I have a confession to make.

A while back I bought myself a bunch of these cool fish dudes because they’re friggin’ awesome. I have all kinds of fun ideas on how to paint them, but mostly, I think they’d look cool if I made them super colorful.

At the same time, I want them to look kind of uniform, like they’re all part of the same group. That, and I don’t want to copy other people’s ideas. And I don’t want to overdo it with the color and just end up with a garish fish man circus. And there are different paint techniques I want to try out because I think they’d work really well for them, but I’m not that practiced at those techniques and I don’t want to ruin my figures.

I really want to paint them because they’re cool, and I want to do them justice.

And as a result, you’ll notice that I haven’t painted them.

Painting for Fun

When I paint minis, I mostly do it for the sheer fun of it. There’s something immensely satisfying about slapping paint onto a model and playing around with different techniques. I don’t particularly care (usually) about getting a perfect result. The expectation is that they’ll look good from three feet away on a game table, so I don’t have to concern myself with perfection.

In addition, it’s really easy to get minis for cheap. I don’t have to worry about messing something up, because if I do, I can usually just get a new one for a few bucks anyway and do it over. The end result is a stress-free hobby where I don’t have to do anything except have a little fun messing around with paint.

The end result is this bookshelf which I’ve been filling over the last year and a half.

Sure, there are some figures that could definitely be better, but I’m happy with most of these. Often, the ones I’m happiest with are those I picked up and painted on a whim just because I thought they looked cool. I didn’t have any predetermined plans for them, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of putting color on them.

Writer’s Block

After realizing this, I (eventually) got to thinking why I don’t write this way.

Sometimes I do, and you see the results of my messing around on this very blog. I don’t particularly care about the quality or magnitude of what I post here, nor do I have any preconceived plans for what the content should be. As such, I feel free to just write whatever I please and put it on the internet for others to maybe enjoy.

On the other hand, I have other stories I want to tell. I have worlds I want to share. I want these tales to be as perfectly tuned and orchestrated as possible, from the structure and prose to the characters and their adventures, and even on to stuff like marketing and publishing so I can make sure the resulting novels are successful. Otherwise, I’d feel like my creations are wasted.

The end result? The same as my little band of fish dudes. I want to make my novels perfect and beautiful and successful, and because of that, they don’t exist.

Don’t Try So Hard to Shake the World

Something I’ve seen some independent authors do is just write stuff and publish it. Amazing.

Sure, they go through a process to make sure they’re actually good (in most cases [hopefully]), but the novels are just put out casually. They’re not treated like they’re supposed to be this big earthshaking thing. They’re simply released in the off chance that someone else can maybe enjoy them too.

I once wrote a short snippet about a guy in a village who was lured by an ethereal voice emanating from a creepy spire nearby. I later expanded it to a longer story, but since it wasn’t connected to anything I cared about—like a predetermined setting I wanted to share with the world—I just had a blast making something cool.

As soon as I tried making something VERY IMPORTANT(TM) out of it, it died.

If I treated all my ideas and projects as something that I can just play around with for fun without having to make something massive out of them, I’d probably write more.

Just like how I paint more when I feel free to just chill and do whatever.

It’s liberating, and usually, the results are pretty decent. In fact, my job-related writing usually does better when I let myself mess around a little. Weirdly, it gets much more positive feedback from clients, which tells me that maybe I shouldn’t try so hard to be perfect.

Just Chill and Have Fun

I realize that this post is more diary-esque than my usual work on here. Hopefully, someone might benefit from this little bout of self-exploration.

I guess the point is that if you’ve been dealing with writer’s block (or a blockage with any other kind of art), maybe the solution is to stop taking it all so seriously.

If you end up making crap? You’ll learn from it. Don’t get too precious about your ideas or resources. The human imagination is infinite. You’ll think of something else to create.

However, I don’t think crap will necessarily be the result. Often, simply letting go of your perfectionism by eschewing this or that self-imposed constraint can create something more wonderful than you would produce otherwise. You’re more free to inject the wild whimsy of your own artistic soul into your work, and as a result, your work will take on a life of its own.

Too much of art these days has no soul, so perhaps the best thing you can do is to let your art inherit a bit of yours, no matter how chaotic the results of that may be.

Thoughts? Questions? Scathing accusations? Let me know in the comments! Also, feel free to share this with all your crazy artist friends. All proceeds go toward making myself learn to let go of arbitrary constraints and just make something cool already. Really.