Creator’s Block — Navigating the Droughts of a Creative Life
Week 10, Day 4 of The Artist's Way
Today, let's reframe creative droughts as a necessity that helps us grow and blossom with creative clarity.
DROUGHT
In any creative life there are dry seasons.
These droughts appear from nowhere and stretch to the horizon like a Death Valley vista. Life loses its sweetness; our work feels mechanical, empty, forced. We feel we have nothing to say, and we are tempted to say nothing. These are the times when the morning pages are most difficult and most valuable.
During a drought (during a doubt, I just accurately wrote with a slip of the finger), we are fighting with God. We have lost faith—in the Great Creator and in our creative selves. We have some bone to pick, and bones to pick are everywhere. This is the desert of the heart. Looking for a hopeful sign, all we see are the hulking remains of dreams that died along the path.
And yet we write our morning pages because we must.
Droughts are terrible. Droughts hurt. Droughts are long, airless seasons of doubt that make us grow, give us compassion, and blossom as unexpectedly as the desert with sudden flowers.
Droughts do end.
Droughts end because we have kept writing our pages. They end because we have not collapsed to the floor of our despair and refused to move. We have doubted, yes, but we have stumbled on.
In a creative life, droughts are a necessity.
The time in the desert brings us clarity and charity. When you are in a drought, know that it is to a purpose. And keep writing morning pages.
(The Artist's Way, 2016, p. 169-171)
I receive clarity as I simply take my next best step.
I receive clarity as I simply take my next best step.
download printable affirmation card
Touchstones Exercise
Make a quick list of things you love, happiness touchstones for you. River rocks worn smooth, willow trees, cornflowers, chicory, real Italian bread, homemade vegetable soup, the Bo Deans’ music, black beans and rice, the smell of new-mown grass, blue velvet (the cloth and the song), Aunt Minnie’s crumb pie …
Post this list where it can console you and remind you of your own personal touchstones. You may want to draw one of the items on your list—or acquire it. If you love blue velvet, get a remnant and use it as a runner on a sideboard or dresser, or tack it to the wall and mount images on it. Play a little.
“Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”
– Meister Eckhart
What is one thing you're grateful for from a previous drought?
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