What to do When You Don’t Like What You’ve Created

While writing my next post, I realized I didn’t like what I was writing. I have a self-imposed deadline to publish a post every Friday. On Thursday afternoon I decided what I’d been working on wasn’t ready. So what should I do? I’m going to share my five top tips to help you when you don’t like what you’ve created. I’ll be talking about writing a lot because that’s what I was struggling with, but these tips work for a lot of creative outlets.

Tip #1

Diagnose why you don’t like what you’ve created. Here are three common reasons for not liking your creation: Getting stuck in the middle, being rushed to finish, being a beginner.

I struggle with what writer Jerry Jenkins refers to as ‘The Marathon of the Middle’ in his guide about How to Write a Book. This basically means you know how you want your story to start and you know how you want it to end, but you don’t know how to make those ideas meet in the middle. This applies to other creative activities, too. For example, when I’m working on a bigger knitting or crochet project I will often lose steam towards the middle because it feels like I still have such a long way to go. It feels like a marathon to get through it.

Conversely, maybe you don’t like what you’ve created because you were rushed to finish it. The quality isn’t where you’d like it. Time management is something a lot of people have had to work on. It’s part of the reason I now start any gifts I make for someone at least a month in advance. The other part is because I really like to enjoy the process. I like to take my time and enjoy what I’m making. I get stressed out and I make mistakes when I’m rushed. Then I don’t like what I’ve created.

Another thing I see a lot of people do is not give themselves grace when they’re still learning. When you’re learning, you can’t expect your hands to be able to exactly replicate the image you have in your head. You aren’t practiced enough and that’s okay. Maybe you don’t like what you’ve created this time, but you just learned an awful lot for next time.

Tip #2

Do what you know. I learned this from a favorite teacher. When you don’t know what to write about, write about what you know. I knew I didn’t like the narrative I was creating in my post. So why not write about what to do when you don’t like what you’ve created?

This advice has become one of my go-to fixers. When I try a new recipe that didn’t go to plan, I have often salvaged it by falling back on my knowledge of cooking and recipes that have worked in the past. It takes experience to be able to have that knowledge to fall back on, but you need to keep trying to gain that experience.

It’s helpful to write or do what you know because it can get you unstuck. Plus, since you already know how to do it, it should come together a lot faster. Your final result will be more detailed and higher quality. Since you know a lot about the topic and the process, it will come together more seamlessly. Compared to the frustration of not liking what you were creating before, it‘s very satisfying.

Tip #3

Brainstorm new ideas. This could mean thinking up something completely new to create, especially if it’s something that you know a lot about. For writing it could mean thinking up more plot points for where your characters are going next. It could mean looking at all of the leftovers in your fridge and coming up with different dishes you could make to use them up.

But brainstorming a couple of new ideas isn’t always enough. It’s helpful to come up with a bunch of new ideas when you get stuck on something. For example, the name of this blog. I had my heart set on a different name entirely. But another site had already taken that name. I was sad, but I didn’t want to give up. So I brainstormed eleven more. My second favorite name was also taken. None of the rest sounded right. Then what did I do? I came up with a total of 61 names for this blog. Happy Try Day was number 57.

Sometimes you can get yourself unstuck by the sheer volume of new ideas you generate. Let yourself off the hook as far as if each idea you brainstorm is good or not. If I thought up a name for my blog, I wrote it down. Not every name made sense (Tryatica, for example). But it really got my creative juices flowing, and that’s what matters.

Tip #4

Put a time limit on it. When you don’t like what you’ve created it can often stem from being too in your own head. When I sat down to generate names for my blog the first time, I spent around three hours coming up with those eleven names. I was too concerned with whether the names I was coming up with were good. I didn’t realize I wasn’t working efficiently. The second time I sat down to come up with names, Hubby challenged me to come up with fifty names in one hour. I thought it was an impossible task, especially compared with my previous efforts. But I got into a blog-naming zone.

The ideas flowed out of me one after another. Then I got stuck for a minute or two. So I looked up synonyms for words I’d already used (such as: repeatedly, frequently, continually). With my limited time in mind, I had to be clever with how I spent it. I took inspiration from common phrases or movie lines (like: Try Everything from Zootopia). I even dabbled in word-play (Try with Umph, for example).

Nothing was off limits because I was trying to work fast. Because I had to stick to the time limit, I turned off my filter. This led me to tap into new levels of creativity. I wouldn’t have gotten to those levels if I’d just come up with eleven more names in three hours.

Tip #5

Do something different. If you don’t like what you’ve created, take a break and do something that isn’t creating that thing. If you can create something in the same medium, you’ll keep the same parts of your brain working. It’ll be easier to jump back into fixing your creation. I can’t tell you how many times I would pause writing a research paper for one class to write poetry for another. Sometimes it’s not the act of creating you need to get away from, just what you’re currently creating.

If creating something different isn’t enough to break you out of your funk, it might be time to do something else. Maybe you need to take a fifteen minute walk to clear your head (and trust me, I’ve taken my fair share of walks). If a walk isn’t enough, try doing an activity that you find relaxing yet productive. For me, that would be turning on one of my favorite movies and working on my latest knitting/crochet project. By doing something that is relaxing yet productive, it helps me feel less guilty about not working on what I was creating. I’m making progress at something.

It’s also okay to put what you’re creating on the shelf for a while. I have projects that I work on in bursts every few days/weeks. I have also gone back and worked on old projects I wasn’t fully happy with from years ago. Now that I’ve had some time away from these projects, it’s much easier to look at them with an objective eye. I can make dramatic changes that I wouldn’t have been able to do while in the emotional thick of it before. Sometimes, what you’re creating isn’t bad, it just takes a little extra time away before you can see the good.

Final Thoughts

There you have it! Five tips to help you know what to do when you don’t like what you’ve created. Figure out why you don’t like it, do what you know, brainstorm new ideas, put a time limit on it, and do something different. Creating is a process. I use these tips all the time and I hope they help you the next time you don’t like what you’ve created. But one thing I do know, you won’t like what you’ve created until you’ve put the time in to work on it.

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