I make a lot of these, sorry!! I just wanted to know if anyone else was having these problems, had any advice, wants to tell a relevant (or irrelevant, I guess, if you're so inclined, honestly I'm not here to block your creative output so you do you) story, please feel free. So I've always been extremely creative - I write novels in my head all the time. I create characters, settings, etc. I do character designs and create wardrobes, I think through important plot points, I polish dialogue, I build worlds, all of it. I do this when I'm at work, when I'm at the gym, when I'm at home - I'm never fully 'in my head' alone, there's always a story being woven in there. But I have the worst time sitting down and actually writing (or drawing, which is another favorite hobby of mine, even though I'm a novice and I straight-up SUCK. But it's just kind of fun and cool to do so I don't mind as much as I thought I would). I don't get a lot of creative stuff done, no matter how much fun I have doing it. I think the writing problem might be because of overstimulation - working retail leaves me really BLUH and mentally not-present. The older I get the more I've noticed that I have trouble articulating what I want to say, which has never been a problem for me before. I was worried it was an early symptom of schizophrenia, but I don't have any other symptoms, and sometimes I'm honestly fine to write or type. Other times it feels like my head is full of static - I'll type a sentence, think 'that looks really awkward. Change the wording'. But when I try and do that, I can't think of anything better so I just kinda give up and leave it so long as I think my point can be gleaned from the typed trainwreck. But as for the art, I got nothing. I love doing it, I have so much fun, but I can't ever bring myself to sit down and draw so I almost never do. Someone I follow on Tumblr said that they have the same problem because of their antidepressants - it suppresses their creative energy or something. I'm also on antidepressants that work as a 2-fer by also keeping my OCD kinda-somewhat under control. Also since I went on a lower dose I've started having PTSD symptoms and hypomania so I think the meds may have been helping with that too (but I'm not a doctor; I can't say for sure). I also stopped taking my ADD medicine back in high school but am trying to go back on it (sadly I haven't gotten to drop off the prescription yet, and it might take a while for them to fill it, I don't know, I can't remember how it was back when I took it). I don't want to quit my medication altogether because that's honestly Really Not a Good Idea (Like Really Not) and I don't want to wind up in the hospital. OCD is treatable, but the Pure-O type (which is what I have) almost always requires medication. I don't know if I'll ever be able to go off it and honestly, I'm okay with that so long as eight of the roughly twelve hours I'm awake a day aren't spent in misery. When I wasn't taking any medication (this was a long time ago, mind, but still) I had no functionality because I got stopped up on everything, hated myself, believed I was the most worthless person in the world, and couldn't focus on anything in front of me. So I'm gonna say stick with medication. Maybe try a different medication, as mine did have its shortcomings (boy howdy did it have its shortcomings). But it might be a while before I can do that. Does this sound familiar to anyone? And are there any tips/tricks to beat this? I used to write every single day and I miss it so much.
So I definitely have since problems in this direction, without any medication in the mix (but definitely with depression and brainweird focus issues). I almost exclusively do fanworks these days, and jumping fandoms DEFINITELY helped kickstart me. But even when I was exclusively doing homestuck, making derivative works helped a LOT. I couldn't figure out what to draw for myself, but I sure drew lots of things for price of forgiveness and centaurstuck. I didn't write as many derivative works, but I did write stories based off punpunichu and syblatortue's art. Not a perfect solution, but it reduced the spoon load and kept me creating even when things were really bad. Also, I've had some good luck with doing aggregate ao3 documents with little short stories for kink bingo, both for homestuck and for transformers. Keeping the individual pieces brief means I don't have to stress making sure the structure is long enough for a fic to stand on its own, and it can be as long or short as it needs to be, and start and stop as abruptly as I feel like. Plus working from a list of categories where I need to Fill The Slots gives me a nice 'task completed' buzz every time I add to the document.
