Getting back on track: learning from a creative trough

A friend once told me that a good blog is generally updated daily, or almost daily if that can't be managed. Assuming for the moment that's true, it means this blog has been lagging a bit of late, a problem I've had before. And just as before, I'm finding the experience both maddening and instructive. A lot of things are like that it seems.

Thankfully, previous experience with writers' block helped me utilize the present bout more effectively. For starters, I worried a lot less this time around about the dearth of new material. Sometimes these things just happen, and excessive worry does little to remedy it. Any number of reasons could be at work, but taking a little time seemed to offer a universal solution no matter what it turned out to be. So I let the matter rest, and thought about other things.

This worked surprisingly well, and reinforces some of the ideas we've discussed in an earlier post on creativity. To summarize, there appear to be two broad ways by which creativity generates new ideas; one involving industry and the other insight. In the first case, people tend to have a general idea and need some focused work to get the details right. In the second case, people tend to be at a loss of where to go next--the classic "gosh, I'm stumped," syndrome--and need some insight before continuing. Neither example follows the model absolutely (sometimes industry leads to insight, or vice-versa), but it does provide a useful framework for thinking about creative problems.

The point is that in my particular case, a lack of ideas for new posts seemed to mean a lack of new insight, not industry. Solving the problem meant disengaging from it for a while, letting the mind rest and associate freely across experience and memory, rather than plowing ahead. After about five days the germ of an idea came to mind. From there, the problem immediately changed from one of insight to one of industry. After all, "the germ of an idea" is not a completed work, and time, energy, and thought would be required to make it one. Having had the insight, I shifted gears and got to work.

Creativity is an important skill, and seems to be increasingly so. Getting a sense of how creativity functions for you--both when it's working, and when it's not--may prove helpful. Something to consider anyway.

Happy Tuesday, friends :)

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