Creative blocks come in all shapes and sizes.
The most obvious type is the psychological block — a mental barrier you can’t get past, or a powerful emotion (often fear) that makes you shy away from your creative challenges.
Sometimes your personal life gets in the way of your creative work. Maybe a family or relationship issue is taking up all your energy, leaving little or none for creativity. Or maybe your lifestyle is incompatible with getting high-quality creative work done.
Sometimes it’s a communication issue. You feel demotivated because you can’t find an audience for your work, or persuade key influencers of its value. Or you can’t say ‘no’ to others’ demands, and give away too much of your precious time. Or maybe you’re afraid of what others will think if you reveal too much of yourself in your work.
And sometimes it can be as simple as work habits that don’t work for you. You’ve never really stopped to consider when, where and how you work at your best, so your creativity is swamped by disorganisation (and email).
20 Creative Blocks - and How to Break Through Them is a free book that covers all these types of block — and offers practical solutions you can use if you ever find yourself blocked.
The project started as an experiment on my blog at LateralAction.com. I posted an invitation to my readers to tell me about their creative blocks, and wrote a series of articles offering solutions to them. Those articles became the chapters of this book.
Here’s the list of blocks covered in the book. All the chapters are by me, Mark McGuinness, except Chapter 6 which is by Marelisa Fabrega.
Feel free to download and share it with anyone who you think will find it helpful.
- “I’m not creative”
- Fear of getting it wrong
- Lack of time
- Creativity v cash
- Disorganisation
- The Inner Critic
- “I don’t know what to say”
- “All blogged out”
- Taboo
- Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll
- When inspiration runs out
- Taking on too much
- Information overload
- Kids!
- Procrastination
- Torn between different ambitions
- Afraid to reveal too much online
- The problem with success
- “Working in a vacuum”
- Hitting a brick wall