Creative crisis. Several ways to get out of a creative crisis

Today we have another guest post from Evgeniy Ignashov, who presents the Candysign project: creating websites, icons, networking, programming.
Are these lines read by creative people or those who consider themselves one of them? If so, then they are probably familiar with times of both crazy creative eruption and creative stagnation. At least familiar to me (let's assume that this means that I a real creator:)) Stagnation for us, designers, can happen for a great variety of reasons, such as: want to sleep, the customer is stupid, the muse has left or the favorite song in Winamp has ended. Everyone has their own. The question arises: “How the hell can you painlessly spur creativity and creative thinking? To be honest, I really believe that it is possible to somehow single out from the total mass of options a few that work most effectively and on greatest number people.

For example, you are a designer (although, most likely you are) and you have the same stagnation, and people demand and even periodically call with the question: “Well, what’s going on?” The most effective method for me personally of transforming into a combat design unit is, oddly enough, waiting. Yes, indeed the saying “the morning is wiser than the evening” is true. You’re sitting, let’s say, at one in the morning, drawing something, but you feel that, as they say, it’s not right. And there is no impulse, and you stay in one place for a long time, in order to bring it to the ideal, and so on. Anyone who studied art or stupidly went to a circle as a child, probably the teacher at the same moments advised him to step away from his drawing for 10-15 minutes and simply distract himself with other things. Being distracted, the image of the drawing partially leaves your head and then you, so to speak, look at your brainchild with a new fresh look and immediately see something that you did not notice when staring closely for an hour.

The muse may also return and when contemplating something/someone beautiful. But certainly not just beautiful or touching, such as, for example, small children, puppies, kittens or naked women, but “thematically beautiful”. Those. It’s a good idea to get acquainted with the works of senior comrades, colleagues, those whom you consider your spiritual mentor, Guru and others. It is advisable to look for works similar to the topic, and not just look at pictures. Right now some people are probably thinking: “What is he hinting at, you bastard? Offering to steal other people’s ideas?” I will answer directly and honestly, without prevarication - no). I'm getting to, again, everyone famous saying“Learn from many, imitate no one.” Even the greats, at the stage of their formation, learned from someone, drew inspiration from something, used something... If you, a simple designer, have your personal art director, then you can contact him and let him work off the salary. Don’t try to walk through the portfolios of quality web studios and learn from them.

Let me remind you once again that you need to study, not steal. Yes, the line is thin, and sometimes the worm of mediocrity gnaws at you, bastard: “Count, fight, the Internet is big, no one will burn it down.” The role of this worm can sometimes be replaced by not too conscientious colleagues in the shop, saying: “What? I always do this and nothing happens.” This is where your designer pride should come into play, which every designer usually has enough of.

Once I was surfing the website of a well-known “bird” in the field of design and came across an article or rather a note general meaning which is that writer's block can only happen if you're going in the wrong direction, but it’s completely impossible to come up with something original and unusual. The unusual can only appear naturally in the process of work. I partly agree. For example, that interesting idea It may arise during the process, but I believe that it can also appear on its own. Let's say you were given an order for a bakery website and you are immediately in the process of discussing the details further work They came up with the idea that in the center of the screen there would be a fat lady with a plate of rolls or something like that. It’s not very original, of course, and doesn’t look like a masterpiece of design, but let’s not forget that this is just an example and I came up with it on the fly in 3.5 seconds.

You can also overcome this creative crisis by generating ideas that are obviously not the most original.(something like “brainstorming”). That is, simply throwing out some working material, 70 percent of which will later be eliminated on its own. But at least this will give you a certain vector along which you can go without wasting time. For example, looking at the same bakery, you can immediately understand that making a website in dark colors is not very logical, therefore, it should be done in light or neutral colors. Colors can be warm and cold, thinking about what an ideal bun should be like, you will certainly come across the idea that it should be fresh, fluffy, and certainly WARM. The chain of logical reasoning can be continued further by periodically writing down or sketching (whichever is more convenient for you) worthwhile ideas. After thinking about the order I had come up with, I came to some quite logical conclusions. In short, in the end we have:

1. The background of a bakery website can be flesh-colored (you know that pink-light brown) or shades of it.
2. With a certain character (woman in the center)
3. The text color can also be made warm
4. Well, cool colors somewhere above will add freshness ( blue sky or something like that).

