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Writer's block is a fiction. (Rumaan Alam)
There is a syndrome in sports called 'paralysis by analysis.' (Arthur Ashe)
Rarely do pens go dry in restaurants. (Nicholson Baker)
Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood. (Jean-Michel Basquiat)
The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is. (Arnold Bennett)
The best cure for a dry period to simply to keep at it. Good things are happening, soon to be revealed. (Eleanor Blair)
Writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all. (Charles Bukowski)
When you come to a roadblock, take a detour. (Barbara Bush)
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping stone in the pathway of the strong. (Thomas Carlyle)
Rentals sank, living rose. I could not afford help. I must be owner, agent, landlady and janitor. I loathed landladying... I tried in every way to augment my income. Small fruit, hens, rabbits, dogs - pottery... I never painted now - had neither time nor wanting. For about fifteen years I did not paint. (Emily Carr)
Sometimes, if you just wait it out, and go on about your business without trying to force a solution, it comes - almost as if the old artist has to die before the new one can be born. (Jane Champagne)
All artists experience a lull in their work. It is a period of replenishing the soil - of plowing in and turning under our past experiences and watering them afresh with new ones. (Charlie Chaplin)
The only real stumbling block is fear of failure... (Julia Child)
The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality... (Pema Chodron)
A blocked path also offers guidance. (Mason Cooley)
My experience is that eventually an image emerges out of the despair - an image of the despair. Painting that image breaks the block. (Warren Criswell)
I don't understand why artists procrastinate the way they do and say they're 'blocked.' Why wouldn't they want to do what they love best? (Lorna Dockstader)
- The Virgin Suicides...
I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
So you're stuck. Every time your madman starts to write, your judge pounces on him... So start by promising your judge that you'll get around to asking his opinion, but not now. And then let the madman energy flow... Save details for the judge. (Betty Sue Flowers)
I do several things to remove a block when it arrives but the one that works 100% of the time is I go for a long walk. Yes, simple as it is, it works without fail. The key here is 'long walk.' (Gwen Fox)
Every so often every artist feels, 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985, I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away. (Helen Frankenthaler)
I used to have problems with creative blocks until I remembered that my ability to do art began with a gift from God - that joy I had as a child doing art... (Nina Allen Freeman)
This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard. (Neil Gaiman)
As well as many subspecies, the main blocks are fear of failure after previous success, fear of success due to a sense of unworthiness, lack of potential venue, jaded attitude, crisis of confidence, evidence of persistent poor quality, lackadaisical motivation, and common everyday shortage of ideas. (Robert Genn)
- Ordinary People...
And do not be paralyzed. It is better to move than to be unable to move, because you fear loss so much: loss of order, loss of security, loss of predictability. (Judith Guest)
Blocks produce in the artist an attitude of pessimism and defeat. He loses that necessary touch of arrogance; the drive to produce new things fades; the mind is blunted. (Lawrence Hatterer)
It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. (Stephen Hawking)
It's pleasing to discover that it isn't necessary to drive oneself forward; instead, one can simply allow oneself to move forward as blocks are removed. Thus, one becomes attracted by the future rather than propelled by the past. (David R. Hawkins)
All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word 'no.' To 'no' there is only one answer and that is 'yes.' (Victor Hugo)
How long were the stretches of toilsome tacking back and forth, of being blocked, of being thrown back again and again. But all that was annulled by the periods when I had my technique in hand and succeeded in doing what I wanted. (Kathe Kollwitz)
Smash creative blocks. Change the problem or sneak up on it from a different direction. Try something fresh - a new way with an old theme, a different point of view, unusual tool. (Nita Leland)
Writer's block is little more than a period of rest, waiting. (Jim LeSire)
Research serves to make building stones out of stumbling blocks. (Arthur D. Little)
A creative block is the wall we erect to ward off the anxiety we suppose we'll experience if we sit down to work. (Eric Maisel)
I use a simple technique to get started when I have writer's block. I simply sit down and write, 'O, lend me to some peaceful gloom,' over and over until my own thoughts and words come, which come, surprisingly, soon. Then I just keep going. Works like a charm. (Michael Michalko)
My prescription for writer's block is simple. Sit down and write. And write. Even if what you write is utter drivel, keep writing. Eventually the muse will kick in. Great art seldom springs full-blown from the artist's creativity. Most great art is the result of plain, old-fashioned, odorous sweat. (Ralph Milton)
Break on through to the other side! (Jim Morrison)
The devil is the boredom with repetition... Surrender is necessary, as is the desire to go deeper... we all have our innate brush stroke style, our way of organizing spatial components and so on. Surrender to that. (Sandra Muscat)
When I am between ideas I clean my studio: I am still in the space, fulfilling my time, and surrounded by my tools and, since making art is more pleasant than cleaning up, it usually isn't long before an idea will appear that demands to be executed. (Brigitte Nowak)
When the path continues to be blocked it's probably time to change lanes. (Birgit O'Connor)
I have not worked at all... Nothing seems worth putting down - I seem to have nothing to say - it appalls me but that is the way it is. (Georgia O'Keeffe)
Blocks are simply part of an artist's natural cycle, and mine come whenever I reach a plateau in my work. I'll feel bottled up with negativism, but when I blast through all the garbage, I find I've emerged in a new place as a better artist. (Nick Payne)
The only creative blocks that exist are the ones you make up. (K. Ann Price)
Some knots can only be resolved and undone with relaxation and patience. (Sridhar Ramasami)
The block is an entirely imaginary, self-inflating disease afflicting both nothing-to-say professionals and not-knowing-how-to-say-it amateurs. (Ray Robertson, novelist)
I miss art terribly. (Jerry Saltz)
Artists need not 'fear' blockages, but instead should observe, write down, be aware of the ways inspiration can be prompted in the most timely and efficient manner... take a walk in the woods, play with your dog, etc... Once you 'know' how to prompt inspiration... you become closer to a professional, you produce more, likely produce better, and you are managing your artistic life with consciousness instead of hope. (Robert Sesco)
Each is given a bag of tools, / A shapeless mass and a book of rules; / And each must make, ere life is flown, / A stumbling block or a stepping stone. (R. L. Sharpe)
I have owed you this letter for a very long time - but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool. (John Steinbeck)
I refer to my non-productive periods as fallow times. I think they are essential. (Catherine Stock)
Creative blocks are optional. (Barbara Timberman)
I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. (Tennessee Williams)
That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block. (Tennessee Williams)
How often do we stand convinced of the truth of our early memories, forgetting that they are assessments made by a child? We can replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories, free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held psychological stumbling blocks. (Benjamin Zander)
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