If you’re in a creative field (or heck, any field, really) you may have struggled with a block—ideas aren’t flowing, you want to pull your hair out, and everything you make feels like hot garbage. Inspiration feels light years away from your current headspace.
It’s the pits, right?
Now I’m no wizard, and these ideas are by no means new, but here are some little tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way from mentors, books, and personal experience to help get the creative juices flowing again. I hope that they help!
1. Original is overrated.
Our culture is OBSESSED with originality. If you’re like me (or many a creative that I’ve conversed with) this obsession with a unique “style” can be a paralyzing roadblock in the creative process. After all, why create something if someone has already done it before?
When I get into this headspace I try to remind my bibliophile self that many great works of fiction are directly inspired by their predecessors. Literary and artistic tropes are tropes for a reason, and making connections between pieces of media is satisfying for the savvy viewer.
What I’m saying is: Allow yourself to be inspired and incorporate elements of your favourite things into your life and work! You might feel like a phony, but your unique fingerprint will always show through.
2. Seek and Ye Shall Find.
One of my favourite activities to do when I’m feeling stuck is to go for a walk.
Wherever I go, I challenge myself to really notice my surroundings. If I’m feeling extra hardcore I look for an object or place that might generally be perceived as ugly or boring, and then I try to find something to love about it. Is there an element of it that I could incorporate into a current project? Why or why not?
We’re so distracted by our phones and our to-do lists that we often miss the everyday magic in our environment. In my experience, committing to being curious about the world around you is the key to staying inspired. Beauty can be found everywhere and in the most surprising of places. Never stop looking for it!
Once you work out this inspiration-seeking muscle, it becomes second nature to notice cool stuff in the world around you.
3. Inspiration is a Active Process
(Did I just make a biology joke? Absolutely I did).
I had a prof in college who told me that waiting for inspiration to strike was a fool’s errand. He argued that the motivation to create great work is not found, but created. How do you create it? By sitting down and committing to the work (Josh is the best, by the way).
At 20 (just a baby!) I remember that logic blowing my little cotton socks right off. As someone who was spoonfed the myth of divine inspiration, this was a relief. You are the master of your creative universe, my friend! Just sit down and commit to doing the thing.
That’s it from me! But if you’re still in search of some inspo, check out these recommendations from the Curios on what’s inspired them as of late:
Amanda: I got this weird artbook about Charles Wysocki. He is a folk artist that focuses on Americana things… and while the style isn’t my thing, I am finding the content of the illustrations so fascinating and inspiring.
Graham: My latest inspo is Dory Fantasmagory. I’ve been reading them with my son and I love the sense of humour as well as the expressive illustration work that’s deceptively simple.
Matt: Cool: Style, Sound , and Subversion by Greg Foley: An exhaustive retrospective of fashion and music championed by counterculture movements since the 1920s. From Bikers to Beatniks to B-Boys to Jug(wait for it)galoes, this is a perfect primer for people like myself who have always been fascinated by what is cool and why I’m not.
This post was last updated on January 18, 2024 by Matt Steringa