Just some thoughts on overcoming writers/artist's block. It's the bain of the creative existence, I know; but I'm beginning to feel that it's not as hard to shake as is popularly imagined. This, at least, has been my experience. So what do I do when the keyboard looks like a neatly-ordered mountain range, or that blank paper is staring me down like a polar bear? Some thoughts:
1. The "Inspirational Blitz" is largely a myth.
I've had my days where I wake up in the morning, brain on fire, and crack out two comic pages before breakfast, no planning, no preliminaries, and they're just bloody brilliant. But that's very, very unusual. More often, I'm just sort of bumbling along, drawing and redrawing my thumbnails, tentatively making a pencil mark on the art board before hastily erasing it. And you know what? That second method is probably the better one. Same goes for writing. The artist's (and writer's) brain has a certain amount of fuel, and it's not the kind you can just go to the station and top up on; it's a complex brew that has to be synthesized inside the brain itself. Sort of like, I don't know...spider silk, or mussel glue. Or wine. You have to pour a bunch of elements in there to make the stuff, and then you have to wait for it to percolate. And then once you do get an ounce of "fuel", you're like "Yippee!" and you end up using it all on one all-nighter, only to wake up the next morning completely burned out. It becomes a vicious cycle: you wait and wait for your fuel-gauge to tick a little past Empty, then end up burning it all in one go.
Basically, I'm telling you to slow down and draw it out a little bit. It may seem boring at first, especially if you're some kind of Speed-fiend Jack Kerouac-type, but with a little practice you actually start to enjoy it more than the jittery burnout session. When you get up in the morning, go make coffee: while it's brewing, sketch a panel. When the coffee's done, get a cup, sit down, read a magazine, have a Danish. Maybe sit on the porch. Watch the neighbors fight. Then go back in and sketch a little bit more. Wash, rinse, repeat (speaking of which, you can do your laundry or take a shower in your "off-times", too - ya filthy bum). Don't forget to eat. You have to be sort of ruthless with yourself at first, because you have the impulse to either (a) not do it, or (b) get on a tear for eight hours at a time; but after a while, you settle into that rhythm. And by the end of the day, your page is pretty much done, and you have time to relax for a bit, see a movie, pick your nose. Start the next page tomorrow.
And yeah, there will be days when the planets aren't aligned just right and you have absolutely no intention of even looking at your horrible, horrible piece of shit comic. That's okay. Feeling guilty about not doing your work is pointless and only stresses you out. Instead, take a day off. Enjoy a show. Hit the beach. Pick your nose. Whatever. When you have an off-day, it just means your fuel is spent, and you need to recharge.
2. Achieve "Flow"
"Flow" is an actual psychological/motivational thing: basically it means that your thoughts chug along without stopping. Same thing happens with creativity. Creative flow is essential for not stressing out. I often find my flow interrupted when I'm worrying about other shit in my life; the thing is, worrying doesn't solve the problem, and mostly just creates a lot of hardship in the present. If something is bugging me ("circular thinking" as opposed to "flow"), I write about it. I start off by writing about the issue, how it makes me feel, my frustrations. Then I plan out some reasonable solutions. After that, I start setting down some goals, simple actions to take toward resolving the issue. Try it a few times: you'll find that, when you have a kink in your thinker, externalizing the issue will help your brain unkink and return to normal flow. Another way I achieve flow, I've found, is by paradoxically not scheduling my creative work. I know, I know - chopping your time into chunks is supposed to be efficient, the mark of a disciplined mind, etc. It doesn't work for me. I find schedules to be oppressive, all about "beginnings" and "ends" of little endlessly-choppable chunks of time; I start stressing about the schedule itself, which only adds to the stress of not doing my work. Instead, just let one event flow into the next. Set an alarm if you have to. Stop worrying about time. I don't have a lot of deadlines, but even those can't be seen as some kind of approaching Doomsday, as if you're stuck on a train heading toward a cliff-face. Write out your worries, solve the small problems, let go, relax. Flow, my friends. Achieve flow.
