Your Creative Fire Didn't Die, It Just Needs This

Hello, and welcome to Character Is Destiny, a newsletter about how everyone can use tools from the dramatist’s toolkit to live a better story!

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In March of 2020, Julie and I walked to the box office at Oregon Shakespeare Festival to buy tickets for an afternoon matinee. Instead, we found a sign in the window, all shows canceled until further notice. That was the moment I knew everything was about to change.

What I didn’t know was that I was going to experience my worst creative block since I started writing, or… that I would figure out how to fix it.

A lot of creative people found it hard to get any work done during Covid. We were worried for our safety and the safety of our loved ones. Worried about the world. About our livelihood. We grieved losses, big and small.

Sitting down to write our magnum opus, or work on a new piece of art seemed kind of pointless. Or, we had the desire, but found ourselves totally uninspired. Whatever the cause, the end result was inertia.

Maybe you experienced this, too.

I went out to the garage office every day for a set period of time and forced myself to sit at my desk, hoping at some point the lightning bolt of inspiration would strike and I’d be chasing down some new idea that made the days feel a little less like purgatory.

But, it didn’t happen.

A few months in, I caught myself repeating the same phrase in all my phone calls and Zoom catch ups. “We’re fine, just going through GROUNDHOG’S DAY.”

Like Phil Connors, we woke up and did the same thing every day. Get coffee, go to the store, make breakfast, work in the garage, walk the dog, make dinner, night walk, doom scroll, sleep, repeat. Over and over and over again.

In the before times, I did most of my writing in coffee shops because I loved being out in the world. I’m a wanderer by nature, so I changed up my routes, which let me stumble into new neighborhoods. If I was stuck on a story point, I’d go see a movie, go to a museum, browse my way through a bookstore, or the antique shops in Pasadena.

Steve Jobs is the first person I heard define creativity as, “Connecting things.” I had ordered my whole adult life around that idea, long before I heard it. I constantly sought out new inspiration and experiences.

If creativity is about connecting things, it was no wonder that I felt so uninspired in the early days of Covid. I’d been cut off from all the things!

It wasn’t just that I was missing the content of the information that I was used to taking in. I was also missing out on the chemical effect that it had on my brain. Our brains crave novelty. New experiences produce dopamine, which helps supercharge the ability of our neurons to transmit information. I wasn’t just reducing the raw data, I was also making my brain less efficient at using that data to draw connections.

I got a little depressed, worried that Covid had dowsed that spark of creation, that it killed the little fire inside that couldn’t help but make stuff.

Maybe something was broken in my brain. Something beyond repair.

What did get supercharged during Covid was my addiction to my phone, at the same time the algorithms got better at keeping us glued to our screens. Even now, I know that I’m outsourcing my responsibility for discovering new stuff that I like. I rely too much on algorithms to feed me interesting and novel data points. The problem is that they also feed me a bunch of whatever is trending, so I get a steady diet of the same stuff that everybody else gets.

I’ve let tech companies frack my subconscious to extract my attention, which is the source of my creativity. My social media feeds are nothing but a digital Groundhog’s Day. Too much scrolling and I feel like I’m right back in 2020.

Like something’s broken in my brain. Something beyond repair.

But… now, I know it can be repaired because I did it.

A few months into referencing GROUNDHOG’S DAY, I realized I’d forgotten the whole rest of the movie. When Phil Connors finally realizes what’s happening, he starts trying different things to change the outcome.

We may have been stuck inside, but I still had a choice. I could do the same thing over and over again, or make some changes. I could take action.

We made as many changes as we could, given that we were still in lockdown. We picked a new neighborhood to walk in every evening. Once a week, we took a day trip to an outdoor spot we’d never been to. We tried new recipes, and ordered food we’d never eaten before. We live in Glendale, home of many Persians, how had I never tried ghormeh sabzi? (I lament all the time I lost with ghormeh sabzi.)

Gradually, I started to feel like myself again.

As novel an experience as Covid was, it is not unique in the sense that it triggered a creative block. Blocks aren’t just for writers. They happen to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons. Parents, teachers, coders, lawyers, architects, and anybody else who benefits from drawing connections and thinking outside the box.

We get in a rut. The spark dies down or gets extinguished altogether.

We feel like something is broken.

If you’re feeling blocked or uninspired and you want to change your story, you have to take action. You have to stoke the fires of your creativity with the oxygen of new.

New routes. New recipes. New experiences. New hobbies. New music. New books. New creative partners. New weird subcultures.

But, and I think this is key, do as much as you can the old fashioned way. Browse a book store, or a record store. Go to a flea market or an antique store. Get analog. Get tactile. Get outside.

New experiences create new connections.

For the past few weeks, I’ve written about how the tools in the dramatist’s toolkit can change your life. The thing about toolkits is they have to be maintained. That’s what this exercise is about.

A couple of years ago, I read an article about a French writer named Georges Perec who created a short work called, “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris.” He sat in a corner of a cafe and recorded everything he saw over the course of three days, exploring what he called, “the infra-ordinary. What happens when nothing happens, other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.” It was an intensely concentrated period devoted to the vanishing art of noticing.”

I followed his lead and took my journal to a place I’d never been, a neighborhood diner in La Crescenta, called Jeremy’s. For two hours, I wrote down every single little detail I could find, as quickly as I could spot them.

“License plates cover the walls. There are dozens of states in eyesight. Sign: “$5 charge for whining.” Sound of customer coughing. Tables covered in faux-wood laminate. Silver condiment tray has Tapatio, salt and pepper shakers, little plastic tubs of Smuckers brand jelly. Grape, blackberry, orange marmalade.”

I had four pages of details by the end. Just when I thought I’d seen everything, a new detail would reveal itself. It was So. Much. Fun. Something else happened along the way. By the time I left, I had a handful of new ideas.

If you’re experiencing a creative block, or worried about your ability to focus your attention, this exercise inspired by Georges Perec’ may just be the spark that lights your fire again. It’s a “two for one” deal.

Leave your phone behind or in the car, take a notebook and a pen, go to some place you’ve never been, and spend two hours writing down every last little detail you can find. You will be shocked at how deep you can go.

Please let me know if you try it!

A few years ago, I wrote a piece called Beatitudes for Creativity. I kept revising and reshaping them over the years, paring them down to eight essential truths. They’re a reminder to stay curious, seek out the new, and protect the spark that makes creative work possible. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.

I had an Ohio-based designer on Etsy (Inkblot GDS) turn it into a print that I could hang over my desk. Check it out!

(That is a digital mockup. Not my real desk, but it is my real dog.)

If you want one for yourself, click this link to get to the Etsy store!.

There’s a digital download that arrives in four high-resolution files (11x14 in pdf and jpeg, and 18x24, in pdf and jpeg).

If it resonates with you, I’d love for you to share it with one other creative person in your life. Thanks!

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