What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck?

At that moment the loud approaching sound of a motor-car was heard in the drive. From this chariot there stepped swiftly and lightly none other than the gifted wife of Sir John Lavery. 'Painting! But what are you hesitating about? Let me have a brush—the big one.' Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and the white, frantic flourish on the palette—clean no longer—and then several large, fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the absolutely cowering canvas. Anyone could see that it could not hit back. No evil fate avenged the jaunty violence. The canvas grinned in helplessness before me. The spell was broken. The sickly inhibitions rolled away. I seized the largest brush and fell upon my victim with Berserk fury. I have never felt any awe of a canvas since.

Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys.  You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students.  Nothing!

We called that the 'story crisis,' and we never expected to have another one. But you know what? There's been one on every film. We don't stop production for five months. We've gotten a little smarter about it. But there always seems to come a moment where it's just not working, and it's so easy to fool yourself - to convince yourself that it is when you know in your heart that it isn't.

No, for me it’s the opposite. I have to find ways to stop the thought process because the thought process is constant; it’s constantly everywhere. And that’s not to make me sound pretentious, because it sometimes makes me unhappy. It can keep you awake or you have it in the middle of a meeting.

No, I guess I don’t really worry about that. The answer to a creative block is just to do another creative thing. To me a creative thing is almost anything. So like, literally, if I’m writing and can’t think of anything, I’ll just start moving my fingers typing, sometimes not even words. Just going through the artificial surface motion of it will get your brain going.

When young artists ask, “How can I get past these things?” I respond: “For one thing, try doing your very worst work. Do the worst song you can possibly think of. At the very least, you’ll get some idea of what your rules are. At the most, you’re going to get something that’s better than anything you’ve ever done because it has a lot of pure energy.” Just make it bad. Just make it really bad. You know, so pure and bad. I have tried that. That works well. Sometimes I clutch on that, too. I think, “No, that’s so bad it’s good.” Go on and on and get yourself twisted up into a language!

If I start to feel bored or blocked or frustrated with something, I’m comfortable walking away. When I was younger, I pushed through or forced it… but in the last five or six years, I’ll literally close a session and be like, “I’ll go back to this in a day or in a week or two weeks.” The second I give it space, I tend to feel more motivated to go back into it.

Just realizing that the block’s part of it. There’s always a week or two, or even a full month, where I’m convinced I’ll never write again, that everything was a fluke before. Or I’m writing, and I can’t tell if it’s inspired or shitty, but I don’t really freak out like I used to. I know that it’s just part of eventually figuring it out. It used to make me panic, but now I know it’s just what happens.

You just have to remember that you’re a creator and not a machine. You just have to know when you’ve got to step aside and either move onto something else or just stop until the moment feels right again.

There’s a first part of observing the thing, or having the idea, but then a huge amount of the next step’s work is: “What do I want to do about it? What form should it take? What am I going to do now do about it having observed it?” That is sometimes a part where it can take a long time to work out. Sometimes I get stuck. Sometimes I change my mind or have to think of very different strategies to figure out what the right one is.

I have a DJ side that I’ve developed, and so when creative blocks hit me I tend to spin a lot more than usual. Also, just trying my hand in other fields. I’m looking at sewing classes the next time I have a creative block.

I think once an artist or musician reaches a certain level of mastery, you can just do it on autopilot. My hand can keep moving and I can be making things, and on the outside I can be like, “This looks really cool” but I’m really just bored with it. I can draw this face or an eyeball or whatever in my sleep, and it’s not interesting to me. A creative block to me just means getting bored with myself. Those are those moments where you have to shake it up or do some introspection, or simply take a break. Sometimes I read a book or go to the movies, have my favorite meal, or go on a trip.

If I start to feel stagnant, going to see a good show always helps. Watching a great band makes me want to play music. Like, when we opened for Queens of the Stone Age a few years back. I was unsure where I wanted to go next musically, and had a feeling, like maybe I should do another acoustic album… I was starting to put some invisible pressure on myself instead of letting my instincts lead. But after a couple nights of watching Queens play these rock ‘n’ roll songs that have been my favorites for years, it was like, “No, fuck that, I want to play heavy music and let some aggression out,” so then I started working on Abyss .

If not, I’ll go to the cinema or answer emails.

I don’t believe in it being a block. I just think that there are times where I’m not supposed to be working.

I stop, but I don’t throw anything away. I don’t put pressure on myself to finish anything. I usually just think, “Okay I had this idea for a reason, but it’s just not working right now. Let me go take a walk.” I can only do like 20, 30-minute intervals, because I’m so fast. If I have an idea, I can get it down quickly. Once it’s down, it’s down. I don’t have to make a whole album out of it. I’ll literally just go outside for a walk for 20 more minutes and then come back. It depends on what the deadline is, but usually I’ll just write it down, make a little something, think about it for five or six days, and then go back to it.

No, but sometimes I don’t find the right song, so I need to go to sleep and find the song the next day. But I have so much music, that if I need inspiration, I just push play and there’s always a song waiting for me.

Oh, my god. Every day. I listen to a lot of podcasts about artists, screenwriting and stuff. Some people say they don’t get writer’s block. I’m like, “What the fuck? How?” I get writer’s block every day. I get stuck all the time because you always hit a road block. You think what you planned before was going to work out so smoothly and then you start writing and it doesn’t quite flow the way you want it to, or the structure may not be working. Happens all the time. But for me, I have a lot of people I trust and can bounce ideas off of… I’ll send the script to other filmmakers and ask their opinions. I have a lot of people that I trust and that I can really talk things out with. I think the thing that’s helped me the most is being able to talk it out.

I don’t put myself into that situation. I play and discover. You have to imagine a kid in a sandbox. You’re just having fun. You’re not expecting anything; you’re not looking for anything. You’re not following a trend; you don’t do something that needs to be similar to something else. It is actually from within yourself, which is endless. It’s like a kaleidoscope—you shake it and you have a bunch of new ways of doing things. So I think this block only happens to people who expect something, or who want something or are chasing something or who are trying to write something that sells or whatever. If you don’t look at all of these aspects, if you’re just having fun with notes, it doesn’t happen.

You know, I have doubts, but the images, like the movies, always inspire me. So when I’m empty, vacant, I start watching any movie, b-class, c-class, it’s okay. B-class kung fu movies are so inspiring. The music, for kung fu movies, very old kung fu movies, not sophisticated ones, is so inspiring. They’re so wild. I was watching those kung fu movies while I was making async .