I’m at a complete loss for what to do with this project. I went to the studio last night, hoping to sketch through my troubles. I worked on 5 minute gesture drawings with etching ink and lithographic crayon on newsprint, working completely out of my head with no references.
I felt like every sketch I drew looked the same, which is not a good sign when you’re trying to put together a series of works. It’s so hard to know whether to scrap everything yet again, or whether I should to stick with what I have and work through the problems. I’m brimming with indecision and doubt, and I’m struggling to find some kind of a concrete anchor that I can hold onto. All I know is that nothing feels “right” yet, which means that I have to keep pushing. I know from experience that if things don’t feel good at the sketching stage that they won’t get any better on the large scale.
Clara Lieu 
Clara, take several steps back. You said you are interested in expressing the dichotomy of showing the public one face and feeling differently inside. Do some brainstorming on two or three dozen ways to illustrate that. A smiling face, anguished body is only one! The problem is that for some reason, the images you are creating are not capturing the message you have in your heart.
Read the War of Art, and also he had a very very good article on his blog this week.It seems you are trying to MAKE ART rather than explore all sorts of ideas, and I know if I don’t come up with something to follow FAST my brain goes into hypercritical mode, the war of art… resistance its a good and fast read