Creative Blocks and What to Do About Them
They don't last forever
Recently a friend reached out to share some of her struggles around writing. She was sure she had writer’s block. She said:
I was really enjoying writing in my blog, but lately I feel like I have nothing to say. It’s definitely some sort of block. I know I’m still finding my voice, and I am trusting that this is all part of the experience, but I haven’t felt inspired by anything lately. I picked up the guitar that I’ve been learning to play for a week and I’ve committed to enjoying that… I learned to play a week ago and have been enjoying it. I know I have a lot to say, a lot of life experiences I want to share, but when I try to write about it I just go blank.
There’s a key element to consider here: my friend has been through an amazing and life-changing transformation in the last few years, one which involved the brave choice of leaving a comfortable life for a very different and uncertain path. In other words, she’s been through a lot, and she’s still going through a lot.
In light of that, she first has to consider whether her lack of creativity might be less about removing a creative block and more about respecting her creative cycle.
When a creative block is really just bad timing
Our culture doesn’t make it easy to honor the creative cycle. We stress productivity no matter what, we prize the next achievement, we want the never-ending pursuit of the goal. And yet, life simply isn’t built this way. We have cycles of planting, growth, tending, harvesting, and decay.
Depending on where you live in the world, your environment reflects this to some degree. In the Midwest, we’re experiencing the end of the harvest and the beginning of decay. Foliage is turning from green to red to brown, the days are getting shorter, and life is withdrawing into itself in preparation for the winter. If you’re in-tune with the environment, you might even be aware of a desire to “hermit” (yes, I’m using this as a verb), which is also encouraged by our current global pandemic. Going after a major goal feels almost unnatural at this moment in the yearly cycle.
Because of our collective inability to acknowledge natural cycles, we believe we should be overflowing with something to share all the time. We think that because we wrote well before, we should always be writing well whenever we have need of it. And my friend does have need of it — she’s started her own business and wants to spread her message. She could be experiencing a block in the form of the pressure to perform. However, she’s still internally sifting through her experience and may not be able to put it to words yet. The seed for what will probably be very inspirational material has been planted, but now she needs to wait patiently while it germinates. And that takes time.
It’s a mysterious process — we never know when the sprout will finally emerge for the first time from the rich dirt. While some of us are blessed with a very quick turnaround when it comes to life experiences and emotions, others are not. It can take months before you’re ready to share the nugget of wisdom from your experiences — and that is truly okay.
It’s important to give ourselves time to process our ideas, and in the meantime, to avoid forcing creativity for its own sake. Notice she may not have been able to write, but she is fostering her creativity in the ways she’s called to do so — through music. She’s letting herself sit with the idea that she has nothing to say, yet, but it will come, and in the meantime, she’s following her heart’s desire.
Everyone experiences creative blocks
Everyone from writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, to singer Adele, to composer Rachmanoninoff, to Peanuts creator Charles Schultz has experienced some kind of creative drought — so know that it’s not just you dealing with this conundrum.
Aside from understanding whether you’re experiencing a creative block or bad timing, it’s helpful to think about what kind of creative block you’re experiencing and what you can (or in some cases, shouldn’t) do about it.
Circumstantial blocks
Life happens… meaning, you’ve got a lot going on. If you’re going through the birth of a child, if you’ve lost a loved one, if you’re getting a divorce or going through a hard break-up, if you’re moving… all of these factors influence your creative work and should not be discounted. Most of us have a tendency to say “Well, it’s not that big of a deal that my dog of 15 years just died, I should be able to work through it,” when in fact, it is a big deal. So instead of letting it be an emotional event and giving ourselves a break, we decide that we should be able to “power through it” and write or produce anyway.
Please don’t do this to yourself. If you’re going through something major in life (and you are the one who gets to decide what counts as major, not society at large), give yourself time to work through it.
That being said, writing can help you process all of the emotions you might be experiencing. I’m not suggesting you force yourself to write the book you want to publish next year, but I do believe that cathartic free writing, where you allow whatever needs to come out to do so via pen and paper, can be healing. Personally, writing down what’s happening inside is one of the best ways for me to make sense of what I’m going through.
If you get ideas and have the desire to write or make art, then sit down and do it, but don’t beat yourself up about not making the time or not feeling the inspiration. Trust that you’ll have the space to be creative when you’ve given the emotions around the life circumstance time to dissipate and heal.
Analysis Paralysis
Sometimes, creative blocks come from the work itself. You’re stuck on one area of your text, you’ve revised it over and over again, and the more work you do the worse it is.
I was ghostwriting a book and had to work on a chapter about my author’s experience of mom guilt, as well as a general commentary on mom guilt in our culture. No matter what I did, I could not get this chapter right. The more I changed, rearranged, added and deleted, the worse it seemed to be.
At the time that I was writing this, I was a wee bit stressed out. It was a Saturday night, the deadline for the revision was Monday, and I was no closer to figuring it out. I had to be away from my kid all weekend to work, which made me feel like a bad mom. To top it off, my partner and I had had a serious argument that morning. Things felt bleak.
That night, I was talking to a friend of mine about what I was going through. He looked at me and said, “So you mean to say that you had an argument with the father of your child, you had to spend all day working, which meant that you couldn’t be with your kid the way you think you should be… and you don’t know why you can’t write the chapter on mom guilt?”