3. An ounce of preparation...
Planning sucks. I'll take the "lightning bolt of inspiration" any day over the slow, methodical chug of thumbnailing and sketching and researching and collecting reference material. But believe me, the pre-production slog is extremely important. Even if you do just a single layout thumbnail before putting pencil to artboard, never underestimate the power of preparation. Thumbnailing actually produces 99% of my inspiriation to start with, especially if my wells have run dry; instead of sitting around drinking and bewailing my lack of ideas, I sit down and sketch until my fingers bleed. Sometimes I'll end up thumbnailing a completely different idea from the one I was "supposed" to be working on...well, that just means that this "intrusive" idea needed to be born first, before my original idea could be addressed. All this is pertains, once again, to Flow. Unblock the vessel. Get the juices flowing. Sketch and sketch and sketch. If you're blanking on a particular layout, just draw layouts over and over. Draw the images you need for the panels, cut them out, arrange them and rearrange them. You may never come up with "the" arrangement you've been looking for all your life, but you'll come up with one satisfactory to the moment, to the project you're working on. And a lot of times, "satisfactory" is all you really need. Speaking of which...
4. Needs of the Moment
Sometimes there'll be a moment when I can't figure out what the hell happens next in a story. I can't figure out what to put in the panel. In that moment, what I need to do is sit down with my script (see "preparation", above), and figure out what the character needs to do.
This sounds odd, especially if you're just starting out as a storyteller - "What my character needs to do?! It's my character, it does whatever I want it to!" Yeah, sure. But not really. As you keep telling stories, you'll realize that sometimes you just need to get a character from point A to point B, in order for the plot to advance. Or maybe character A needs to perform task X, in order to advance along their character arc. Or, in an extreme case, character C just needs to die...because the story demands it. Without their death, the story won't have the emotional resonance it requires.
Storytelling is kind of like building with Lego's (pretty much my favorite pastime as a kid, second only to drawing). When you first start out, you sort of attach bits in a jangly, off-kilter way - "Look Mommy, I made a Flying Man with Flame Hands!" - but as you get older and start building starships sans instructions, you'll realize that the look of what you're building is hugely important, no matter how fantastical. Each ship must be (a) structurally sound, (b) interesting to look at, (c) convey a particular "personality" (i.e., battleships are long and brutal and covered in guns, support vessels are ponderous and motherly, fighters are sleek and devilish). Without a, your Lego ship will fall apart; without b, you won't want to play with it; without c, it'll be just a huge hunk of multicolored bricks. I used to have a ball of a time putting the things together, figuring out where to best attach guns, engines, shield projectors, and comm towers; then, of course, enormous space battles would take place, the models supplementing the movie playing in my mind. And I could make some hellish sound effects, too. I wish I had a camera. Ah, memories...
Whoops, got off on a tangent there. But seriously, the needs of the moment are a powerful tool to keep your project on track. Let's say your character needs to get from the bridge of her star-cruiser down to the engines to put out a catastrophic laser fire (or whatever). How does she get there? What obstacles does she encounter? What's going on in her head/over the comm/outside the ship? It's easy enough to say, "Then she ran from the bridge to the engine room and put out the fire", but the series of events leading up to the conclusion are insanely complicated. Is the artificial gravity turned on? Does the ship have power? Are their elevators, and would she want to use them at all? At what point does she grab the fire extinguisher? What does the ship look like along the way? If you're drawing a comic, you'd better damn well have the ship's layout all figured (see preparation, above), otherwise you'll draw yourself into a corner pretty quickly, and end up flipping back to earlier panels trying to get all the details, thus destroying your flow (see Flow, above).
Conversely, if you're really, really stuck, Needs of the Moment (NotM) will help you slam out the next bit. Consider that bane of the comic book page, the Establishing Shot. Sometimes I'll look at the damn things and be all like, "NO". But they're important. And if you're struggling with them, really all you need to do is hash out the essentials. Fr'instance, what if you need to show your characters looking at an alien city under its three moons? Well, we know you need (a) your characters, (b) the cityscape, and (c) the three moons. So start with a line to demarcate the horizon. Then subdivide the bottom half to create a hill for your characters to stand on. Draw your three characters as small silhouettes. Draw the three moons and stars or whatever. Then focus on making the city as eye-catching as possible - it's the main event here. Do your shading or whatever. Boom, done. On to the next thing. Same damn process for your characters sitting around a kitchen table, or a close shot on a watch dial reading "12:30" or whatever. 90% of the time, if you're stuck, you're over-thinking the scene. Just bang out what's necessary to establish the next scene, then move on. Going back over the work belongs to the editing process; for now, the important thing is to get it done.