Agree, you can already start working with this. Isn't it?

Well, thanks to Evgeny Ignashov from Candysign for another design and philosophical material for discussion. It would be interesting to read in the comments what specific sources of inspiration you use and what you generally do when there is no creativity.

Basically, I think this situation applicable for others as well" creative professions”, for example, blogging or, to simplify, writing text. It happens that you sit down to write another article that needs to be published, you come up with a topic, but your thoughts just don’t want to materialize into letters and lines on the monitor screen. In this case, I think, like for any other creative, painstaking, “smart” work, you need to be distracted - literally for 10-15 or more minutes, occupy yourself with something else, or relax. Secondly, analogies can be drawn with contemplating the works of other designers and reading the publications of other authors. This may resolve the issue creative crisis or stagnation in terms of finding ideas for new publications.

P.S. Guard. Reading about DIP 2.0 - New service for storing bookmarks.
Where to have fun in Kyiv? Complete Poster of Kyiv online, news and articles about Kyiv.
A useful article about how to promote a forum - discuss and share experiences.

“Literary master class” by writer and screenwriter Jürgen Wolf; in it famous writers talk about the techniques that helped them overcome their creative crisis.

Literary Masterclass: Learn from Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dickens, Hemingway and many other modern and classic authors

Jurgen Wolf

Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2014

Why you shouldn't be afraid of creative crisis

“The wisest thing to do is not to worry too much about periods of creative infertility. They help the theme mature and bring the reality of everyday life into the story.”

Shelley Jackson suggests that creative impasses are a completely normal part of the creative process:

“I sat on the unfinished draft for several years until I suspected, and rightly so, that I simply did not know how to finish it. When I returned to it again, I still didn’t know this, but I continued and eventually finished the book. If someone had immediately told me that I would never understand how to write novels, I would have immediately continued, despite almost complete confusion and doubts, and after finishing the draft, I would have appreciated what I had written and began to improve the book.”

Roddy Doyle- another novelist with a rather carefree approach to work:

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a writer’s block. If a novel is moving slowly or is extremely unsatisfactory, I switch to another book so I can return to the problem area later. I calmly write nonsense with full understanding that this is nonsense and I will fix everything later. Often you have to write six bad sentences before you get to a good seventh. But first you need to write these six, understand that they are bad, and guess that the seventh is what you need. So even bad days useful."

Temporary creative impasse accompanied the work Alice Munro over all her books:

“There were times when I was writing and thought that I had made great progress - I had written more pages than usual. The next day I get up and realize I don't want to work on this thing anymore. When I am so reluctant to continue that I have to force myself, I usually know that something is going wrong. About three-quarters of the time, I felt the urge to quit the story quite early on. I spend a day or two severely depressed, wandering around aimlessly, wondering if I should write something else. Everything is as in love story: Frustrated and unhappy, you start dating a new guy who you don't like at all, but you haven't realized this yet. Then suddenly it appears new idea the story left was: I need to see if she will fit, but only after I tell myself: “No, everything is bad here, forget about it.”

Similar doubts about their own stories also existed among Chekhov. He compared them with those not yet written:

“I have plots for five stories and two novels languishing in my head. One of the novels has been planned for a long time, so some of characters already outdated before they were written. In my head I have a whole army of people asking to come out and waiting for a command. Everything that I have written so far is nonsense in comparison with what I would like to write and what I would write with delight... I don’t like that I am successful; those stories that sit in your head are annoyingly jealous of what has already been written; It’s a shame that the nonsense has already been done, and the good stuff is lying around in the warehouse, like book trash.”

Writers have several options for practically addressing these issues.

Move to more
major issues

Paul Auster believes that writer's block may be a sign that there are larger issues to consider:

“The greatest patience is needed. After many weeks of sadness and months of suffering, I discovered that when a writer reaches a dead end, it usually means that he does not understand what he really wants to say. You need to go back and carefully consider your motives, intentions and goals that you intend to achieve. But the main thing is not to force yourself to write further just to fill the last pages with words.”

