" Writer's block", or painter's block, or any other creative block we could think up, is completely psychological and pretty much nonsense, and here's why.
As you're walking down the street toward your car or your job, you vaguely hear birds. Birds with entirely strange lifestyles up in the trees, foraging for worms and seeds, speaking in strange languages to each other that we can't understand. Do they love? Do they hate? Are they organized into communities or do they fend for themselves? Is it true that birds evolved from dinosaurs?
For that matter, look at the street around you. People going about their lives, cars driving down the street doing rude things and making pollution. What about this scene would be different if a dinosaur was inserted into the middle of the highway? What kind of color patterns do you imagine on the dinosaur? Let's take that dinosaur pattern and put it on paper in shades of gray. What sort of media would we use for that? Watercolor? Markers? How would that pattern look on human skin? What kind of reaction would that get?
What if the panic of that street scene with dinosaur were applied to the idea of a relationship gone wrong? What would that song sound like? What recording artist would be the best person to vocalize that feeling? Let's apply that song to an imaginary movie, maybe one set in space on a vast colony around an alien sun. Two lovers separated by necessity as one of them is forced into battle against an alien army.
Back on Earth you put your headphones in. Immediately you hear beats from the newest artist you've discovered. The beats themselves have kind of a shape, and they form a pattern. Maybe those beats and sounds even give off colors in your mind. Let's turn that pattern into stripes on a bathing suit, on a woman on the beach. On a beach where you can feel the sun beating down on you.
Is that a good enough example of how silly creative block is? It's very important to understand how impossible creative block really is.
Every one of our observations has a potential story attached, hidden and waiting for you to follow its path. The problem has always been that we are unwilling to follow our imaginations into places other than where we direct it. Letting go of our imaginations sometimes, we will find that it does the work for us. Instead of "applied imagining", try daydreaming again. If you've been too yang and assertive, try allowing the yin a chance to balance things out by being receptive and open. And as soon as you get the slightest notion, start writing, start singing, sketch it out, and record those ideas. A new path is found and it's time to explore.
Your homework: go to a park, a city, any place where you are free to walk around. Leave your headphones at home, turn off your thoughts about life, and simply walk and observe. Let your tensions disappear and simply walk, breathe, watch, and listen. The world will open up to you, and creative block will be a thing of the past. (Pro Tip: Do it now.)
