Unblocking Creative Blocks

It is safe to say that I have been creatively blocked for sometime now. I'll grant you that by running a digital media production company, there is a certain sense of being "on" that I need to maintain, but I know deep down inside that my ideas are growing stale, that my techniques and stories need to grow, and that I need to take more creative risks. I couldn't find any way to overcome the blocks to creativity that I was struggling with. The work kept piling up, and grew incredibly tired and frustrated.

Enter a few tidbits of advice that I have read, heard people tell me, or personally experienced along the journey that I have been on.

The first morsel of advice is a concept, from the book "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, called the morning pages, a simple exercise of writing three pages each morning. Stream-of-consciousness, journaling, reporting the thought process of your inner mind, whatever you want to call it, it comes down to freeing your mind of the things that occupy the resources that you need creatively. I have been doing this every morning for 5 days and have accumulated 15 pages of writing filled with thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, things that have been building up inside. The obvious observation that I have is, "wow, I haven't written 15 pages of material in a long time, probably since college." It is followed by, "you know, I can do this!" It feels great to write. To spend time writing about the things that I have been neglecting. Spending time pondering, wondering, wandering, and loving the process of creativity that is really the essence of the life that I have been given to live.

Advice often comes best from people that know you best, and the next nugget comes in the time that I get to spend with a friend, almost weekly, as we talk about business, ministry, and life. It is amazing how freeing the words, "just be yourself" can truly be. When you spend as much time comparing yourself and your work to other people and companies, you get tired. So, when someone says to "just be yourself," it helps you to break through a block. A block of envy and jealousy that increases the fear that you will never be as good as person A is, keeping you from attempting to do something, to risk, to find success through failure.

Lately, I have been inundated with so much work, that I have felt overwhelmed. I have never been a disciplined or structured man, but the amount of work got to a point, where a little structure and discipline was definitely not a bad thing to really invest some time in developing. The fruit of that effort as been creating a weekly schedule of the work that I need to get done. I know that sounds really simple, mundane, and possibly counter-intuitive, but it really helps me to see what I need to get done, and what I can communicate to clients.

You probably ask yourself, how do you schedule creativity? You can't schedule that, it's intangible, you can't grab hold of it whenever you want. I'll be the first to agree with you, you can't. Creativity is elusive. But I'll tell you one thing that is consistent with the experience of others, creativity will honor the daily pursuit of it. The only word that I can think of is courting. Creativity wants to be courted. Not taken advantage of. And that is what a daily schedule does for me. It helps me to schedule jobs, play time, and most importantly, encourages me to add things like writing blog postings.

Finally, the only real way to unblock my creative blocks, is to get in the bulldozer and drive at it full steam ahead. Hard work and determination, with the focus not being on this exact moment as the culmination of my life, but on the fact that my life is comprised of millions of moments like this one, all growing together, making me who I am.

Getting beyond the fear of being blocked, leads to freedom. It helps you to rise up and walk in the creative sense, makes your life richer, livelier, and one step closer to fulfillment.