What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or 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.

Recorded Tao Lin said elsewhere, not written here
I imagine people with writer’s block feeling unable to think of something to write about. I haven’t had that problem, but I’ve had something where I have too many things I want to write about and I feel unable to focus on one for sustained periods, and it feels like writer’s block in that I feel stuck. I keep becoming interested in one of the other things and my motivation keeps changing or disappearing and it usually takes something major from outside, like a book contract, for me to finally focus on one thing.

Willis Plummer, The Creative Independent interview source ↗

Others on this question

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Greg Mendez American musician
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.
Recorded Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Katie Tupper Canadian singer-songwriter
I think I get writer’s block all the time in every session that I do. There are always going to be blocks that happen. You should treat yourself cyclically, you’re going to go through periods where you just need to be intaking.
Recorded Hannah Harlacher, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
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.
Recorded Essay first published in the Strand Magazine in 1921–22 and collected in Amid These Storms, 1932, Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime, Project Gutenberg Canada, 1932 source ↗
Sophie Strand Writer and poet
Here is one of the methods I use that has been really helpful, which is I very rarely get blocked when I’m doing something I really love. So, I do think that when you encounter a block, questions you can ask are, “Is this project really where my heart is?” “Is this the most urgent practice, project, book, piece right now?”.
Recorded Mariah Irwin, The Creative Independent, 29 January 2026 source ↗

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