It comes in fits and starts. In the past I thought about them as creative blocks, but I don’t really think about it like that anymore. I just think about it as a season. That’s okay.
Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
The question
What do you do when you feel creatively stuck?Originally asked
The Creative Independent, to working artists, its interview series
A recurring Creative Independent question whose wording distinguishes a lasting block from a temporary impasse.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
It comes in fits and starts. In the past I thought about them as creative blocks, but I don’t really think about it like that anymore. I just think about it as a season. That’s okay.
Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
For sure. I think that’s why I also work in other mediums. Sometimes I have the urge to make something. Sometimes I want to make a poem but at that moment I can’t for whatever reason, so I work with other materials. I like to do sculpture; my sculptures are usually more like objects. I also play music here and there, but I just do these things to kind of help me with writing… I use these other ways of making to help keep my wheels moving in one way or another, and eventually the language will come for writing. Sometimes I do get writer’s block, but I have never really viewed it in that way. I still try to make things even if I don’t have the language or words to put to it in at the moment.
It’s lame to say, “Well, there’s this book,” but I would only mention this book—The War of Art by Steven Pressfield—because it is a super-easy, fast read. And it really is written for artists and entrepreneurs. One of the concepts that he lays out is, it’s a matter of us not brushing over the things that are important or giving ourselves excuses to not do the work that we don’t want to do.
I always want to feel fresh when I do something. If I don’t have that excited feeling, it’s impossible to move people, and that’s the most important thing for me.
There’s a lot of ways to talk about this but in terms of writer’s block, every block I’ve ever had, every metaphysical obstacle and every obstacle inside of me that has prevented me from doing something that mattered to me always factored down to fear. It was really a matter of, in most cases, lowering my standards, and it was this kind of perfectionism. Like, I can’t write badly, I can’t fail, I can’t be rejected. If it becomes okay to be rejected or to fail or to stutter in your attempt at something, then it becomes more possible to do it. If I have to do it perfectly the first time—and my default is that it should be perfect the first time—then I become immobilized.
Miho Hatori, Bill "Blinky" Sellanga, Katie Tupper, J'Kerian Morgan, Tegan Quin, Stephen O'Malley
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