Feeling Stuck Creatively? Here's What You're Missing
Wake-Up Call #18
We like to think we’re wildly-original, anointed with the ability to create something entirely new, out of thin air.
The older I get, the deeper into writing, building, and making I go, the more I realize...
All creation is commentary.
Much as we like to delude ourselves into believing it’s purely generative—it comes from our deepest impulse, or from the Muse, it is wholly ours—that’s a bit of a lie.
The truthier truth is that we don’t create in a vacuum, the process of making something is always a reaction.
We are always pushing up against something.
It could be internal, like sorrow, loss, chatter, shame, rage, suffering, or pain. Or, external, like art, music, events and experiences, conversations, fights, meet-cutes, the din of traffic or lack of sound, or that lovely barista who makes your day by knowing your drink and name. Often, one leads to the other, then back again.
When we rub up against these stimuli, a certain generative friction crackles into existence, creating a reaction that releases heat. Captured and directed, this fuels creation.
No thing to push up against, no friction.
No friction, no reaction.
No reaction, no heat.
No heat, no creation.
It’s like
recently shared, in her fabulous two-part interview with . The creative process behind her sermons begins with selection of scripture. This is the thing she pushes up against, provoking her to consider how she feels about a line or verse or phrase, or the larger context around it. Those thoughts, feelings, and ideas eventually coalesce into a sermon we get to experience, often as profoundly wise, irreverent, and deeply moving, all at once.It always starts with something to react to. Something to comment on.
There is no conjuring out of thin air.
And, here’s the thing…
At first blush, this might feel a bit hollow. Defeating, even.
You mean, all of my art, maybe even my life, is just a reaction to something or someone else? A commentary on anything and everything?
Well, yes.
Every moment of our lives is an interaction. With a being, an idea, an experience, a feeling. And, that’s okay.
Having something to rub up on that is strong enough to provoke the desire to respond in the form of creation just means we’re engaging with life, rather than hiding from it.
In a weird way, knowing that all creation is reaction, or commentary, also takes the pressure off.
Especially when we get stuck.
Why?
It tells us what to do. It endows the ache with agency.
If we assume making is all about our ability to tap into the Muse, or come up with something to create sui generis, like it emerges from our soul or drops from the sky, then we’re kinda screwed when those things stop coming. Stuck, without a resource, so we spiral into doom, shame, and blame. Maybe for a moment, a month, or an entire season.
We’re left waiting for the gods of creativity to bring us back into the fold. It’s stunningly disempowering.
But, if we accept the "Creation as Commentary” hypothesis, then stuckness has a different origin. One with a far more obvious and accessible solution. We just need more, different, or better things to bump up against.
We can do something about that.
Thoreau wrote, “how vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
Dude was onto something.
Rather than sitting deeper into our seats and grinding, Creation as Commentary tells to step back into our inner and outer experience of life, reconnect with, or find things to react to. Things that make us think and feel and do and be. Things that inspire or inflame. Things that create that spark of friction, and fuel the desire to create in response, through the mechanism of whatever medium or craft avails itself to us.
When things stop flowing, and they always will, don’t sit longer or hope harder, stand faster and live bigger.
Go out into the world, do things, read things, see things, listen to things, play, work, explore, risk, engage.
Give yourself something to push up against, the lean into, to unfold alongside. To react to.
Then, pay attention.
Safe bet, in relatively short order, you’ll find yourself running back to the keyboard, canvas, or preferred expressive medium with a flood of ideas to channel into whatever art you create, even if that’s simply the way you live your life.
Wake-Up Call #18 | Find Something to React To.
Over the next week, make a list of interesting, fun, exciting, evocative, provocative things to do, people to interact with, or experiences to have.
Choose a few to do.
Note how they make you feel. Good, bad, high, low, indifferent, alive, dead, curious, tuned out, passionate, flat. Whatever.
Then, pick one or two that triggered something in you, a feeling, awakening or anything that made you want to respond in some way.
Now, take a few moments and tap those experiences and feelings as fuel to create. See what emerges.
And, if you’re open to it, share in the comments.
I’ve been waiting my whole life to read this…thank you, thank you, thank you!
Nice little musing on this process. It’s like my whole Substack - Every week using one of Terrance Hayes 255 questions on a century of poetry to react to. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t, sometimes there’s an answer, sometimes there’s just more questions - but none of it would have found the page were it not for the spark of Hayes questions. :)