22 Oct When Inspiration Doesn’t Come
(This post is also available for free on my Substack.)
What’s the difference between a fine artist and an illustrator? Here’s a few quips:
“A fine artist paints the soul; a commercial artist paints the packaging.”
“Fine artists hang in galleries. Commercial artists hang in deadlines.”
“Fine art is what you do after the client goes home.”
To me, the biggest difference is this:
“A fine artist paints what he loves. A commercial artist loves what he paints…if the check clears.”
As a professional illustrator, I’m obligated not to my muse but to art directors and deadlines. Whatever problem the client has—selling something, telling a story, or just grabbing attention—my job is to solve it on time, whether I feel like it or not.
Emmy-winning comedy writer Ken Levine had a popular blog for several years. He often made the point that a writer working in the fast-paced world of television doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for inspiration to strike. He has to create something funny on demand and under pressure:
“If you write for television, especially on staff, you cannot afford to wait for the muse to come along and inspire you. You must train yourself to write on demand. Morning, night, late night, when you’re tired, have a cold, dealing with family issues, ducking a drug cartel – it makes no difference. You’re expected to be productive. This takes discipline, experience, and fear (I mean, “motivation”).
A large part of the job is being able to perform under pressure. During filming nights on multi-camera shows, when a joke bombs the writers quickly huddle and with the cast and crew waiting and two hundred people in the audience impatiently looking on, you’re expected to come up with that new killer line. You can’t say, “Let me go up to my cabin in Arrowhead for the weekend, pour myself some nice Swiss Miss, light a cozy fire, put on my “Pat Boone Sings Heavy Metal” CD, and work on it. I’ll have the joke for you on Monday.” You need it now. Just like the drug cartel.”Source: https://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2010/12/some-final-questions-as-we-wrap-up-this.html
I don’t believe most creative people are born with this ability. I think it’s something that is developed over time, like a muscle. It takes practice. Lots and lots of practice.
That’s why, in my opinion, one of the biggest things that separates the amateur from the professional is discipline. The discipline to create when you don’t feel like it. The discipline to get up early and stay up late to meet the deadline. The discipline to bite your tongue and give the client what they want. The discipline to keep sketching even when your hand feels like it’s stubbornly refusing to draw the right lines. The discipline to keep going.
Even if you aren’t disciplined in other areas of your life, a successful creative freelancer HAS to have discipline in their career! They have to see the gigantic importance of consistency. That’s not the same as being perfect. Far from it. In my experience it actually means doing work that is less than you hoped for, over and over. At least at first. But the key is to keep at it. I try to learn from each mistake. Keep getting up, brushing yourself off, and trying again. That’s the key. Each crumpled piece of paper is another pebble in the mountain of experience. Slowly and in spurts, you will gradually get faster and better at solving creative problems.
Here’s a few tips that have helped me when my muse has gone on vacation. None of these are sure-fire guarantees but I’ve found them all to be useful:
If you don’t have inspiration, borrow someone else’s. Spend a few minutes on Pinterest or Instagram or Google Image Search. Look at the work of other artists you admire. Try to examine how other artists have solved a similar problem. Soaking up great art for a few minutes can give you enough “borrowed” inspiration to get over the hump.
Take a break. Sometimes the best way to deal with a creative block is to walk around the block. Get out of the studio—touch grass, breathe in some fresh air, wave hi to a neighbor. Run an errand or two. A brief change of pace can do wonders for your creativity.
Sleep on it. If the solution just won’t come—and your deadline allows—go to bed. Hand it over to your subconscious. I can’t explain it, but sometimes after a long day of puzzling, my brain has kept working on a problem while I was asleep and in the morning I find the creative dough has risen. Doesn’t always happen but it’s happened enough times to convince me there is something to it.
Quit procrastinating. Procrastination is the enemy of creativity. Of course rush projects come up, but most creatives (if they are honest) will admit that more often than not they actually had enough time, they just waited too long to get started. Don’t be “that guy”. Start early so you have time to noodle, refine, and gradually make something great.
Talk it out with someone. I’ve brought several creative problems to my wife. She’s a “normie,” not a creative professional, but she has often surprised me with ideas or angles on a problem I had never even thought of. Don’t be too proud to ask for help, to run it by a couple of friends, to take a nugget offered by someone else and hold it up to the light.
Inspiration is great when it strikes—sometimes the lightning comes out of the blue. But more often than not, you’ll have to rub a couple of balloons together to make your own. That’s another difference between a fine artist and a commercial artist: one waits for lightning, the other builds the generator.
(This post is also available for free on my Substack.)