Knock on Silence
I have not worked at all.... Nothing seems worth putting down - I seem to have nothing to say - It appalls me but that is the way it is.
- Georgia O'Keeffe
Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: You don't know anything...
- Vincent Van Gogh
I have, as the writer Anna Held Audette discusses so beautifully in her little chapbook, "The Blank Canvas," struggled as a writer to invite in the muse. As Audette reveals, there is nothing so devastating as discovering you have no creative ideas. The experience calls into question some fundamental issues about who you really are. Perhaps you're not the creative person you thought you were. The blank page, the empty canvas, is all the proof needed: You are a fraud. Caught between your devastating stuckness to make anything at all and inner doubts about whether one even has the creative stuff to begin with.
Audette's book is about creating, or encouraging, the circumstances in life that increase the likelihood of ordering up "that flash of inspiration." She points out that even the most dazzling architecture has a solid foundation we might not commonly consider worthy of a moment of revelation. I happen to know from experience that Audette is right. Even if you sit in your writer's chair staring at your cracked paint for an hour, day after day, praying for inspiration at your personal "genius bar," if you have a pencil, tablet, or whatever you use to jot down fleeting ideas as they arise, you are on the way to corralling enough inspiration at any given moment to light a small fire in that dark night. Does this sound melodramatic? Try answering the question, "So what are you working on next?" asked by any interested soul hoping to be wowed off their feet. Only you mumble, "Uh, right. Working on that very question."
One of the "revisit the foundation" tricks that works for me is to dip back into the creative fishbowl for a bit. As O'Keefe might have abandoned the ranch and caught the train east to New York for a month of exhibitions and dinners with fellow artists, or Van Gogh take his pint at the village pub, sometimes we can come out of a dry spell by plunging into the energy field of other creative souls. For that reason, I love writers conferences. There is inspiration to be found in the inspiration of others, and I love the fact that most of us hanging out post-panel at the bar have been around the ring a time or two with our creative demons. Support, in abundance. I'm headed to a conference this week, in fact. I'm really hoping to rediscover the foundations of some dazzling creative architecture there in this time spent with other writers. Writers conferences are one tool in a creativity "rescue kit" that works for me when everything else I can think of does not. There must be ways that boost you toward inspiration as well. Keep signing up for those classes, do the dishes nude, sit in meditation, run the trails, or whatever it is that helps you see that design in the paint cracks.
Wish me luck. I hope to come back having solved a big structural problem in a novel I'm struggling with. Or at the very least, with the patience to keep staring at the wall, pencil in hand.
- Georgia O'Keeffe
Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: You don't know anything...
- Vincent Van Gogh
I have, as the writer Anna Held Audette discusses so beautifully in her little chapbook, "The Blank Canvas," struggled as a writer to invite in the muse. As Audette reveals, there is nothing so devastating as discovering you have no creative ideas. The experience calls into question some fundamental issues about who you really are. Perhaps you're not the creative person you thought you were. The blank page, the empty canvas, is all the proof needed: You are a fraud. Caught between your devastating stuckness to make anything at all and inner doubts about whether one even has the creative stuff to begin with.
Audette's book is about creating, or encouraging, the circumstances in life that increase the likelihood of ordering up "that flash of inspiration." She points out that even the most dazzling architecture has a solid foundation we might not commonly consider worthy of a moment of revelation. I happen to know from experience that Audette is right. Even if you sit in your writer's chair staring at your cracked paint for an hour, day after day, praying for inspiration at your personal "genius bar," if you have a pencil, tablet, or whatever you use to jot down fleeting ideas as they arise, you are on the way to corralling enough inspiration at any given moment to light a small fire in that dark night. Does this sound melodramatic? Try answering the question, "So what are you working on next?" asked by any interested soul hoping to be wowed off their feet. Only you mumble, "Uh, right. Working on that very question."
One of the "revisit the foundation" tricks that works for me is to dip back into the creative fishbowl for a bit. As O'Keefe might have abandoned the ranch and caught the train east to New York for a month of exhibitions and dinners with fellow artists, or Van Gogh take his pint at the village pub, sometimes we can come out of a dry spell by plunging into the energy field of other creative souls. For that reason, I love writers conferences. There is inspiration to be found in the inspiration of others, and I love the fact that most of us hanging out post-panel at the bar have been around the ring a time or two with our creative demons. Support, in abundance. I'm headed to a conference this week, in fact. I'm really hoping to rediscover the foundations of some dazzling creative architecture there in this time spent with other writers. Writers conferences are one tool in a creativity "rescue kit" that works for me when everything else I can think of does not. There must be ways that boost you toward inspiration as well. Keep signing up for those classes, do the dishes nude, sit in meditation, run the trails, or whatever it is that helps you see that design in the paint cracks.
Wish me luck. I hope to come back having solved a big structural problem in a novel I'm struggling with. Or at the very least, with the patience to keep staring at the wall, pencil in hand.
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