Brainstorming topics

If the difficulty is that you have no idea for next book, try the method you used Philip Roth. He told NPR how he came up with the plot of the novel Nemesis about the polio epidemic:

“I started [writing] as I often do: [writing down] everything in a yellow notepad on lined paper. historical events, which I witnessed and which I have not yet reflected in my books. When I got to polio, it was a revelation to me. I never thought that this could be the topic of a book. Then I remembered how terrible it was, how deadly it was, and I thought, “Okay, try writing a book about polio...” I wanted to see: Can I portray how afraid we all were of it?

Roth used the same method for the book “The Plot Against America,” where he tried to imagine what would have happened if Charles Lindbergh, rather than Franklin Roosevelt, had won the presidential election in 1940.

Write only if you believe

Ray Bradbury said:

“Those who get stuck are simply doing something they shouldn't be doing: those who write screenplays or books that shouldn't have been written will end up with writer's block because their subconscious will say:

“No more inspiration!”

His opinion is typical for a writer high level: if you write about what you love, creative crisis will not occur.

Get treatment

Having experienced problems in the middle of working on the script for the film Carter Conquers the Devil, Glen David Gold took a break for seventeen months to consider whether screenwriting was a symptom of struggling with unhealed childhood trauma. He says:

“I decided to go to therapy, change my life, move on to another stage and come back. And then I decided that I needed to surprise myself. I was walking between the stacks in the library and decided that I would place on the stage an object from the first book that I came across. And this turned out to be the story of the guillotine! This was able to surprise me, motivate me to move from exposition to action and complete the rest of the plot.”

Keep a diary

Dominic Dunn advises:

“I think keeping a diary is the best thing for a writer... A journal will be especially invaluable when you are experiencing a creative impasse. Write down complaints to yourself about creative crisis there. Tell me how bad you feel, how angry you are that your talent suddenly left you. Describe the chapter or scene where you are stuck: who the characters are and what you want to achieve in this episode. Write about it. Believe me, everything will start to get better right there, in the diary.”

Give a surprise

H.G. Wells advised:

"If you're having trouble with a book, try the element of surprise: attack her when she least expects it."

I agreed with him Francis Scott Fitzgerald:

“Sometimes it is possible to solve a particularly difficult problem if you approach it from the very early morning, with the freshest powers of consciousness. I have had this happen so often that I have blind faith in this approach.”

Listen to music

Amy Tan speaks:

“There are many ways. One of them is to play the same music that I listened to when I was working on it before. Music has a hypnotic effect and mobilizes all senses. And I immerse myself in the right atmosphere.”

Write one
this offer

Ernest Hemingway This is how I built my self-confidence:

"Sometimes, starting new story, I couldn’t move, and then I sat down in front of the fireplace, squeezed tangerine peels into the fire and watched the splashes flare up with blue sparks. I got up, looked at the Parisian rooftops and thought: “Don’t worry. You could write before and now you will write. You just need to write one truthful phrase. Write the most truthful one you can.” In the end, I wrote down one truthful phrase and moved on from there. And it was already easy, because there was always one truthful phrase that you knew or saw, or heard from someone. If I began to write intricately, or to lead to something, or to demonstrate something, it turned out that these curlicues or decorations could be cut off and thrown away and start with the first true, simple affirmative sentence.

How to overcome creative crisis?

Inspiration and creative crisis are always nearby, but there is still a difference between them.

Inspiration, in my opinion, is a mood, an uplift of spirit, a special state of “lightness” of creativity, when everything works out – and difficult things too. A creative crisis is precisely the loss of insight, conjecture, and ideas.

Writer's block is most often associated with a lack of ideas. It seems to me that this is not entirely true. Or rather, this is one of the reasons, but there are others. For example:

– there are ideas, but there is no ability to implement them;

– a feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s own results;

– emptiness after completion great job;

– the inability to navigate the flow of information can also cause a crisis;

– dissatisfaction from transferring what is in the head onto paper (file) – the so-called “dumbness”;

– the feeling that everything has already been written, said;

– lack of readers and a feeling of uselessness of creativity, etc.

There are many reasons, and each writer has his own.

I tried to collect ways and techniques for getting out of creative impasse, voiced on the Internet (as is the case with inspiration). I noticed that often the same methods are offered to return inspiration and to get out of a creative crisis. That’s why I sorted them and highlighted those that are necessary (or called necessary) to overcome a creative crisis.

