【Podcast】Spark & Fire: 5 ways to get creatively unstuck

I just recently found this podcast programme called “Spark & Fire: Fuel Your Creativity”.

Wow, what a podcast!

The very first episode I listened to was on how to get unstuck when you are working on something creative.

And it is a must-listen if you want to be creative!

Various top artists and creators come up with how to rediscover their inspirations in an interview way.

It was concise, simple and informative. All those good qualities I seek in any podcast programme.

So let’s dive right into what I learned.

Strategy 1: Do something else.

By CHIP KIDD

“If you get stuck, if you’re hitting your head against the wall, you’ve been working on this particular project too long and concentrating on it, give yourself a break from it.
Give yourself a break from it, and go do something else, because your subconscious is still going to be working on whatever it was that was giving you trouble”.

Oh his case, it is to do crossword puzzles because it helps him to think conceptually.

Strategy 2: Play hard to get.

BY PATTON OSWALT

“I get stuck all the time.
Sometimes the hours I carve out to try to write or create something new, a big chunk of that is spent not doing anything.
It’s spent staring into space and waiting for the inspiration to hit.
Sometimes my strategy is to push through.
Sometimes my strategy is to fake it.
I put a placeholder idea there in the writing, in the screenplay, in the joke, and hope that it will fill in later in context if I just keep writing.
Sometimes you have to play hard-to-get with these things, not be anxiously hanging out there, hat in hand, hoping that you’ll get inspired.
It will inspire you. The idea that’s in your head, if you are begging it and being needy about it coming forward, the idea won’t come forward.
Sometimes you have to walk away and then let it chase after you.”

Patton also tells us about working on meditation twice a day for 20 minutes each session.
He says it gives him the breathing space to be creative and to not get anxious and self-conscious of all the mundane things.

“It’s okay to give myself space. Let the idea chase after me for a while.”

Strategy 3: Change course, and start again.

By KAMILAH FORBES.

If your initial plan, for example performing a play, is not going according to plan due to say, pandemic problem, then switch flexibly to work on something else, like a movie.

“We really began exploring, “Well, how do we get this out? Let’s remount this. Let’s do that now.
We obviously can’t do the play. We obviously can’t gather people in the same room.”
Then we said, “Well, let’s make a film.”

Strategy 4: Keep your inner editor at bay.

By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ.

“All artists get stuck.
But I have learned the secret to how to get unstuck.
And it’s very simple.
And I will tell you the story of how I came to learn this.
I was working on one of the songs on Hunchback of Notre Dame for Disney, and I was having that sort of cliché experience of writing things out and then crumpling up the paper and throwing it on the floor.
And I just was getting nowhere.
And I happened to have a conversation with a wonderful writer named John Bucchino.
I was kind of whining to him about how stuck I was.
And he simply said, “Oh, well, you’re just being the editor too soon.”

This is when he realized that when we work any kind of creative work, we’re constantly switching invisible hats which are sometimes of the writer who puts his/her work on paper, and sometimes of the editor, who is evaluating what’s out there and making choices.

Stephen says “If the editor shows up too soon, then you’re stuck, then you have writer’s block, because you just judge everything prematurely”.

Strategy 5: Look for the note behind the note.

By KEMP POWERS.

“There’s this expression called “the note behind the note.” Sometimes people will give you a note, and the note doesn’t really make sense. They aren’t able to articulate specifically what the problem is. But the fact that it’s bumping for them means that there’s something that needs to be addressed, so it’s up to you to find the note behind the note that they’re giving you.”

Especially when working as a part of a team, learning how to look for “the note behind the note” is absolute essential.
When one of your ideas is not quite working, perhaps what it lacks is not another new idea but that process of looking for the note behind the note.

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