It was a Friday night, and I found myself, once again, sitting alone in my dorm room, alternating between staring at my much-too-blank score and at the dusty keys of my keyboard. Making progress on my midterm composition project seemed impossible. I’d never even written a string quartet before. How was I supposed to write my first one in three weeks? And it wasn’t like I could spend the entire day working on it for three weeks—I had fifteen other credit hours of course work to deal with on top of daily two-hour piano practicing.
For two weeks, I tried and tried to make progress on my quartet, but after the first twenty measures, nothing was working. I tried different approaches to composing. I tried sitting outside under the oak trees and just “listening” to whatever came into my head. I tried imagining how the piece should’ve sounded. After those methods failed, I went back to the piano and started improvising off my main theme. I started to make progress that way, but it too failed.
Frustrated, I came back to my final Tuesday composition lesson before the due date bemoaning the unproductiveness and composer’s block I was experiencing. Â I told my professor that I wasn’t sure it was possible to finish the piece in another week.
His confident response was, “I’ve seen your portfolio.”

In that instant, I saw the light, and I realized that my biggest problem wasn’t my method of composition or even a lack of experience––it was that I hadn’t thought I could do it.  I suppose it was a sort of artistic depression—it seemed so hopeless, that even though I was fighting so hard, I was at the same time barely trying anymore.  But then I stepped back and looked at what I’d written, and I realized that my professor was right.  I could finish the quartet.
“Compose” began to take on a whole other meaning for me that week. I may not have been “hearing” anything in my head. I may not have felt any emotion to inspire the piece.  I may not have had a story—but I had my willpower and my mind, and I realized that was enough. I pushed through the walls. It was a revolutionary concept: Why didn’t I just compose?
With three days left until the due date, I simply didn’t have time to think about whether or not what I was writing was any good.  If I caught myself staring blankly at the empty staves, I’d tell myself, I’ve seen my portfolio, and I’d just write something. It was when I stopped trying to make the piece “good enough” that I made some of the most memorable moments––and wrote the most music.
In the end, it only took around fifteen hours to write my string quartet once I stopped getting in my own way. Â Until I pushed myself to write the quartet in three days, I don’t think I’d truly seen my own portfolio. Â But now I’ve learned that sometimes, it’s better to step back and look through the fading pages of your well-worn book of compositions than to stare hopelessly at an empty score. Â It is in your portfolio that you can see how far you’ve come and dream of how much farther you can push yourself to go.

So readers, let’s hear from you:Â how do you overcome composer’s block? Â Have you ever felt like you were your own biggest obstacle?