And again, Tin and I conducted experiments on ourselves and came to the conclusion that there are many ways, but choosing them in to a greater extent individual than the choice when returning inspiration.

Look at the table and how to work with it so that it benefits you too, you already know.

After thinking and filling out the table, Tin and I came to the conclusion that quite simple things most often help to overcome a creative crisis:

1. Observations

2. Experiments

3. Self-development

4. Visualization

5. Routine daily work

I wonder if your opinion matches ours?

Eat good word"plow". Plow - in any case. Work and understand that you yourself need creative work...

And so I looked at all these collected methods and techniques, thought, and I was missing something. I would like to say one more thing: in my opinion, there are things that are either not mentioned or not explained in numerous articles about inspiration and creative impasse.

The important thing is author's emotional environment .

Imagine a writer is writing a novel. He gets used to the fate of the heroes and experiences a certain emotional state. Like an actor on stage, it can be very difficult for him to switch it to something else, but the actor learns this!

We often dream of scenes from a future novel or story, we think about it all the time, we are sad or love together with our heroes.

You need to be able to get out of this state. And it's not that simple.

Sometimes it helps "cinema" reception , when the author, as it were, mentally edits the film, mixing different scenes of the future story and not allowing himself to be deeply immersed in the emotions of one scene.

Creative fun – also a good way out of their crisis. When an author shuffles the actions of his characters this way and that, like cards, it helps him find new ideas.

However, many do not know how to stop; they write series, not realizing that everything is already over.

And here we need new emotions and a long rest, perhaps switching to something else. It is known that L. Tolstoy, while “resting” from War and Peace, studied and learned some languages.

Finding and eliminating the cause.

It is important, in my opinion, to find pinpoint the cause loss of inspiration and creative crisis. And the reasons are different.

External reasons It’s quite easy to detect: troubles at work, at college, a rude salesman or bus driver, fatigue, family problems, everyday difficulties, lack of necessary resources for creativity, etc.

Personally, it’s difficult for me to create if I, say, have a quarrel with someone. And one day I discovered the cause of the crisis in - believe it or not - a broken kettle. Really: I couldn’t write normally, all the time being distracted by boiling water in a saucepan. Both serious and funny can be the reason.

All these reasons are not only negative. Completely positive things can also throw you out of a creative rut. For example, if I have a date in the evening, I think about the date, not about the next chapter of the novel.

Internal reasons not so easy to detect.

Lack of ideas is not a reason in itself. Why aren't there any? That's the question.

And then, if you look for reasons, sometimes very interesting things happen. For example, you sketched out the plot of a story, but it doesn’t get written, you suffer and don’t understand that your inner “I” is struggling with all its might to resist the development and actions of the hero that you came up with. Or you simply lack the experience and knowledge to develop ideas. Or maybe the “scatter” of ideas does not give you the opportunity to put an end to it.

But! It is important not only to find the causes, but also to eliminate them. Otherwise nothing will work. And if in order to regain inspiration you need to make peace with someone, you will have to do it. And if new ideas require acquiring new knowledge, you will have to do it.

I’ll say more - even creativity brought people out of a state of grief. And I know those who wrote one book - a book of memory - but it brought them back to life. What can we say about a broken kettle, the very fact of whose existence just begs to be included in a pamphlet?

You and I understand that problems in our lives always exist: big or small, tragic or not, but, one way or another, we have to solve them.

That's true “...what do I care about Faust, an extravaganza of rockets gliding with Mephistopheles in the heavenly parquet! I know that the nail in my boot is worse than Goethe’s fantasy!”– wrote V. Mayakovsky.

What to do? But here, in my opinion, motivation will help.

Motivation as a way to overcome a creative crisis.

Strictly speaking, motivation in its most primitive meaning is an understanding of why (or for whom) you are doing something.

Even if this is so (superficially), the motive of creativity will still be present.

Very often motivation appears spontaneously, from the external environment .

For example, there are people who support you. They are waiting for your creativity, they read you, they criticize you - in any case, they are not indifferent to you. There may be many such people, or it may be two close friends or a couple of relatives.

