The Creative Process: Breaking Through Writer’s Block
No matter what hobbies we indulge in or profession we practice, we have all hit a place where we just don’t know how to go forward. Whether we call it Writer’s Block, The Wall, or simply being out of The Zone, how do we spring past that phase into our best work?
Kit to Thwart Writer's Block. Source: http://elizabethdilk.com/
The Writers Block Kit by Elizabeth Dilk offers a compendium of exercises, objects, and toys to (hopefully) kick writers into a creative mode. It may seem very specific to those pursuing the written word, but crossing over into other creative territories is an effective way of jump-starting productivity for those in any field.
Once one of my first professors in architecture told me to get away from our studio and walk across the quad to sit in the libary’s poetry section. He insisted it be for two hours or longer. I thought it was an assignment that somehow directly affected my project; it wasn’t. He knew that each student had to find their individual design process and saw that every student would inevitably hit a wall in doing so. The wall was usually one specific problem that effectively stymied the progression for the rest of the project. Frustration would mount and usually result in an ineffective, last-minute all-nighter before finals. He recognized my symptoms and sent me to read poetry. Why poetry? It simplified one’s thinking. It took words down to a deliberate essence. It moved my mind away from my architecture work and into another discipline which effectively shifted my mode of singular thinking. It worked. Just as Einstein played his violin when stuck on a math equation, the solution came to me when I wasn’t forcing it.
Disturbing your primary mode of working allows for truly creative thinking to return. The framework by which a question is posed cannot produce a solution beyond that framework. Capital Community College Foundation offers several suggestions of overcoming one’s boxed-in thinking:
- Start from the middle and work your way back to the beginning. Often the project is generally formed in your head but the introduction or initial strokes are missing.
- Jog the ideas loose with exercise. This gets you away from your project but it also wakes you up; a tired mind offers only tired propositions. New scenery can trigger new ideas.
- Use that Moleskine that you carry around! Write down flashes of inspiration as they hit you throughout the day. You may not remember them when you finally settle down at your desk.
- American poet, William Stafford, offered this advice for creative production: “There is no such thing as writer’s block for writers whose standards are low enough.” Meaning write down junk. Scribble out the inane, common, and cliche. Even the dumb ideas can sprout better ones.
In overcoming this creative block, we ultimately want to design an authentic work, beyond previous projects, something that only we can offer. In doing this, we achieve a satisfaction and happiness by exploiting the breadth of our talents. In this TED talk, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi describes how he came to identify the phenomenon of Flow or a heightened mode of effective working.
“What makes a life worth living?” Noting that money cannot make us happy, [Czikszentmihalyi] looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of “flow.” –TED
In ranking periods of producing one’s highest quality work in a highly focused manner, individuals in his studies consistently reported that these periods are some of the happiest moments in their daily life. Not only are we moving beyond writer’s block, we are searching for the state Czikszentmihalyi points to as a state of ecstasy. His research is ultimately about happiness. The field of positive psychology, pioneered by Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, often refers to Czikszentmihalyi’s work because it is key to increasing positive states and increasing our overall happiness. Isn’t that why you do what you love?
The goal is happiness in our work. Hitting The Wall stops us from producing more work and work of a higher quality. Once we have explored new methods of pulling ourselves out of a singular way of thinking, effectively jolting us back on track, it is the state of Flow that will push creative boundaries and ultimately offer happier moments in the process.
Good luck!
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