82 answers answered between 1932 and 2026 one of 4 from The Creative Independent
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.
Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.
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.
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 .
I don’t believe in it being a block. I just think that there are times where I’m not supposed to be working.
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.
If by the second or third day I’m stuck and it’s not working, I usually will scrap it. I find an open tuning and start picking around until I find a melody or something I like. I follow that melody to the end of the song. I have to be willing to scrap the entire thing and move on because I can’t waste a lot of time. Everyone has a different approach with writing, this long excursion, excavating out of the ground, like you’re digging and finding it can be this long process. For me it’s more like following a bird. If it flies away too quickly, it just wasn’t meant to be.
I get really mad, and I’m like, “Well, I have to solve it.” I think of these things sometimes even as math problems. I take a photo of it, I turn it away, and I look at it in my phone a lot. An image becomes much less scary to solve when it’s not eight feet tall, but it’s eight centimeters tall. When I’m going to bed, I’m obsessively in the finger drawing app on my phone, and I try and figure out what to do with it. Eventually, I’ll figure out the answer, and then turn the painting back around and fix it, but it’s way harder to do when you’re just staring at the giant thing.
Oh, there’s so many. Usually it’s when I’m overwhelmed, because I get defensive and I just want to like hide under my couch. I’m working on a project now that I’ve been stuck [with] on a problem for four years and I’m finally [in] “fuck it, let’s just get it done” mode. Which is really nice, but there’s always blocks. I mean, I’ve had a block with the foldable coat hanger for years, and I think we finally have solved it. It’s cool how it ebbs and flows and you’ll discover a new way to approach it that solves [a] problem–and then maybe [that] causes new problems. There’s nothing consistent about it.
Nobody has answered this one yet.