I used to

“I used to rush home to write poems after work that felt natural and powerful. I published a few. Now, it’s as if my creativity melted away or part of me has closed off when I sit down to write.”

“I used to draw and paint. I took weekly art classes. My friends and family called me the ‘creative one’ because I was always working on a new idea.”

“I used to be so inspired to start new projects, enter an exhibition or even just doodle.”

Missing inaction

It feels like part of you is missing. Your creativity, your inner artist, your muse.

“They’ve just popped out to the shops, or to visit a relative,” you say to yourself, whilst organising your bits and pieces, so you can be ready when they return.

Seventeen coffees and twice as many circuits of the news, your socials and the fridge, your creative output is: nil.

Staring into that empty fridge is not unlike your inner artistic world: a cold and lonely place.

The doorbell rings

You hurry to the front door, grateful for a distraction from self-flagellation, only to find your inner critic, hands in pockets, leeching smug superiority onto the doorstep.

“I’d ask how it’s going, but it’s a safe bet that it isn’t.”

They press inside and saunter down the hallway, towards the heart of your home (they’ve been here before). It seems your creative spark, or more likely, the caffeine overdose, has been replaced by a deep, burning resentment. Making art has become an obligation, a chore, a deep well of guilt.

Yet, the impulse to create persists. The ideas keep coming and, like emails from your boss, they can’t be ignored.

So, what’s actually missing?

Chances are, before you stopped, you were creating within a system. It created the conditions for you to connect with, express and share your creativity with others.

“I had a group of friends - also artists - that I’d meet every week or two. They made me feel comfortable asking for advice, or swapping ideas and entering prizes.”

“My painting setup was permanent. I could step into it every day. We called it ‘my studio’, even though it was just some bits and pieces in a corner.”

Then, something changed

“Since COVID, I work remotely and the days are long. After work, my family, friends and pets come first.”

“After our first child, my music room became a storage room. When I crack the door open, the layers of dust make me feel guilty, even though I know it’s not forever. Is it?”

“I fell through a wormhole to another planet. The locals, believing me to be a demigod, anointed me as their supreme leader. The money’s great and the culture suits me. But it’s very taxing mentally. By the time I get a minute to myself with a sketchbook, I’m creatively drained.”

Your creativity - or your inner artist, muse or whatever you call it - didn’t disappear. Something else did. Something every fish needs. Wifi.

Your invisible support system

Your creative support system is like water to a fish (or WiFi to humans): invisible. You don’t notice it until it’s missing or you’ve evolved beyond it.

The right support system connects you to a signal that says “It’s OK for you to do this. Keep it up.” It also reinforces your identity as a creative person, maybe even an artist. Even if you don’t call yourself one, you feel like one. You feel positive because your creativity is valued.

When your creativity is nourished like this, you’re motivated and inspired to keep doing your thing, whether that’s drawing, painting, writing, music, or any other art form.

Critically, all of this fits in with your busy life.

These conditions promote a continual creative practice.

If the system doesn’t fit, or supports fall away, a gap appears. A day turns into a week and in time, that gap widens into a chasm. One that a single creative act can’t bridge because it can’t do the work of the entire system. Neither can you, alone.

A spot of time travel

If you - or someone you know - is grappling with a creative block, check the support system. Think back, just before you stopped or were blocked.

What structures created the conditions that fed your creativity?

Are any missing now, or do they still fit your current life needs?

What’s the smallest structure or tweak that could be a fit for now? Something low-friction, low expectations, that you could try out, as soon as you’ve finished reading this letter?

You are wifi to my fish

In other words, thank you. For reading this, for your comments and your encouragement. Would I write and draw without knowing you’d read this? I might make some notes in a journal and, if I could be bothered, maybe a sketch to capture the vibe. And that would be the end of it.

I wouldn’t picture you reading these words, possibly getting something helpful to take away, or at the very least some entertainment. So I wouldn’t put as much care into it. I wouldn’t stick with it. I wouldn’t be as challenged in some ways, nor would I receive the many, often tiny rewards of exploring and expressing my creativity.

It’s this: when you try to get back into it, there’s a block.

I used to create, to draw and paint in a way that felt natural and powerful. Now, when I start, I stop as suddenly. It’s as if that pathway in my brain is closed off.

The desire to make something is still very much there, but I can’t convert it into anything real. The engine is running, but the wheels aren’t touching the ground.

I was never what you’d call a prolific writer, but I used to finish things. Now, a hundred words in, I lose the thread entirely. It’s like I’ve lost all the ability to make anything.

A hungry brood of ideas

If this is you, there’s a good chance you’re not a beginner struggling to gain technical competence and comfort with your medium. You can do all sorts of impressive stuff. Sing in perfect pitch. Draw photorealistic images from your mind’s eye. Write passive-aggressive emails without breaching your workplace HR policies.

