Rut

One of the humbling things about creative work is that experience doesn't seem to protect you from getting stuck.

You spend years building a practice, solving problems, and refining your eye, then sit down at your desk one morning with no sense of what comes next.

That happened to me recently while working on a new series of printed pieces. I simply couldn't find my way forward. Ideas arrived and dissipated. I started things, abandoned them, and started again. More than once, I wondered whether I had used up whatever it was I had to say.

Anyone who makes things will recognize the feeling.

The choreographer Twyla Tharp wrote: When you’re in a rut, you have to give time a chance to do its work. The capacity to enter into the struggle is itself a talent.

I like that because it treats creativity as a practice rather than a mystery. Most of the time, the work isn't waiting for inspiration. It's returning to the problem again and again, even when the solution remains out of view.

A few weeks later, the designs were finished and on their way to the printer.

The experience reminded me that creative work isn't a steady current. It moves in fits and starts. It disappears and returns.

Experience doesn't protect us from getting stuck. It teaches us that stuck is not the same thing as finished. ✦

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