Artists of All Kinds: Has your creativity every abandoned you? How did you get it back?

Just wondering if any artists/writers/musicians/painters or anyone with a creative occupation has lost their creative drive and how you recovered it. Did it come back by itself after a period of time, or did you do something to bring it back?

he had a story on that theme, about how when asked where he got his ideas, he said he watched a lot of movies

i guess it sounds silly but terrific story

When I want to get re-inspired, I go to the museum, art exhibits, or research great artists. It helps a lot. So many times, artists labor in isolation. It's hard to keep the spark alive without interaction with fellow creative people.

My mom poisoned me with a quote fron George Bernard Shaw:

"Those who can do, Those who can't teach."

Whenever my creativity drops, I know that I'm not getting enough sleep.

My best work; my best ideas come to me in dreams.

If I don't get enough sleep; If I don't sleep long enough to dream, my muses abandon me.

I really am desperate to get some good advice. It's been a couple of years now since I have really felt like writing or painting or doing much of anything. Why? For twenty years I wrote nearly ten to twelve hours a day. Never been blocked. In fact, I'm not blocked, I just am uninspired.

The stuff going on in this world seems to be so much more fascinating than anything I can create now.

It comes, it goes. It stays out all night sometimes with out so much as a simple fucking phone call, as if that's asking too much, the selfish bastard.

That is what worries me. It's been about two years.

Have you settled into a routine? If so, intentionally break it. Try to figure out what else has changed in your life during that time, and make sure your creativity isn't just buried beneath it or hiding behind that big thing in the fridge.

I want to really study what you all are saying. Maybe there are some answers here. I just feel so lost lately, in terms of knowing what my direction is.

I started school this Fall and now I HAVE to draw. It's broken through a bit, but I have to keep at it or I lose it.

Keep at it. Thanks for the reply.

Smooooch!

I seen your stuff, it amazes me as a non-drawing type looker at stuffs.

:yourock:

shoulder left me unable to hold my left arm up long enough to play the guitar, banjo, and more important, my beloved Autoharp.

But so it goes.

Redstone

One of my passions is guitar, and I haven't touched it in three months due to some personal issues. I've lost all my callouses and so much joy in playing that guitar.

You take care. thanks for replying too. The loss of that creative outlet is one of the most painful things I know. It takes away so much of my lust for life.

Not only did she love to watch me perform; she loved even to watch me practice.

Music is a damn hard part to a life to give up.

Redstone

How have you worked through it?

worked through it...by accepting. You can bitch, moan, rage, and otherwise carry on, but what is...is.

Eventually you must come to that realization, or lose your mind. Furthermore, at least I had the opportunity to be a professional musician, which is something that VERY few people are forutunate enough to experience. Better to have had and lost, than not to have had at all, yes?

I can still listen to the old tapes, and say "yeah, that was me who had that audience hypnotized." And that's enough.

Redstone

When you want the soil to fruit, you have to work it. If the soil hasn't been worked for a long time, it's hard, weedy, and tiresome. But you have to dig at it, pulling the weeds, chucking the rocks aside. After you've prepared the soil, then you have to till it, and sometimes add amendments to make it stronger. Heard of crop rotation? Same for creativity. Can't write a song? Try painting a picture. Can't paint a picture? Try baking a pie. Can't bake a pie? Try writing a poem.

You know, you really needn't listen to anything I have to say. I'm in year six of this particular fallow period.

I never get to talk to artists anymore, because I just don't have them around me anymore.

This all helps. Every letter, syllable, word...

Thank you

I'm a poet. Also originally from Phoenix - Tempe, actually. I read your profile. I know of a great sangha in Tempe if you're looking for one.

Where did you get stuck?

I think I need to take a few classes to stimulate my brain again :)

:shrug:

say more.

I'm trying to trace exactly what happened to me.

Be it for newspapers, for self, or for others to read for fun.

I fell deep in a depression a few years back which actually was a good thing for writing at first. One day, I just thought noone could hear me and stopped.

I just play now for my own personal fun. I still love it, but its a skill that needs honed.

:)

and suddenly it leaves you, how have you dealt with the pain of that loss, if you can say?

Years as an Econ major...I'm taking a studio art class, Intro to Printmaking, and I'm doing quite well! :bounce:

Which has led to much sketching and thinking and future endeavors. :D

:hi:

and very encouraging. Keep us the positive trend!

My dark and secret hours with zinc plates, acids, inks, and papers are my new refuge. I love the printlab. I can't wait to take another art class next semester!!

:woohoo:

I find my creativity is best under pressure. Otherwise I just avoid doing anything and end up stagnating out. It helps if you have someone/something to keep nagging you, especially someone/something you don't want to disappoint.

Sometimes the idea doesn't come to you. Sometimes you have to go to the idea.

:shrug:

sort of destroys your sense of your self. That is what I'm having a hard time dealing with.

I feel rather empty all the time. Because I was taught that what I do is what I am, and I don't do what I want to do anymore. So I feel often that I'm not really much of anything.

I feel brutally beaten and it's as though my muse has been kidnapped. Haven't touched my ax since July. My reed desk has become an art installation.

In the name of "survival," I began teaching with the goal of balancing my creative and financial lives. Circumstances beyond my control crashed down on me. (Family drama). No. Energy. Left.

It's like getting divorced from yourself. I've become somewhat reclusive except when it's "showtime." Then I don my FOA costume and entertain upper-level execs, while re-installing their language programs. I scrape every crumb of joy I can from it but feel increasingly lost, profoundly disappointed in life and simply empty. Sure, I'm good at what I'm doing, but somehow it has NOTHING to do with me. I'm just playing an actor's role in a never-ending soap opera...

haven't written a decent song since I stopped getting stoned , and physical issues make starting again out of the question. The one good songwriting night I've had in 5 years was right after watching Oliver Stone's Doors movie, but never completed the songs I started that night. I did EMDR therapy recently on the writing issue and its helped with at least non-musical writing, maybe it'll transfer some day...Got a book called "The Artist's Way" and started doing some of the things the author recommended but never fully followed through on that...its been highly recommended by more than one fellow artist/writer/musician... Recently started taking saxophone lessons and my playing has been noticeably improving... Maybe some lessons, even if you feel you don't need 'em might help; just getting input from someone else...But I understand what you're going through; I have lots of creativity in me, and it feels really uncomfortable not getting it out...

Your post really helps... It really makes sense to me.

Many ways to express oneself.

I have found that to be the most effective approach

to rest and rejuvenate. It is a process.

It's the motivation that comes and goes so often. I have all these ideas, stories and novels and drawings sketched out... But when my motivation leaves me, I can't so much as even look at them without yawning and getting bored.

At this moment, my motivation has been gone for about four months. I'm still waiting for it. x(

I used to write sixteen to eighteen hours a day without even taking a breath, but for the past couple of years, all I can think of is how the book industry is dying, and how the world has become so much more fascinating than anything I could ever write. And we are facing so many obstacles that threaten to shorten or terminate our lives.

Thus, i ask myself, Why Create? This won't last, and nobody cares anyway.

The best way to recharge your batteries...

i don't know why it went away but it didn't ever come back and i don't miss it, maybe this was helped by the crap pay tho?

i had better add that a different opportunity came to me that i had never thought of doing and while uncreative it had its own excitements, i think if the reason you're not writing is you're doing rather than talking/writing, that can be a good thing, but if the reason you're not writing is depression or the sorry state of the market just crushing your heart...well that's completely different

That forced my back into writing.

...helps me in times like that. Visiting my favorite places... letting the beauty soak in... allowing it to calm me and rejuvenate my psyche. Hope you find what works for you. :hug: