The Search For Inspiration
It happens all the time. I’m working on a project, and I hit a mental block. Suddenly, nothing. Everything goes blank. Here I am, a creative professional who makes a living coming up with ideas, and I’m coming up empty.
Many creatives need help with this. We try week after week to develop something new and good. Good! That’s the hitch, isn’t it? To be successful, it has to be good.
It can be exhausting. And we don’t have the luxury of waiting out a creative drought when deadlines and bills linger in our future.
How do you find inspiration when it seems like the world is as bland as a brown paper bag? How do you recharge when you feel your creative batteries are dead?
For over two decades, I've faced these challenges day in and day out as a television producer and show developer. Whether it’s finding a new way to tell a shark story or engaging an audience about house pets, I've developed a few tools that help me push past the doldrums. I've been where you are and found a way through. You can, too.
Tool 1: take a break. Staring at a blank screen is the work version of insomnia. You hope for a magical idea to appear, but it’s unlikely. So, change your scenery! Get up, move around, walk, go to a cafe... change your environment! It's a practical tool that works for insomnia and sure as hell works for mental blocks. You have the power to shift your environment and your mindset.
Tool 2: revisit old muses. I was recently working on a script, and my brain crashed. It was the spinning, rainbow ball of death. I couldn’t come up with a single line of narration. I got up, started walking around, and remembered what had inspired me in the past. It was The New Pornographer’s album Challengers. I started listening, and by the time Myriad Harbour (my favorite) finished, I had relaxed. I went back to my laptop, and the words came quickly.
Tool 3: exercise. When I had cartilage in my left knee, I would change into workout clothes and go for an afternoon run. By the time I got 30 minutes in, all the fog in my brain would lift, and the ideas would come. I would return to my office at Red Rock Films, sweaty and smelly, and immediately blurt out new ideas. (I always apologized to my coworkers for being a sweaty mess.) If you can’t run, swim. Your brain has nothing else to concentrate on, so it’s excellent for clearing your mind. Yoga, boxing, basketball–whatever works for you.
Tool 4: experience others' creativity. I’ve mainly produced natural history films but find inspiration in other genres. Examples include Pachinko on Apple TV, Fire of Love on Hulu, and The Great North on Fox. It's all helpful for me. I find a lot of inspiration in True Crime docs. I’m not particularly interested in the crime. What interests me is how they tell the story. True crime producers always find new and innovative ways to shape their narrative. McMillions on Max and Worst Roommate Ever & Sophie: A Murder in West Cork on Netflix impressed me with their clever storytelling.
Tool 5: collaborate. It’s hard to create on your own. Sure–the imagery of the obsessed writer, huddled over a typewriter and working day and night to finish their next masterpiece is alluring. I don’t know about you, but I’m not Hemingway. I love collaborating. Run your project by your best pal or sounding board and get feedback. They may offer something that opens the floodgates. I remember developing a show about an incredibly uncool military jet and couldn’t figure out how to make it less uncool. I went to a Nationals baseball game (my summer home away from home) and hung out with my other season-ticket-holder buddies. One happened to be a retired Navy captain. I asked him his opinion on this plane. He gave me insight into how much the pilots themselves loved this plane. Sure–it wasn’t cool, but its unsexiness made it beloved. I now had my angle. Breakthrough.
These are a few short-term solutions to help with a mental block. They work for me, and they may work for you. For the long term, take a vacation. Creative professionals need Dumbledore’s pensieve to dump out their ideas and start with a new slate. Since we don’t have magic available to us (yet), vacations will have to do.
Good luck! I know it’s hard to stay creative. But with some helpful tools, you can make it through tough times.