It is very difficult to write something completely alone. That's probably why huge amount graphomaniacs, having found two or three fans of their graphomania, hold on to them like a lifeline. And that's good. It's inspiring. Man creates - for them. Of course, it is advisable not to feel like a star and to study. Let's remember the famous lines: “...they accepted praise and slander with indifference...”

I am lucky in this regard: my work is supported by my family, friends and loved one. I have a circle of readers whose opinions I value and whom I respect and love. My loved one freezes and practically does not breathe when I do something there. And this is also one of the reasons now for love, and not just creativity.

Firstly, there is still readers, critics, there are communities (website) .

I think there is no need to be shy about asking for a review; on our website you can order a review, and directly contact the inquisitor with a request to read the work. There is no need to be afraid of this, on the contrary, whether they scold you or praise you, this is a community that will give you experience.

Secondly, there is no motive - create it yourself!

Let it be anything: from dreams that your story about how a shrew found the meaning of life will receive Nobel Prize in the field of literature to imagining how your friend or someone on the site will read it, that you yourself will be happy and satisfied.

The degree of your adequacy and perception is important here: it’s no secret that authors who suddenly found a couple of readers are starred as if they had already been published in a million copies on Mars.

Underestimation often creates conditions for creative crisis. However revaluation Same.

If you learn to stick to the “golden mean”, you will go oh so far.

I’ll tell you about myself - I most often underestimate myself, and this really bothers me.

As a result, I came to the following conclusions:

1. Doesn't happen universal methods, everyone is different. And here, oddly enough, you need to be inspired to find these very own ways and then use them.

2. Elementary laziness and lack of responsibility for one’s creativity are very often mistaken for a loss of inspiration and a creative crisis.

3. Inability to search, lack of knowledge lead to eternal rhetorical sob questions: how can I regain inspiration or overcome the crisis?

It’s clear how. But no one sees what you do. Any action is better than inaction.

This concerns my personal attitude to issues of this kind.

Crisis, stupor, naked - this state can be called differently, but it always means the same thing - the absence of new ideas or the inability to implement them. sometimes leaves everyone creative people who suffer incredibly from this. If you can't create, it often means you can't work, which leads to a flood of sad thoughts and discomfort. Today we will talk about how to get out of a creative block - there are a lot of ways, try and choose the ones you like. And don’t forget to share your ways of overcoming the crisis in the comments.

1. Inspiring work from other authors in your field can work wonders. Read/watch/listen and get inspired. Me reading beautiful works other authors have been pulled out of crises more than once.
2. Get away from the computer, the Internet and other sources of information. Turn off your phone and don't distract yourself with conversations. Stay alone with yourself - nature and other secluded places are perfect for this. It may take a few days to wake up your brain, but when it does, it's best to have a pen and pad handy to jot down ideas. :-)
3. Look through your old ideas - both implemented and remaining ideas. Very often inspiration comes from one's own creations.
4. Chat with people who have completely different interests than you, or better yet, do something together with them that you don’t usually do.
5. Try changing your daily routine dramatically. For example, get up at 5 am and try to create something.
6. Diversify your activities and interests, enrich yourself. Have you long wanted to read a book, try yourself in sports or learn? Well, now is the time. Stupor is the child of stagnation. Let new energies and ideas into your life, and inspiration will not keep you waiting.
7. – do something new, intriguing and scary. The emotions of simply discovering something fresh will take you to the right wave. Do something crazy, weird, wild!
8. The brain, like muscles, needs a variety of loads. To get out of a creative block, it’s good to practice logical thinking, read serious difficult book or do .
9. Try to overload yourself with information from different sources. In order to create, you need to consume. Beat yourself to capacity, digest and start creating something new!
10. Change not only working hours, but also their locations. For example, you can work not only in the office or at home, but also in a coffee shop, on the roof of a building, on the grass in a park, at a train station, etc.
11. Don't strive for results. If you need to complete a project or order, but inspiration doesn’t come, forget about the task and just do what you want, what you like. Along the way, you may come up with an idea for a project.
12. Walking has always helped me and continues to help me. If I feel stuck, I take my player and go for a walk along the city streets, temporarily forgetting about my tasks. I listen to music, look at the buildings and passers-by, clear my head. Upon returning from a walk (and sometimes during it), I am overwhelmed by a stream of new ideas.