You lead a life filled with work, family, social obligations, and varied interests. You’d never openly call yourself an ‘artist’. Not at work, anyway. Even if you have a website that says you are, shelves overflowing with sketchbooks or unfinished drafts, a few framed pictures on the wall and...

You’ll often have many ideas, all crying out to be fed.

The widening chasm

You’ve put the hours and years into developing technical skills. You could be published, exhibited, or have won an art prize or two. You’re an experienced traveller, venturing down seemingly blind alleys with nothing more than curiosity and trust in your intuition. You sometimes return with accomplished works that connect with people. Sometimes you don’t. You used to be fine with that.

You know what you can do. Yet, find somehow…you can’t. It seems you have everything you need, but can’t access or apply it. With every attempt, the chasm between where you stand now and committing to step onto that tightrope you’ve walked many times before grows wider.

Good advice that isn’t

You scour the internet, seeking advice. Your friends - some of them artsy types - are sympathetic.

“Creative block’, they nod knowingly. “Happens to the best of us. I couldn’t think of a single idea for dinner on Saturday night.”

Noting your controlled, exasperated exhalation (they notice, no matter how subtly you mask it), they hastily add.

“You’re a bit rusty. You’ll be fine - it’ll pass once you start back properly”.

“Fair enough, thanks,” you say. Because you’re polite.

“We ended up getting take-away, in the end,” bookending their wisdom.

Rusty skills are just a symptom

You also know they’re wrong, because recovering your technical skill is a tiny part of the broader problem. You’ve enjoyed holidays and downtime between projects. You’ve come back a little rusty, and know that technical skills return quickly enough. You can ride a bike.

Where have you gone, me?

The real issue is that part of who you are, part of your identity, is no longer accessible. Not your entire self. Like most, you probably have several identities: friend, father, mother, sibling, professional by day… Yet one of them isn’t showing up. One you’re fond of.

Even if you never called yourself an artist in public, it’s the artist within that’s missing.

Mostly, I’ve been saying “Not much”. Which is true, and also not the whole story. Two weeks ago, I made some marks in my sketchbook.

This is what I know I can make

This time last year, I was in a very different place: finishing new works, entering competitions, exploring opportunities.

It is one thing to be uncertain because you are beginning to learn a new skill. It is another to be uncertain after you have made something skillfully and with conviction. Somewhere between then and now, the thread slipped through my fingers. What was first a beat became a pause, then stone-cold silence.

Even this newsletter became difficult. With nothing progressing, I had nothing to report. No new ideas. People read these letters and sometimes reply, and that connection matters. Guilt crawled into a space once occupied by motivation.

Guilt is not creative energy

So I made some bad drawings. No concept. Not attempting to accomplish or progress anything. The point was to stop trying to make something and simply do something. That was harder than it sounds.

It is hard to suspend judgment when you have technical skill. It is hard to make bad ‘art’ when part of you, in some small way, aspires to be ‘an artist’. It’s hard to begin when that reminds you of the many times you did not before.

Expectation is the block

I used to think creative block meant having no ideas at all. I also believed it to be the reserve of real artists, real writers, poets, composers and songwriters. Those good enough to make a living from art.

In professional life, creative work is measured by its usefulness: innovation, ideation, and problem-solving. That is functional creativity. It’s powerful stuff, but when imagination is purely functional, our sketchbooks stay closed. Our ideas, our creative impulses, tiny signals, are dismissed - filtered out as noise - before they have a chance to become anything.

When life is purely functional, we hesitate to follow that odd thing we just noticed. To cultivate imagination for its own sake. When too many expectations are attached to the beginning of things, it’s hard to begin.

That block is for everyone and anyone who tries to keep imagination alive.

Start close in

I borrowed that from the title of a poem by David Whyte.

Start close in,

don’t take

the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

My bad drawings help precisely because they’re not secretly good. They don’t announce a new body of work. They’re just a first step.

For the keepers of imagination

These letters are for those of us who seek ways to keep imagination alive, for its own sake. They are for you if you don’t want to or can’t escape to the cabin in the woods, reconnect with your inner child, or quest for ancient wisdom (all worthy, just not for me right now).

I often draw on Irish myth and folklore for inspiration in my art - as a way to examine modern-day dilemmas from a different perspective - the technology of story and wild imagination. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pause my mortgage repayments and camp out in a hut made from hazel branches.

A first or one of many beginnings

If you’re struggling with your own block, what’s the smallest step you could take?

A single mark. An incoherent paragraph. A snapshot - not even a photo. A tuneless song, played off-tempo. Ten minutes with a notebook. One line copied down because it’s following you around, tugging at your sleeve? It doesn’t matter if it’s your first beginning or one of many.

So, what’s your bad beginning?