I'm sure there's a lot more that I do that's useful; I'll add more as I think of them. Hope this helps!
Rick Out.
1. The "Inspirational Blitz" is largely a myth.
I've had my days where I wake up in the morning, brain on fire, and crack out two comic pages before breakfast, no planning, no preliminaries, and they're just bloody brilliant. But that's very, very unusual. More often, I'm just sort of bumbling along, drawing and redrawing my thumbnails, tentatively making a pencil mark on the art board before hastily erasing it. And you know what? That second method is probably the better one. Same goes for writing. The artist's (and writer's) brain has a certain amount of fuel, and it's not the kind you can just go to the station and top up on; it's a complex brew that has to be synthesized inside the brain itself. Sort of like, I don't know...spider silk, or mussel glue. Or wine. You have to pour a bunch of elements in there to make the stuff, and then you have to wait for it to percolate. And then once you do get an ounce of "fuel", you're like "Yippee!" and you end up using it all on one all-nighter, only to wake up the next morning completely burned out. It becomes a vicious cycle: you wait and wait for your fuel-gauge to tick a little past Empty, then end up burning it all in one go.
Basically, I'm telling you to slow down and draw it out a little bit. It may seem boring at first, especially if you're some kind of Speed-fiend Jack Kerouac-type, but with a little practice you actually start to enjoy it more than the jittery burnout session. When you get up in the morning, go make coffee: while it's brewing, sketch a panel. When the coffee's done, get a cup, sit down, read a magazine, have a Danish. Maybe sit on the porch. Watch the neighbors fight. Then go back in and sketch a little bit more. Wash, rinse, repeat (speaking of which, you can do your laundry or take a shower in your "off-times", too - ya filthy bum). Don't forget to eat. You have to be sort of ruthless with yourself at first, because you have the impulse to either (a) not do it, or (b) get on a tear for eight hours at a time; but after a while, you settle into that rhythm. And by the end of the day, your page is pretty much done, and you have time to relax for a bit, see a movie, pick your nose. Start the next page tomorrow.
And yeah, there will be days when the planets aren't aligned just right and you have absolutely no intention of even looking at your horrible, horrible piece of shit comic. That's okay. Feeling guilty about not doing your work is pointless and only stresses you out. Instead, take a day off. Enjoy a show. Hit the beach. Pick your nose. Whatever. When you have an off-day, it just means your fuel is spent, and you need to recharge.
2. Achieve "Flow"
"Flow" is an actual psychological/motivational thing: basically it means that your thoughts chug along without stopping. Same thing happens with creativity. Creative flow is essential for not stressing out. I often find my flow interrupted when I'm worrying about other shit in my life; the thing is, worrying doesn't solve the problem, and mostly just creates a lot of hardship in the present. If something is bugging me ("circular thinking" as opposed to "flow"), I write about it. I start off by writing about the issue, how it makes me feel, my frustrations. Then I plan out some reasonable solutions. After that, I start setting down some goals, simple actions to take toward resolving the issue. Try it a few times: you'll find that, when you have a kink in your thinker, externalizing the issue will help your brain unkink and return to normal flow. Another way I achieve flow, I've found, is by paradoxically not scheduling my creative work. I know, I know - chopping your time into chunks is supposed to be efficient, the mark of a disciplined mind, etc. It doesn't work for me. I find schedules to be oppressive, all about "beginnings" and "ends" of little endlessly-choppable chunks of time; I start stressing about the schedule itself, which only adds to the stress of not doing my work. Instead, just let one event flow into the next. Set an alarm if you have to. Stop worrying about time. I don't have a lot of deadlines, but even those can't be seen as some kind of approaching Doomsday, as if you're stuck on a train heading toward a cliff-face. Write out your worries, solve the small problems, let go, relax. Flow, my friends. Achieve flow.