And to get out of a creative crisis, it is useful to stop thinking about the crisis and ways to get out of it. :-) If you can’t create, do other things. Communicate, take care of home and yourself, help friends, do whatever you want - even lie on the couch all day long, just without thinking about work and the crisis of new ideas! Sometimes creative block is a hint that you need a good rest.

I open a Word file and look longingly at the pristine blank page. I can't write. Nothing. I take the album, thoughtfully twirl the pencil in my fingers and realize that I can’t draw either. I don’t want to knit or embroider. I aimlessly scroll through pages on the Internet, but no information remains in my head.

This is a creative crisis. I think many people are familiar with a similar state, when there seems to be a need to create, but the soul is empty, like a dry well, and just as dark and hopeless. But there must be a way out of this painful state?

Despite the fact that this fairly common phenomenon is clearly psychological in nature, it has been little studied. The authors of even reputable books on the psychology of creativity rarely and casually mention creative crisis, so everything you read here is largely the result of my own thoughts.

What is creative crisis?

This term usually refers to the subjective feeling of the impossibility of creating, which spontaneously arises in any creative person from time to time. Interestingly, this crisis is not associated with a lack of creative ideas, ideas, plans. And a person experiences it even more acutely, since he is not able to implement these grandiose plans.

Like any other crisis, a creative one is generated by contradiction. IN in this case the contradiction between the need to create, which all creatives experience, and the inability to do what they love. This contradiction is experienced quite hard, because the person himself often does not see a way to resolve it. After all, obstacles are not external, created by other people or circumstances, they are of an internal, psychological nature, and understanding them can be difficult. These obstacles have the character of a psychological block, which is overcome with great difficulty.

Creative crisis is often explained as simple laziness, but this is wrong. More precisely, sometimes, indeed, a crisis situation is justified, for example, when a person does not have time to submit an order on time, or an art student has not prepared test work. What can you do if there is a crisis and it goes somewhere?

But a real creative crisis is a rather complex and severe mental phenomenon. It is accompanied by a general decrease in activity, apathy, and often.

Characteristics of creative crisis

It is not difficult to distinguish crisis phenomena from simple laziness, since they manifest themselves not only in a specific creative activity, but also in all spheres of a person’s life, in his emotional and intellectual state. Creative crisis is distinguished by a number of specific features:

• depressed state affecting mental and physical performance;
• the predominance of negative ones, which color all human activities and his relationships with others;
• involuntariness - a crisis state cannot be overcome, and a person finds himself in this state contrary to his desires;
• a feeling of the indefiniteness of the crisis, when the creative does not believe in the possibility of exiting it, even if this is not the first time he has experienced such a state;
• loss of faith in yourself, your abilities and capabilities;
• openness, which manifests itself in a demonstrative, public experience of one’s inability to create; that is, when a creative is in a state of creative crisis, all his relatives, friends and colleagues know about it.

Despite the fact that this phenomenon is transitory, one should not be condescending or frivolous towards those who experience it. This is a really difficult feeling that can lead to real depression, attempts to relieve emotional stress with the help of alcohol and drugs, antisocial behavior. There are cases when a deep and protracted creative crisis became the reason for the suicide of a creative person. Researchers in the psychology of creativity believe that, most likely, it was the creative crisis that caused the suicide of Vincent Van Gogh, V. Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Kurt Cobain.

Causes of creative crisis

Understanding the reasons that give rise to a state of creative crisis, you come to the conclusion that this term refers to two completely different phenomena. They arise in different conditions, are experienced differently and, accordingly, require in various ways overcoming.

Crisis associated with the mental state of the creator

The first type of creative crisis is associated with the emotional and psychophysiological state of the individual. There are two mental phenomena that can cause it.

Fatigue

This is not just physical fatigue, but an overload of the nervous system, which is often a consequence of creative enthusiasm. In a state of inspiration, a person experiences a colossal surge in productivity and bright positive emotions, which the ancient Greek philosopher Plato called ecstasy. A creative person literally enjoys every moment of the creative process and can work for days, forgetting about sleep and food.

