Creativity Clog
Never mind writer’s block or artist’s block. Sometimes you find yourself wishing you had that because you have something else entirely.
You have ideas.
Not only do you have ideas, but you have ideas that divide and meld themselves together and tie themselves in knots and sometimes fall in love with other ideas and begat new baby ideas. Ideas are nice things to have, but when in overabundance, they can be unmanageable.
Because with ideas, there’s a certain desire to carry them out. This can be time-consuming, depending on what the idea is. You could be stuck working on Idea A for years. Meanwhile, Ideas B, C, D, and so on continue to dance about and bruise the inside of your cranium because THEY long to be manifested in the outside world, too.
Once it gets to be a bit much, you ask your doctor if there’s any hope in purging your idea infestation.
“Sorry,” she says. “Ideas cannot be purged, but they can be dangerous if not satisfied soon enough. Get too many and you develop creativity clog, which renders you too overwhelmed to create anything. Being in a state of creativity clog for too long can bring on—”
You’re terrified and speak up before she can go into further detail. “So how do I cure creativity clog?”
“Get to work.”
You don’t consider that to be very helpful advice at all. You still don’t know where to start. So you walk home feeling restless and jittery, itching to create something.
You look up at the trees and find the branches mostly bare—except there are still some red leaves and white flowers clinging to it. Autumn leaves and spring flowers on the same branch?! The weather has been weird this year. The trees are all confused. You almost sense a kindred spirit in the tree. You feel… inspired. Inspired to create a—
No. No more ideas! You already have more than enough in there!
But the tree is intriguing. You could at least take a picture.
So you do. You take seven pictures, all at different angles, each with a different filter. Then you rush away, weaving poetic lines in your mind of leaves and petals as you go, pausing now and then to catch your breath—and to scold yourself for your inclinations to poesy.
You happen to pause outside an art gallery. NEW WORK ON DISPLAY, a sign declares.
You dive into the gallery with no hesitation; the notion that you are setting foot in dangerous territory fails to cross your mind. And so you find yourself blissfully captive in a pit that sparks inspiration, that displays new techniques, that make you ponder things from fresh perspectives.
You are doomed.
I wish I had that kind of skill, you think as you pause by a watercolor of a screech owl. You admire the fineness of its feathers. Then you are astounded by the sense of depth in an etching of a fishing boat at dock—the gulls flying above look as if they might fly out over your head and… do something. You shuffle quickly away and find the use of chiaroscuro in The Broken Victrola (by anonymous) to be particularly striking, and then are horrified by an acrylic piece of a frog with fangs. Are frogs meant to have fangs?
I wish I could produce something like that, you think, and that and that and that and that and—
You are reminded of your many, many shortcomings and decide to practice more on the basics once you get home.
Home! Yes, that’s where you were headed. You hurry down the darkening street. And pause.
Music leaks through the doors of the theater. Rachmaninoff! Oh, if only your hands were as large as his, imagine the music you could make! But you have shrimp-hands, hardly able to span an octave. In fact, you can barely play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” without getting your fingers tangled. If you put your life on hold and practice, perhaps you could manage playing a chord or two of Rachmaninoff. Or Liszt. Yes—just one measure of Liszt’s Totentanz and your life would feel complete.
After you compose that poem about the tree. And finish that novel. And those comic strips. And that sculpture of kitty. And that profound essay on the importance of nematodes, complete with 52 wood cut illustrations and a sneak preview of your next scientific work—on leeches. Damn the leeches. Science is nice, but you’re really in the mood for haiku, and limericks, no—portraiture! No—pipe organ! Scratch that—with scratchboard! How about a satirical biography about Dante Gabriel Rossetti from the perspective of his wombat??? YES! THE WORLD NEEDS THAT! Or—AAAACK!
It’s all a blur after that. You find yourself covered with a crinkly white sheet and blinking into harsh lighting.
“You were prescribed to get back to work,” the nurse says.
“I fully intended on it. But I had to get home first.”
The nurse rolls her eyes.
“Say, that print hanging on the wall—it reminds me of—”
“Don’t look at it!”
“Is that Wyeth?”
“Don’t!”
“But—”
“STOP LOOKING AT THINGS!”
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Sometimes dreaming or overthinking can be your worst enemy. With activity, you will find relief from creativity clog. Don’t let this catastrophe happen to you.
“And now for something COMPLETELY different…”
My next post will Dec. 27—I’m taking an extra week “off” because of Christmas. (Here’s wishing you a jolly one!) Since it’s an end-of-year post, it makes more sense to have it closer to the end of the month.
I’m planning to dedicate the majority of December to cartooning and some drawing practice. I seriously need some practice in certain areas where I lack confidence, and I really haven’t been drawing at all lately.
SO—By the time this post is published (it’s still November as I’m writing this), I’ll probably have my next three posts (Dec 27, Jan 3, & Jan 17) drafted (at the very least) and hopefully close to complete to help accommodate that plan. Yes, I’m happiest when ahead of schedule and as far ahead of schedule as possible.
Until then, take it easy and don’t get too rambunctious with your festivities!
