There would probably be a billion more artists in the world if we stopped interpreting artist's block as the end of the road.
Have you ever experienced a creativity drought? No ideas, no oomph, just malaise and blank pages? That, my friend, is artist's block. "You're not good enough to keep doing this," the monotonous blasé whispers in your ear. And if you're not hearty enough, you start believing it. Days go by, then weeks, and the next thing you know, you haven't created anything in months. You start to wonder if you're even an artist anymore.
The symptoms of artist's block vary. If you're a writer, you might find yourself unable to fill a plot hole in your novel, and no motivation to even try. If you are a painter, you might find yourself suddenly losing interest in a piece you used to be really excited about. For bloggers, nothing is so death-knelly as a blinking cursor on a blank page.
What causes it, and how do you get out of the rut?
For me, artist's block is usually brought on by social media consumption combined with too much free time. (I work best with a full schedule, for some reason.) But the reasons are different for everyone. Artist's block may strike when they're not eating right, or if there's too much family drama going on in your life. It may be connected to a too-busy schedule, or bad (or good!) weather.
If you're interested in getting your creativity back online, read my blog post on inspiration and motivation. You may, however, want to get creating again as quickly as possible, without having to wait for your emotions to cooperate. If so, this article is for you.
Good news: it's possible to create art every day, even if you don't feel like it. Here are five practical techniques you can employ, without the need to get your emotions involved.
1. Copy other artists
Sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to be original all the time. Take a little of that pressure off, and remind yourself that there are no rules about what you are and aren't allowed to create on your own time.
It's not a shame to copy. Honestly, it's how we learn anything, including language. If you don't have any inspiration, just pick something you like and copy it.
Try copying a classical painting in your own hand. It's easy to forget that illustrations are made up of technique (lines, colors, shadows, perspective) as well as composition (how a scene is arranged). Composition, or balance, is actually one of the hardest parts of creating. When you copy an old painting, all the composition is done for you, and you just have to focus on executing the image. I recommend picking a scene with a lot happening. Copying a complicated image will take you about an hour, which is enough time to warm up your drawing muscles. You'll probably even have a few ideas of your own while you're copying.
For writers, copying is a little more challenging, but possible. I read of one author who copied an entire book by hand, just to see what it physically felt like to write a best-selling novel. Benjamin Franklin cut up works by famous writers and tried to put them back together by memory. He even started rearranging sentences to see if he could improve on the original works.
Many writers start off their writing journey by creating fan fiction about a story they enjoyed. I'll admit that my earliest and most successful works came from me saying, "Hey, I really liked that book I just read," and then borrowing elements from the story world to build my own universe.
(In my teenage years, I even wrote fan fiction about my own life, where me and my friends bumped into celebrities and musicians at the grocery store. A dark and embarrassing time in my life, but at least I kept the creative juices going.)
Copying seems to be the most acceptable for musicians, many of whom pin their entire careers on copying the work of others. For many years, I thought the strength of my piano skills lay in composition and improvisation, until I noticed that my playing improved by leagues when I started copying the greats. Much of my inspiration comes from Randy Newman, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin.
Nobody's watching! Go ahead and make some counterfeits.
2. Write lists
My roommate and I used to give each other creative prompts all the time: one person would say the topic, and the other person would come up with a list. For example:
Name five of the worst things you could say at Thanksgiving dinner
Top ten children's TV entertainers most likely to be war criminals
Three illegal uses for sunglasses
Your brain is essentially a bunch of connected nodes, and when you write a list, you start connecting associated nodes, which jump-starts your imagination. I honestly don't know if that's how this actually works, but that's my philosophical take on the neuro-situation.
You can also work with lists visually. Last year I drew a collection of nine Taiwan plants. In five minutes, I had a list of nine plants I saw every day. From there, the rest of the work lay in near-mindless execution. While I worked, I watched Judy Blume's Masterclass on writing—that's how mindless creating was, once I had my themed list of things to make.