3. An ounce of preparation...
Planning sucks. I'll take the "lightning bolt of inspiration" any day over the slow, methodical chug of thumbnailing and sketching and researching and collecting reference material. But believe me, the pre-production slog is extremely important. Even if you do just a single layout thumbnail before putting pencil to artboard, never underestimate the power of preparation. Thumbnailing actually produces 99% of my inspiriation to start with, especially if my wells have run dry; instead of sitting around drinking and bewailing my lack of ideas, I sit down and sketch until my fingers bleed. Sometimes I'll end up thumbnailing a completely different idea from the one I was "supposed" to be working on...well, that just means that this "intrusive" idea needed to be born first, before my original idea could be addressed. All this is pertains, once again, to Flow. Unblock the vessel. Get the juices flowing. Sketch and sketch and sketch. If you're blanking on a particular layout, just draw layouts over and over. Draw the images you need for the panels, cut them out, arrange them and rearrange them. You may never come up with "the" arrangement you've been looking for all your life, but you'll come up with one satisfactory to the moment, to the project you're working on. And a lot of times, "satisfactory" is all you really need. Speaking of which...
4. Needs of the Moment
Sometimes there'll be a moment when I can't figure out what the hell happens next in a story. I can't figure out what to put in the panel. In that moment, what I need to do is sit down with my script (see "preparation", above), and figure out what the character needs to do.
This sounds odd, especially if you're just starting out as a storyteller - "What my character needs to do?! It's my character, it does whatever I want it to!" Yeah, sure. But not really. As you keep telling stories, you'll realize that sometimes you just need to get a character from point A to point B, in order for the plot to advance. Or maybe character A needs to perform task X, in order to advance along their character arc. Or, in an extreme case, character C just needs to die...because the story demands it. Without their death, the story won't have the emotional resonance it requires.
Storytelling is kind of like building with Lego's (pretty much my favorite pastime as a kid, second only to drawing). When you first start out, you sort of attach bits in a jangly, off-kilter way - "Look Mommy, I made a Flying Man with Flame Hands!" - but as you get older and start building starships sans instructions, you'll realize that the look of what you're building is hugely important, no matter how fantastical. Each ship must be (a) structurally sound, (b) interesting to look at, (c) convey a particular "personality" (i.e., battleships are long and brutal and covered in guns, support vessels are ponderous and motherly, fighters are sleek and devilish). Without a, your Lego ship will fall apart; without b, you won't want to play with it; without c, it'll be just a huge hunk of multicolored bricks. I used to have a ball of a time putting the things together, figuring out where to best attach guns, engines, shield projectors, and comm towers; then, of course, enormous space battles would take place, the models supplementing the movie playing in my mind. And I could make some hellish sound effects, too. I wish I had a camera. Ah, memories...
Whoops, got off on a tangent there. But seriously, the needs of the moment are a powerful tool to keep your project on track. Let's say your character needs to get from the bridge of her star-cruiser down to the engines to put out a catastrophic laser fire (or whatever). How does she get there? What obstacles does she encounter? What's going on in her head/over the comm/outside the ship? It's easy enough to say, "Then she ran from the bridge to the engine room and put out the fire", but the series of events leading up to the conclusion are insanely complicated. Is the artificial gravity turned on? Does the ship have power? Are their elevators, and would she want to use them at all? At what point does she grab the fire extinguisher? What does the ship look like along the way? If you're drawing a comic, you'd better damn well have the ship's layout all figured (see preparation, above), otherwise you'll draw yourself into a corner pretty quickly, and end up flipping back to earlier panels trying to get all the details, thus destroying your flow (see Flow, above).
Conversely, if you're really, really stuck, Needs of the Moment (NotM) will help you slam out the next bit. Consider that bane of the comic book page, the Establishing Shot. Sometimes I'll look at the damn things and be all like, "NO". But they're important. And if you're struggling with them, really all you need to do is hash out the essentials. Fr'instance, what if you need to show your characters looking at an alien city under its three moons? Well, we know you need (a) your characters, (b) the cityscape, and (c) the three moons. So start with a line to demarcate the horizon. Then subdivide the bottom half to create a hill for your characters to stand on. Draw your three characters as small silhouettes. Draw the three moons and stars or whatever. Then focus on making the city as eye-catching as possible - it's the main event here. Do your shading or whatever. Boom, done. On to the next thing. Same damn process for your characters sitting around a kitchen table, or a close shot on a watch dial reading "12:30" or whatever. 90% of the time, if you're stuck, you're over-thinking the scene. Just bang out what's necessary to establish the next scene, then move on. Going back over the work belongs to the editing process; for now, the important thing is to get it done.
I'm sure there's a lot more that I do that's useful; I'll add more as I think of them. Hope this helps!
Rick Out.
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