All of this talk about creativity — and sometimes the lack thereof — had me thinking. On Tuesday, Naomi blogged about designer’s block, and she received some fantastic responses about how people cope with it. What confused me, however, is how many suggestions dealt with putting distance between one’s self and one’s jewelry. Overall, I got the impression that most people step back, take a breather, and give themselves some space. Then when they return to their jewelry in a few hours (or even a few days), they feel refreshed and ready to design again.
Naomi’s blog reminded me of another creative pursuit, writing. On my own time, I’m working on my first novel. As part of my endeavor, I joined a fantastic writing organization that has given me immeasurable motivation and inspiration. As I’m sure you know, writers are plagued by their own kind of block, the dreaded writer’s block. In my writing group, the most popular method of dealing with said block is not distance, but the exact opposite. We lovingly call it the butt-in-chair method. It goes a little something like this: Whether you’re blocked or not, you sit your butt in a chair and you write. If you don’t write, you’re going to get awfully bored staring at a blank computer screen.
So can you understand my confusion now? How can two creative disciplines have such different ways of dealing with creative blocks? And is this something that varies from individual to individual? Or is there some essential difference between jewelry-making and writing that makes their block-busting methods so different? I suspect it’s a combination of factors. The creative process is a very individual process; there are as many ways to create as there are people creating. And the fact that jewelry-making is a visual art might mean that people process it differently than writing.
I realize that there will be no clear answers to my questions, but I still can’t keep myself from wondering. Are there butt-in-chair jewelry artists out there? And what about give-me-space authors? Maybe, like many things in life, the ideal answer isn’t one extreme or the other, but a combination of the two . . . a golden mean. In fact, it might just be that jewelry-artists and writers have a lot to learn from each other . . .