Friday, April 14, 2006

Creative funks are like X-Wings in swamp water

I just realized today I hadn't blogged this week. Faced with writing this blog and yet another one next week, I find myself stuck in a black void of anti-inspiration.

Lately my creativity has been dry. I'm supposed to write several fiction snippets for my various creative hobbies. I'm going to play in a Star Wars game this summer. I LOVE Star Wars. Coming up with a character concept should be as easy as failing a midterm! But I'm stuck. I feel a bit like Luke Skywalker trying to raise his X-wing up from the swamp in Degobah.

I often find inspiration in ice cream and oil paintings - the ice cream is to change my brain chemistry just a little, and the art gives me visual stimuli which my brain interprets creatively. Deviant Art helps feed my need for paintings. But lately... my creative methods are stagnating.

Maybe you can help me escape this horrible mucky swamp. How do you get out of a creative funk?

4 comments:

Michael K. Althouse said...

I just start writing - about anything. It could be writing about having nothing to write about. I even blogged about it recently. When I do this, something always comes of it and often it is totally unexpected. I usually find that once the process has started, I can more easily focus on the task at hand.

Hope this helps,

Mike

Lacey said...

Mike - Thanks for the link to your blog. I posted this comment on it and then realized you might not ever check those comments again. Here it is...

"If I don’t write I don’t think."

Wow did that one hit home for me.

I've been feeling very similar things lately... Trying to shake that feeling of wanting to sleep through life is a battle more easily forgotten than fought. You have encouraged me though to actually see that fight. Sometimes, it's hard to name.

Incidentally and very anecdotally, my best friends' toilet is a Throne of Creativity. It has never failed me yet.

Michael K. Althouse said...

I got it and thanks. In the blogger settings, you can set it to email a message to a particular address everytime a comment is posted. So... not only do I get an email alert on my computer, I also get it on my Blackberry because my email addresses (some of them) are forwarded there. The email includes the actual comment too. The long and the short of it is that I got it not long after you posted it while I was in San Jose!

~Mike

Anonymous said...

It sounds like you are putting more out than you are taking in. It is a common problem in life. :)

I find that I need stimulation to get my creativity going. Before I paint, I always light a candle, I look a bit at a statue of Isis I have, I set out my paints on my palette very deliberately, then I just sit and look at the painting I am working on for a bit. When I start, I begin on something that I could not screw up if I tried. By the time I am a bit into it, I find that it is easier. In other words, consider setting yourself up with a ritual that gets you into your creative space.

Now, Christie sets a page count per day for her books and she sits down in the morning and writes that many pages - be they deathless prose or total garbage. She is like a machine and does not often allow herself the luxury of creative blocks. I am in awe of her capacity for doing that.

And of course, you ALWAYS need to look at upping your quotent of activities that feed you. :)