All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Anything worth making usually begins with a long look at something unpleasant: the thing you fear, the problem nobody wants to name, the part of the situation everyone edits out. Work that skips that step comes out decorative. Willingness to look is not bravado, mostly just staying put a few minutes longer than is comfortable.

If a project feels thin, ask what you have been steering around. Write the version you would not want anyone to read. You need not use it, and the work that follows will have something underneath it.