a commitment to do something creative for 100 days. It was based on one of my favorite writers Suleika Jaouad’s 100 Day Project. It sounded so beautiful and I was hungry to add more creativity to my life, not just writing, but making other things. My first red flag should have been the thought I had that if an artist in active cancer treatment can make the effort to create a beautiful thing every day, I certainly should be able to manage. I didn’t. I made it through a few half ass days of doodling and photographing. It wasn’t fun. I just did it so I could check it off my list of shit to do. Made dinner. Paid dentist bill. Pretended to be creative.

I already know that comparison with Suleika was stupid and gross, but I still had the thought that I should be able to do something, just because someone else could. And aside from being able to do it, I didn’t even ask myself if it was something I truly wanted to do every day. Before I’d even started the 100 day project, I’d already been thinking about how I would talk about the completed project. I was thinking about the struggles and lessons and takeaways and how to package them, instead of doing the actual thing. I was not thinking about making, but about marketing. Another red flag that maybe it wasn’t what I needed, if I wanted to be done with it before I even started.

I correctly diagnosed my unhappiness over the lack of creativity in my life, but then made the mistake to jump on the first solution without considering if that was the most helpful and fitting for me.

I saw it as a solution for the lack of beauty and creative activities and passion and fun and newness in my life. Instead of starting slow, I decided on doing something every day for a long time (100 days), without taking into consideration my current life and needs, and creative personality. I like taking whole chunks of days for creative endeavors, not a few minutes here, an hour there. My creative personality is to take a whole weekend to refinish a dresser (if I knew how to do such a thing), or a Saturday to write and edit an essay or start a painting.

I’ve been writing about how I don’t like bite-sized content and superficiality. I don’t like being rushed when making something. I like it to require effort to make and consume. And yet, I figured doing a quick creative thing every day would be right for me. Just doodling, painting, drawing or writing for 30 minutes or an hour which is what I could spare was not satisfying. In some ways it was actually frustrating. Either I wasn’t in the headspace to make anything so the time seemed wasted, or as soon as I got into it, I’d have to quit and do something else.

I felt so embarrassed and ashamed for not following through that I didn’t stop to consider why it didn’t work for me. Instead, I just didn’t do it and then quit writing and posting altogether so I wouldn’t have to tell you that I didn’t do what I said I would do. Even though I knew nobody was waiting for me to do 100 things. In my head, I totally made up a story that if I admitted my failure, you would be disappointed. Cringe. Then I felt stupid for making such a huge issue about something that wasn’t a real problem and that zero other people cared about. Double cringe.

These three months of not writing and making very little helped me realize that true creative expression makes me more accepting, less judgmental of myself and everyone else. Making and sharing helps me feel connected and less lonely, although it also poses risks. The process is an opportunity to practice balance and relying on my core regardless of other people’s responses and opinions. And finally, writing down the most cringe-y, self-absorbed, ridiculous thoughts I’ve had over the last three months make them less compulsive and powerful.

This reminds me of a saying

Suleika Jaouadparaphrased during an interview (the origin of which I couldn’t track down), which has always stuck with me:

If you want to write a good book, write about what you don’t want to admit to other people. If you want to write a great book, write about what you don’t want to admit to yourself.

I normally don’t write about writing. But today, it was the truest thing that needed to come out, so hopefully, I can begin again.

Note: This article was first published on Medium on September 24th, 2022.