With that one question, it all clicked. The chapter wasn’t coming together because I was struggling with the very topic I was supposed to be writing about. What’s more, I was writing about it from a detached standpoint instead of embodying what I was saying. It was as if I was standing outside a room looking in, trying to describe it the way I saw it, instead of owning that I should be in the room with all the other moms who feel guilty. I had to get real with myself about my feelings of mom guilt, what it meant to me, how it showed up in my life, and the moments that sparked it. And when I did, it became one of the strongest chapters in the book. It was a powerful example of the obstacle being the way.
If you’re struggling with a part of your writing or idea that you’re working on, get real with yourself. Sit in it. What about that topic aren’t you facing? What deeply pertains to you? Is there something that you haven’t resolved and yet you’re trying to teach it? Are you failing to practice what you preach?
Lack of inspiration
This is probably the most terrifying of all of the blocks. You have the time to write. You have your goals. You might even have a book deal and a publisher waiting for your manuscript. You sit down to write… and nothing. No creative spark to speak of.
First, what have you fed yourself lately? I don’t mean food — I mean what does your inspirational diet look like? Have you been reading books or articles that challenge you and cause you to think differently, or have you been binge-watching Workin’ Moms episodes on Netflix? Have you had any stimulating conversations lately with new people from different walks of life, or have you been hanging out with the same people who tend to do the same things, day in and day out? Have you traveled, tried something new, taken on any new challenges? Are you interested and excited about your topic, or have you done it to death?
Inspiration comes in many forms, but when we talk about using inspiration as fuel for our creative work, we need to remember that there are some things that fuel us and some that deplete us. Yes, Workin’ Moms is hilarious and makes for a good break, but I think few of us can argue that TV is supportive of our creative work. Life-long friends are important, but it’s also vital to expose ourselves to new ideas and new people. When we stretch our boundaries, we create the opportunity to make new connections and come up with creative ideas.
If you’re not consciously feeding yourself a steady stream of inspiration, whatever that means to you, you’ll notice an uptick in creativity when you give your creative spirit something to work with.
Burnout
Burnout is closely related to a lack of inspiration, and they can go hand in hand. There was a point in my professional career where, for three months straight, I was pushing myself hard. I was writing two proposals and finishing the final edits on a manuscript that would be traditionally published, and the pressure was heavy. When I finished what felt like a dead sprint, I was exhausted. I had set myself up to have a low workload for the following few weeks after the final deadline, which was fortunate because I had nothing to give. I was suddenly left with all of this time, during which I had planned on writing for myself, but I was drained. And while the desire was there, I had no creative inspiration.
I had to be very gentle with myself, set low expectations, eat well, and above all, rest. A lot. Over the span of a few weeks of taking care of myself, my sense of excitement and inspiration returned, and I had plenty of ideas to work with.
If you’ve been pushing yourself hard with little rest and no time for yourself, it will be difficult to perform the way you want to. Take a look at the previous months, or even year(s). Have you given yourself time? Have you taken a break at any point? If the answer is no, consider how to work in downtime so you can have the energy to foster the creative spark when it returns.
For what it’s worth, I try not to do that to myself anymore because I know the cost is too high. A slightly slower work pace with more realistic expectations means that I have inspiration to spare and room in my schedule to work with it when an idea comes to me.
Fear
Fear often shows up as procrastination. We suddenly feel we have to do the pile of dishes, or clean the house, or pay all those bills — anything instead of writing or working on the project that means so much to us. This might arise if you feel an incredible amount of pressure around what you’re writing. For example, you might have a book deal and you’re super excited about it, but now you’re terrified about the reality that you need to show up. That kind of fear, especially if we don’t want to admit that we’re afraid, can be crippling.
There is no getting around fear until you admit to yourself what you are truly feeling. You don’t need to roll around in it, you don’t need to obsess over it, but you do need to acknowledge it. I hope you have some coping techniques for fear — some of us do yoga, some of us run, and some of us meditate. I do all three when I experience fear, but most importantly, I welcome it in. I don’t fight it. I sit with it to hear what it has to say, and then I do yoga or take a walk to help it move through my body.
Fighting fear is useless. Fear is a part of life, and how we manage it internally is key. Additionally, when I have a plan for what I want to work on, I’m able to focus on what I know needs to be done. Maybe I choose the easiest part to write, the part I know by heart, because it will be easier to accomplish. With one accomplishment under my belt, I can move on to the next section and fear has less of a hold on me. Having a plan is like having a shortcut. You might still be afraid but it gives you something to focus on. You can tell yourself you’ll just work on that one easy part for 20 minutes. By the end of 20 minutes, you’re far less likely to stop.
Having a creative block doesn’t mean that you’re a bad writer or artist, that you’re dried up, or that you have nothing left to say. It’s usually an indicator pointing at some area of your life that has been left untended and needs attention. Make the space for yourself to acknowledge and work through your block, and you’ll be creating again in no time.
Follow the thread
No matter what kind of block you have, you have to make space to follow the thread of your curiosity. It might be that you’re percolating new ideas that are out of the range of your usual turf, and your psyche needs time to find those threads and give you the clues you need to follow them. Listen for the quiet nudges that come along in your day-to-day life. What attracts you? What makes you curious? What gives you a little tinge of excitement? Follow that thread.