Self Doubt - A Common Creative Virus

By Jason Santo • Jan 24th, 2007 • Category: Editorials

“Don’t let the bastards get you down.” – Kris Kristofferson

We all catch colds. Each and every single one of us knows the sting of a sore throat, the force of an unexpected sneeze and the burn under the nose from blowing it too many times without the comfort of Puffs Plus. But as the majority of the visitors to this website are creative artists, most of us have also been similarly felled by another, occasionally more long-lasting virus: self-doubt. Like the common cold, self-doubt can make you feel tired and lazy. Your feet will drag and you won’t be able to bring your chin up. Your drive to do anything other than lie in bed and watch TV overrides everything. Like a cold, self-doubt has a number of different causes and when you get it, you feel like you’re the only one in the world that has it. This is to let you know that all creative artists get saddled with this virus because we all experience, in some form or another, very comparable symptoms.

One of the most common causes of self-doubt is overly harsh self-criticism. The old adage “You’re your own worst critic” isn’t an old adage for nothing. Almost all creative people are subject to harsh words from themselves. For writers it’s “this idea isn’t original or fresh.” For a cameraperson it’s “that shot is terrible and the white-balance is all off.” For an editor it’s “I should’ve tightened that shot up.” To many of the people surrounding the artist, the work is fine because they feel they could never put such creativity on display themselves. And indeed, to other creatives, the work may seem perfectly fine, depending on their own level of experience. But to you, the creator, the faults are evident and you fear all will notice them. Alas, the one who notices most is you!

There are, however, plenty of times when the work isn’t well received by those viewing it. Anytime when artists put a piece of themselves out on display, they run the risk of hearing negative feedback. Of course, this is in part due to different tastes. You make a horror picture filled with zombies that pop out of the ground because you find that scary. But the audience you showed never got scared, and in some cases, even laughed! BAM! Self-doubt will immediately start to cloud your vision of your own work.

Sometimes this may be okay. Sometimes we all really do screw something up, and people don’t react to it the way we planned. I know I once made a very, very personal movie that I felt worked on several levels. In fact, I thought it was the best picture I’d ever made. And initially, the first few people I showed agreed with me. Then, WHAM… the door shut on the picture as just about everyone else who saw it didn’t get it. It was a sad and frustrating time, but it was a valuable experience as it made me think about what could have made it better. I did experience self-doubt, but by inverting that, I could see the other side of things, working with people’s critiques rather than allowing them to simply pull me into the mud.

Of course, this all comes from experience. I’ve been making movies pretty actively for about 10 years now, and I’ve come to realize that you can’t please everyone and that you shouldn’t try. What you can do is listen to people and absorb their criticism, but don’t immediately note it as gospel or discard it as rubbish. By accepting their word over your vision wholesale, you’re immediately allowing self-doubt to run you over. By tossing aside valuable, carefully thought-out advice, you’re pretending you’re better than you are as there is always room for improvement, and down the line this could make for an even bigger case of the blues. In this way, you could think of outside criticism as a weird type of vaccine. You’re giving yourself a shot of self-doubt straight-up by listening to it, but in the long-run, it’s better you heed it than ignore it and get slammed by a much more heavy case of it in the future.

When you talk about self-criticism and outside critiques, there must also be some measure against which the evaluation is being performed, and usually this is superior work. This work could be from either peers or recognized individuals in your field, but any way you cut it, it’s what you look up to. We all have influences and we all have favorite writers, directors, songwriters and the like. When we finish a work, we either consciously or unconsciously try to see how we compare against that/those that we respect. And often times we have such a high opinion of a superior effort that we cannot see our own work as “great” or even “good,” but rather as something mediocre or just plain bad.

In part, this sort of reaction seems to come from the love or respect paid to that work against which you’re evaluating yourself. If you truly think something is terrific, you’ll have a lot of good feelings toward that picture. So if you really love Pulp Fiction, and you make an offbeat comedy/drama with lots of colorful conversations about nothing, you’ll almost automatically be setting yourself up for some degree of a letdown. It’s good to aspire to heights of that which you love, but don’t always get down on yourself when it doesn’t pan out right. And if others compare you against the work and say you’ve missed the mark, listen to what they say and see if there’s any value in it. And at least take solace in the fact that they are comparing your work to the one that inspired you!

This kind of self-doubt, this measuring one’s worth against other work, is specifically applicable to competition with one’s peers. Each month, it seems there are hundreds of new movies being produced on the Microcinema level. Short movies, experimental pictures, feature-length releases: all types and all kinds, and each of them are projects with which you could conceivably imagine yourself in competition. We all pay attention, at least some of the time, to what our peers are doing. And it can be disheartening to see a work produced with the same time and effort of your work that’s more clever or better directed than yours. You wonder, “How can they do that?” and soon could fall into self-doubt about your abilities. Again, don’t let it take you over completely. Like critiques from others, take a look at what someone else is doing and see what it is you like about that work that supposedly is better than your own efforts. Use the knowledge for the next time you go and make something. If you’re working on a movie, maybe they used a particular filter that made things look great. If it’s a screenplay, maybe there was a certain way the words of the dialogue read. Look for the differences and see if it’s something that could help you better yourself. Don’t justshrug and say, “I suck compared to that.” This sort of reaction will lead to long hours of sitting before the TV critiquing everything you see with the words “I could do better than that.”

When it comes down to it, one of the best medicines for self-doubt is patience. Be patient with yourself and if you’re a novice, accept and forgive yourself for your mistakes. Like getting colds, we’re all susceptible to making mistakes as well. It’s part of being human. It takes a lot of solid work and concentration (and yes, even fun!) to make a good movie, so be patient during the process. Understand that your vision may not always be what ends up on the screen. In time, experience will help you better communicate your ideas, and by forgiving yourself, listening for value in others’ critiques, and paying attention to the differences in work you feel is superior, your bouts with self-doubt won’t keep you down for long. Understanding self-doubt and utilizing the causes to make your work better is the Vitamin C for this particular virus.

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