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 Marya Hornbacher said elsewhere, not written here
I think most of the ways we get stuck are self-imposed, but I also think most of our problems are in how we respond to the world or our situations. So I can’t say it’s false. I can’t say it’s not a thing. I think what it is is a broad term for the experience of being creatively stalled, or not being able to align your vision with your practice. The points where I’ve found myself stuck have been points where I could imagine what I wanted to write, and did not have the skill, or did not have the tools, or did not have the bandwidth, or did not have the space, or the money, or the time. That writer’s block. I will also say, as an addendum to that, I think a lot of what people call writer’s block right now is such a profound level of distraction that it isn’t actually writer’s block, it’s a block of [having too much] online and screen time.

Elle Nash, The Creative Independent interview source ↗

Others on this question

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Ahmed Zewail Chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1999
I am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoint’s and things of that sort. So, I’m an old fashioned still in this regard but these are the moment where I really can be creative, if I am, to be left alone with just a book and piece of paper and to be thinking.
Recorded Sture Forsén and David Dishart, Nobel Prize interview, NobelPrize.org, 12 December 1999 source ↗
Lynn Fainchtein Music supervisor for film
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.
Recorded Miriam Garcia, The Creative Independent, 31 May 2019 source ↗
Brian Jungen Canadian artist
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.
Recorded Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Ryuichi Sakamoto Composer, pianist and record producer
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 .
Recorded Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent, 15 January 2021 source ↗

More from Marya Hornbacher

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Question How do you know when a piece of work is finished? Craft & work
Michael Chabon talks about staying with projects that you should abandon. He talks ignoring what he called “the hand of dread,” which would grip his throat every time he sat down to write. He worked on this project for five years and I took that to heart. I’m like, “Don’t ignore the hand of dread. If you know, the project is wrong, walk away or you’re not ready to write the project walk away.” And it doesn’t, at that point, matter whether the publisher thinks it needs to come out or not.
Recorded Elle Nash, The Creative Independent interview source ↗

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