Creativity in Crisis
How I get through my creative blocks (and why we need creativity now more than ever)
Creativity is an expression of our internal experience. By embracing this, we transform the world and ourselves.
I recently experienced a minor creative crisis. I am working on my next book proposal, and there’s nothing like this process to bring up some existential drama. What do I actually have to to say? Will anybody care? Is writing even what I want to be doing with my life?
There’s something especially tough about going through a creative crisis during a global crisis. It can make the labor of art feel impossibly small and unnecessary. What is the point of creativity in a time when immigrants, trans people and other marginalized communities are literally just trying to survive, with climate chaos all around, and what feels like an unstoppable heartless economic machine devouring every last available resource? Yet in many ways, creativity is even more important during periods of crisis.
Creativity helps us alchemize the heavy feelings that we might carry. We turn the grief, fear, shame, and rage into beauty, into materiality, into expression.
I was at an artist residency in Oregon the first time Trump was elected. I remember standing in the kitchen with my friend Thea, stuffing bread into our mouths and crying. I’ve spent the last month at an artist residency in Mendocino, watching this horrible man once again attempt to wreak as much havoc as possible in the shortest amount of time. Being here, among so many other artists, has kept me sane during these first few weeks of the new administration.
It has also revived my creativity, and I’ve realized that part of what I’m missing in my daily life is this creative engagement with others. Even if it’s just a quick, “What are you working on tonight?” Or “I’m feeling blocked in my creativity today, what helps you when that happens?” These brief encounters in the communal kitchen or shared art studio kept me motivated and focused.
Creativity feels like such an integral part of human nature. We eat we sleep we breathe we create. I spent a lot of my time in Mendocino at the clay studio making a teapot. Earlier this year, I decided I would like to begin my mornings with a moment of stillness and presence, so I don’t just wake up and start scrolling. Making myself a tea set seemed like a perfect way to start this morning practice. That way when I sit down at my desk to write, my mind and body are calm and alert, and I’m ready to focus.
There were so many lessons in working with clay. The teapot was made from reclaimed stoneware, which meant it was made from all the scrap waste of the many people taking classes at the studio, all the hands that touched this material, working it over and over, centering it, throwing cups and bowls, fucking up, trying again. It’s glazed with a glaze made from sea urchins, a species that has become overly abundant in Northern California.
Creativity exists in community (including the larger ecosystems in which we exist). It is the collective outcome of continually learning from our mistakes.
The biggest lesson for me from the clay experience has been that of gentleness. Don’t push it too hard. Keep breathing, relax, surrender, it’s all an experiment, right? Always.
Sometimes if I hit a wall during a project, it’s just a sign to take a break. If I am feeling frustrated or tearful, I’ll direct my creative energy elsewhere: into a meal, a painting, a good and lively conversation with a friend. It’s not only ok, but sometimes absolutely necessary, to take these pauses from the task at hand.
The book proposal I have been working on this month is for a book about eating alone, something that we all do much more of these days than ever before. When I think about the power of food to bring people together, to create lasting community, and as a place to share ideas and feel held, its so obvious that most of us are missing this vital ingredient in our meal times. I hope that this book can explore all the feelings around eating alone (which can sometimes be a very pleasurable activity!), and offer some tangible advice on how to get better at eating together, despite the many systems that wish to keep us disconnected and apart.
The time in Mendocino has really inspired me to create something akin to an online artist residency. This will be a digital container where we can gather and create together, to support each other in our various works, during the various crises we face. Because ultimately, just like eating, creativity is a group project. The program will likely launch in March and if you’d like to be informed of it’s progress, please sign up on this Google form.
We will meet once a month on zoom to talk about our creative projects, feel into our blocks, talk process, support each other and keep up the inspiration. I will share a weekly creativity prompt (timed to the moon) to help keep you focused and enlivened during the month. There will also be a dedicated Telegram group so you can build creative community. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
I’ve also decided to open my books for a few more creativity clients.
Part of my job is helping other people with their creative projects (and the inevitable setbacks and moments of difficulty). One of my clients, who is working on a deeply personal book, recently messaged me:
I’m feeling anxious that I haven’t actually figured anything out and that the end of the book doesn’t work and I’m NUEROTIC!
It’s part of the process, I told him. In breath. Out breath. Expand and contract, and do it all over again. It doesn’t matter if “you haven’t figured anything out”. We are gonna make something satisfying and pleasurable to read. And people will learn from your journey.
And you will transform from it, too: In five years you will look back at your book, and not even recognize the work, and wonder how it channeled through you, because you have become a totally different human.
That’s how art works. It’s a reflection of what needs to be expressed in this moment.
He replied: haha so you want me not to worry so much?
A few days later he wrote me again—So I know I was supposed to chill but I haven’t at all. I feel so clear and creatively unleashed on this edit. I know exactly the assignment and its really fun! Thank you for your help. It’s already so much better!
That’s the funny thing about creating: it marks a moment in time. I’m still very proud of my book Feasting Wild, but it doesn’t feel like me anymore. It was something that needed to be expressed eight years ago at the time of its writing. It came through me as much as it came from me.
After a creative breakthrough there is often a contraction. Much in the way we’ve seen in politics. We make progress and then have a tendency to pull back inwards, afraid of too many changes. The key is to remember this and keep staying with ourselves while we learn how to inhabit our new expanded forms.
If you’d like to work with me one-on-one creativity coaching you can book a month of support here, or reach out to ginarae@substack.com if you have questions.
Lots of love,
Gina Rae
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thank you for this! Your tea pot and cups are gorgeous! I'm riding a creative crest right now and am working on a few writing projects at a time (a collection of haiku about my solo road trip to Santa Fe for Natalie's workshop, a long form poetry manuscript which is done but has nowhere to go, getting back on Substack, and two community writing groups) which feels chaotic and normal for my brain. I know me. I know this momentum won't last long and I'll inevitably crash into that existential crisis you wrote about --"Who cares about this shit anyway when people are actually dying?" So, your post came at a perfect time for me. To remember. To continue under all circumstances. Thank you.