Are you waiting for proof that you’re really an artist?

(and sometimes you’ll ask yourself: “am I really an artist?”)

Everyone knows that if you’re not making work, claiming the title of “artist” or “writer” is going to feel questionable. And it’s not easy to get over that hump, and get into a routine of creating regularly. Sitting down to work is not about willpower, it’s about having a plan.

But there’s another piece to the puzzle.

What if you really are sitting down in that chair and working, but it feels so difficult, and the work comes so slowly, that you just can’t believe that you could possibly be doing it right? You’re going to hit moments when you think, really? Is this it? Because this doesn’t feel great. Isn’t it supposed to feel great when I actually hit my creative goals? Does this mean I have no talent? Should I just give up?

After all, the point of “doing the work” isn’t producing freewriting or doodles or endless pages of notes, it’s making art, right? It’s making your dream creative projects come to life; it’s launching your thing into the world. And if you’re deep in it, and what you’re producing feels more like a morass than a coherent statement, that can be demoralizing.

The bad news is: This is often what it feels like to make creative work. Or to keep making creative work. It can feel like you’re flailing, like you’re completely incapable of getting your mind all the way around the subject at hand.

Kazu Kibuishi, the author of Amulet, who I think we can all agree is a genuine, honest-to-god narrative artist, expressed his experience in a well-loved tweet.

Creative process:

1. This is going to be awesome
2. Oh, this is hard
3. This is terrible
4. I’m terrible
5. Hey, not bad
6. That was awesome

See #4 on that list? That’s where you’re at. But it wasn’t true about Kazu, and it’s not true about you.

You’re in what I call the Dark Forest.

The Dark Forest is a scary place to hang out. I made a podcast episode all about it.

The good news is, the projects where you find yourself lost like this are really only the big, important ones.

This kind of stuck doesn’t happen with little things, with easy, non-challenging work. If you can get through this one, it will be creatively life-changing.

If you’re not stretching yourself, trying to say something you’ve never said before, trying to give form to ideas that are truly new for you, writing is a breeze. It’s a walk in the park. Do you struggle to describe the ridiculous behavior of your annoying roommate? To express how you feel about what your dog did to your shoes? To recount what happened in some recent sports match? Probably not. If you were to write about these topics in an email, say, it would probably be a pretty cut-and-dried affair. But that is because the ideas you’re expressing are fairly simple, and the events are clear and on the surface.

And that email would probably not reach the level you’re aiming for when you sit down to work on your dream project.

If what you’re doing is deep, if it’s worth doing, it’s going to be hard.

I’ve been lost deep in the Dark Forest on every major project I’ve ever done. Even on smaller projects, I spend at least a few hours there. And it’s no fun.

But I’ve been doing this long enough that if I didn’t get at least a little bit stuck in those brambles, I’d worry that I wasn’t stretching enough. That feeling of being lost is what happens when your brain is working the hardest to make connections, to understand what this morass of work you’ve produced actually means. And if I’m not stretching? Maybe I’m not doing my best work.

So when you’re in the Dark Forest, be kind to yourself. It’s impossible not to think, “Am I doing it wrong?” in these moments. Just try not to go all the way to “I’m terrible.”

Take a walk, take a shower, take a nap. Your mind is doing its work, and it hurts. But keep working, keep making art, and you will escape from the forest. And there’s a beautiful sunny glade on the other side.

You’ll emerge from the Dark Forest, and when you do, you’ll be a new person. The forest is fire, and it’s that fire that will forge you into an artist.

Per aspera ad astra

Through hardship, to the stars.

You can find an expanded version of this article in my book, Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life.