When Creativity Goes Dormant
Creative people create. It’s what gives our lives meaning, what gets us out of bed in the morning, and it’s why we choose to shoulder all the burdens that come with making a career in music. When we’re in sync with our creative flow, ideas come to us with little effort, projects feel effortless, and we’re blessed with a sense that this is the way life is supposed to be. In these moments, when we’re surfing the wave of a big creative surge, it’s difficult to imagine that it will ever end.
Much as been written about writer’s block. Less attention has been paid to the fact that whether it be words, notes, artistic vision, whatever, every art form has its own special hell known as a creative block. Many times we don’t even know what prompts them. We’re cruising along, creating our art, and then one day it’s as if the spark that fueled it has gone out. The muse has left, and suddenly everything seems dead and dry inside. The words won’t flow, the notes aren’t there, and we start looking for answers: is it burnout? Are life complications interfering with my art? Has my creativity entered a dormant stage? Or (our biggest fear), have I run to the end of my ability to create?
Burnout is common in the arts and is something I’ve written about in past articles. It (like life complications) is painful but relatively easy to self-diagnose. But if neither of these options apply, we’re forced to look at scarier questions: is my creativity temporarily dormant or have I reached the end of my ability to make art? For creatives, for whom making art is as necessary as breathing, asking this is like staring into the abyss. I’ve found myself at this point twice in my life and both times found it terrifying. In these moments of truth, we know there’s nothing we can do to force our creativity, and the only option is the be still and wait.
You’ll never know this from looking at other artists’ glossy websites and humble-brag social media feeds, but almost everyone who stays in a creative career for very long will experience at least one period of artistic dormancy. The experience of it is so intensely personal and painful that, sadly, few are willing to talk about it. Dormancy happens; it happens to most of us. Simply knowing this fact can make it less painful to endure. The silence and shame around creative dormancy is unfortunate because the very cycle of the seasons tells us that after budding, flowering, and harvesting, there comes a time when things lie dormant. Dormancy is as much a part of the cycle of life as the visible, productive stages. It is thus with our creative lives as well. Whether it be the ground we walk on or the foundation of our creative selves, this winter ground isn’t dead, it’s resting. It’s gathering resources in dark secret places so that when the time is right, something new will burst forth.
The thing we fear the most, of course, is never being able to create again. Because this isn’t something I’ve experienced, I must draw from the examples of my elders—the pianists who play fewer notes because their hands (or minds) won’t let them play the repertoire they used to perform, or the novelist I know who chose to reframe her progressive dementia and the delusions she experiences as stories. Through their examples, I’m learning that creativity is a life-long companion, as long as we’re willing to stop confusing creativity with productivity.
Creative dormancy, however, is something I know well. I can’t begin to speak to others’ experiences, but both my times of dormancy precluded a radical shift in my thinking, my understanding of myself, and my creative efforts. Both times I had to let go of a cherished vision of myself. Both times I had to accept that I’d been trying to force my creativity to fit a form I’d created for it rather than let it tell me what form it needed to take.
The first bout of dormancy required me to accept that my childhood fantasy of being a concert pianist playing solo Romantic repertoire was completely unrealistic. By trying to force myself into that mold, I lost my love for the piano and had to leave music for a year. When I returned to the piano, it was with the knowledge that I’m a natural-born collaborative player with a flair and passion for new music. My second bout of dormancy happened just a few years ago, right after I published The Waco Variations. Again, I’d invested a lot in an image of myself as a novelist and had hopes of writing many of them. Many poorly-written attempts and frustrations later, I accepted that creativity wanted me to write non-fiction, and No Dead Guys grew to be what it is today.
In a recent email exchange about creativity and artistic forms, my friend, the author Theresa Krier, said it best when she wrote,
“Our forms choose us, not the other way round. But poking around inside oneself, and in other forms, does suggest paths that might work instead. But I also think that our arts choose us, and choose our forms for us. I have, on the one hand, a strong sense of my own gifts as a writer, and on the other hand, a humility that, while I have given my everything to that medium [of writing], so much of it in its demands or summons or invitations comes to me from a Muse, or the Spirit, or Creativity.”
When our creative lives enter a dormant phase, it’s an opportunity to mourn the passing of the projects we’ve already harvested, and embrace the quiet and contemplation that comes from hopeful waiting. This is very, very difficult to do. Like the ancients who believed each winter solstice that the sun wouldn’t rise again, we feel age-old fear in our bones that our creative lives are behind us and that our artistic vision won’t return. But creativity doesn’t play by our rules. It is no respecter of ego or career building. It, like the wind, blows where and when it wishes and our job is to listen and to accept the form it gives us—even when it’s outside our most cherished wishes and hopes. Then, and only then, will be see the first signs of creative spring.