I've gotten lots of mileage out of lists. When I have nothing to say, I start making a list. And when you've got ten points on a list, at least one of them will be good.
In fact, if you haven't noticed, this whole article—and most of my blog posts—are really just giant lists.
There's a ton of lists you can make. Here are just a few ideas:
Days of the week in order of how much you like them
Best airports around the world
Library books that changed your life
Favorite cities in your state
Authors people will still be reading in a century
Ancient cultures you wish would come back
Emojis that should not exist
European pastries that should be granted U.S. citizenship
What language each planet should speak after colonization
Most edible-looking inedible things
Colloquialisms to live by
House plants by likelihood of surviving a hurricane
Architects that should be given knighthood
Laws that should not be laws
Crimes that should not be crimes
U.S. Presidents by swag
Facts about Canada that Americans should know
Lists to make that will fuel inspiration
I feel a boost of inspiration just writing these list ideas! Drop some of your own list ideas in the comments.
If you're interested in building your instagram engagement, lists are for you. Consider designing a post based on a list of eight things. The Instagram algorithm favors posts with multiple slides (called "carousel posts"). That means you can include an intro slide, eight list points, and a wrap-up slide. Boom, a high-engagement post with minimal effort!
3. Reach into real life
When you don't have any creative ideas, reach into real life.
It can be a story from your past, a character piece on someone you know, or a slice of life from your home town. The richer your personal life is, the stronger your artwork will be. The more you understand things, the more of that reality you will be able to infuse into your work and transport your viewers/readers into that world.
It doesn't even have to be a story. Draw flora and fauna from your region. Sketch a 100-year-old building in your city. Interview a local old person. Once you start documenting real life, your work will take on a layer of verisimilitude and color that you can't get if you always focus on imaginary places.
It's much easier than building a world from scratch, and it doesn't require emotional involvement.
4. Embrace boredom
Many ideas come from boredom. In today's culture, it's really easy to stay saturated all the time. It's entirely possible to spend a whole day consuming music, TV shows, and social media.
One thing that I can point to in my idea-boom years was a lack of anything else going on in my life. Sometimes I created stories just because I had nothing else to do. Once I started filling my time with cell phones and Netflix, my inspiration started waning. (That's not a roast of modern tech, it's a roast of myself.)
Challenge yourself to some quality "nothing time." Pour yourself a glass of something cold, sit on the porch and stare at the sky. Do a crossword with your morning coffee. Go for a walk in the park and look at leaves. While I'm not advocating for a total media shutdown—I don't think I could do that without some practice—it's important to dedicate some time letting your mind wander.
5. Shut off all taps
If you're as vocal on social media as I am, you are probably used to sharing every interesting-sounding thought you have. I was in the habit of opening up twitter or instagram whenever a thought hit me, and immediately sharing that thought. (I've posted some of my recents on the right.)
If you keep a thought inside you, it struggles and then suffocates. But if you let it out of your head and into the world, it flaps its wings twice and then vanishes. How do you let a thought breathe without losing it forever?
Shut off all taps for a while, except for one: a notebook. Keep a dream/thought/idea notebook, and funnel all your ideas into it. This it he halfway point—it gets out of your head, but it flies into a cage that only you know about. From there, your thoughts and ideas will grow in a controlled environment.
Try it for a few days and see if it jives with your style!
Final tip: Reminiscence ≠ inspiration.
It's tempting to look at your old work "for inspiration," but in my experience, this is a trap. Laziness is clever and can put on disguises—in this instance, it's disguised itself as research. Looking through old stories and drawings merely distracts you.
This is because perpetual motion is impossible. You can't draw inspiration from your own work to create more original work. Think of it like pointing a flashlight at a solar panel that charges a battery that you put in the flashlight.
"Sounds good, doesn't work."
If you need inspiration, look at the work of others. Pick up a new book, scan through famous paintings, and research mid-list illustrators. Cartoons provide inspiration for storytelling and art style. Use elements from the work of others to synthesize original work of your own.
What are your own ideas for beating artist's block? Share them in the comments below!
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