This performance is ensured by a strong focus of excitation in the cerebral cortex, associated with interest and enthusiasm. In order to maintain high activity for a long time, the body uses all its reserves, but they are not endless. Sooner or later, a reckoning comes, increased activity is replaced by a decline, and after a bright flash of inspiration, a rollback occurs. Overload of the nervous system and depletion of physical resources leads to a general loss of strength and decreased emotional tone.

After the extraordinary elation and euphoria that inspiration gives, such a decline is experienced very acutely, sometimes as a feeling of the impossibility of ever creating at all. In the fantasy genre, there is a very good analogy with a wizard who has lost his magical powers.

But despite the subjective sensations, the condition generated by this reason is temporary; to overcome it, it is often enough just to have a good rest and do something completely uncreative.

Lack of motivation

The saying “Anyone can offend an artist” appeared for a reason. Indeed, creative people, as a rule, have a sensitive nervous system. This, on the one hand, allows them to notice all the nuances of changes taking place in the world around them, to see what other people do not see, and to find non-standard solutions. On the other hand, increased sensitivity is the source of many problems. Creative personality she experiences failures hard, she is hurt by the lack of recognition from others and the low appreciation of creativity.

Those people who say that they write books, compose poems and create paintings “for themselves” are lying. They also try to deceive themselves, so as not to experience too hard the indifference or criticism of society. Recognition is the main motive for creativity, and its absence causes disappointment, loss of faith in oneself and one’s abilities, and abandonment of creative activities that seem meaningless.

Nowadays, creative people are often accused of commercialism - after all, an artist should create not for money, but out of love for art. This is an erroneous position, because money is one of the main equivalents of public recognition. Modern man is ready to pay for what he likes. But still monetary reward cannot replace a positive assessment of society, public recognition– this is an energy boost, without which creativity is impossible.

Crisis associated with the peculiarities of the creative process

If the causes of the first type of crisis are rooted in individual characteristics and the mental state of the creator, then the crisis of the second type is associated with the instability of the creative process itself. Creativity has both ups and downs, inspiration gives way to stagnation. This is a normal phenomenon that many creatives experience as a creative crisis.

There is one more feature of the creative process. It is exploratory in nature, and often the difficulties that arise in finding a solution to a problem, a suitable image or a plot twist give rise to a feeling of crisis. The inability to solve a creative problem, when it is so necessary, often provokes a desire to abandon creativity altogether, both for oneself and for the whole world. What to do in this case? Nothing.

Indeed, you don’t need to do anything, it’s better to find some neutral activity, wash the dishes, for example. Perhaps in creative process the “period of crystallization” has simply begun, when our subconscious “digests” the available information. There is no need to interfere with it, then after some time it will give us the necessary solution.

How to get out of a creative crisis

I think you already understand that the most serious psychological problems are associated with the crisis of the first type, and it is this that requires special methods of overcoming.

Since the main cause of this crisis is fatigue, the main way out of it will be rest. It is desirable that the holiday be active, bringing positive emotions and not requiring intellectual activity. In winter you can go skiing, go to the skating rink or the gym with friends.

And in the summer, walks in the forest, in the park, on the shore of a lake or river help a lot. It's better to walk in fun company, lonely walks do not help turn off thinking and can only worsen the condition. A change of scenery, an excursion to another city or a trip is especially useful.

Don't worry about wasting time - in a state of creative crisis, you won't do anything worthwhile anyway. But after you have rested, you will feel a surge of strength and a desire to begin implementing your plans and projects.

If main reason is a lack of social motivation, we can advise the following:

• Tell your friends and family about your work, ask them to help organize an exhibition or make a presentation.
• Contact local library, museum, house of creativity, school and invite them to talk about their creativity, their projects and ideas. As a rule, these organizations readily accept such proposals.
• Create your community or group in social networks, create a website dedicated to your creativity, or use ready-made platforms for discussing creative activities.
• Read about the successes of other creatives, discuss them with your friends, “try on” their glory.

That is, stop “writing on the table”, creating projects in your dreams and drawing “for yourself”, forget about timidity and make your creativity open and public. How more people will know about it, the more fans and followers you will have.

Or perhaps what you do is not appreciated by others and does not bring you satisfaction, because it is not your business at all. Leave it, do something else - there are so many interesting things in the world. After all, creativity is always a search, including the search for yourself and your calling.