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 Brian Jungen said elsewhere, not written here
You can move on, or if something gets overworked and you can put it down, cover it up, or something, and then come back to it and take it back to a place where you were still excited about it. I’m excited about having that opportunity again. I’m probably going to buy some land, but I don’t want to have agriculture be such a huge part of my life. As much as I believe in agriculture—and I think it’s very important that people know how to grow their own food—it’s another thing to take it on as another business and try do that at the same time as having an art career. I would not recommend it.

Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent interview source ↗

Others on this question

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David Yow Singer, artist and actor
There were a few times I got stuck and I would do automatic writing where you just decide, okay, for five minutes or eight minutes or 10 minutes, you just write and you don’t stop for a second, and you end up with pages and pages of stuff that way. And there’s stuff you can glean from it. There’s vague ideas or just a couple of sentences that’ll make you think of something. So that would be an easy-ish way to worm myself out of hitting a wall.
Recorded J. Bennett, The Creative Independent, 11 September 2024 source ↗
Richard Feynman Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965
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!
Recorded Excerpt from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine, 1985 source ↗
Tao Lin American novelist
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.
Recorded Willis Plummer, The Creative Independent interview source ↗

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