I have a confession to make.

I have a confession to make.

It's Sunday morning as I write this and I have absolutely no idea of what I am going to say. No ideas. Zip. Zilch.

This doesn't usually happen. I usually write this email on Saturday morning and I almost always have a clear idea of what I will say.

But yesterday there was nothing and so I waited, sure that inspiration would strike today.

Well it hasn't.

I could just give up, make a cup of tea and have a nap. I've been ill with a chest infection and I'm pretty tired. But this newsletter is an important commitment and so I've plonked myself down at my kitchen table, opened my laptop and started to type.

There are so many times when I feel this way. Times when I go to my studio even though I don't feel inspired to paint. Or times when I record a podcast eve though I don't really want to. Or evenings when I have a live Q&A session with my group, but don't feel I have the energy.

But a funny thing happens when I show up anyway. If I go to my studio, I might just mess about in my sketchbook for a while, but pretty soon a few pages are filled and I feel better. When I record the podcast, it's almost always fun, even if I am not motivated before we start. And those Q&A sessions are great once we get going. They really energise me.

It's making me wonder how much of being blocked creatively is really about just shifting our mental state from negative to positive? I've mentioned before that I was in a creative slump last year. I made a few half-hearted attempts at abstract landscapes and I messed around with some portraits for a while, but nothing felt exciting and I stopped painting for a few months

I wonder what would have happened if I had just kept showing up in the studio anyway? Was that much of a gap really necessary?

For me the creative spark came when I taught a class in Art Tribe called "Creative Kickstart." In that class I shared 11 ways to generate new ideas for your art - and of course realised I hadn't been doing any of those things myself for quite a while. 

Once I did a few of those exercises, the ideas and inspiration began to flow and I was able to start making paintings. Here's the latest view of my studio wall ... 

That's better!

Now a few weeks ago, I talked about how we need rests and we can't be creative all the time and I still believe that. I'm just asking whether we sometimes extend those breaks longer than necessary. 

I suspect that action is usually better than inaction. I think we mustn't force things - we mustn't go into our studios determined to make a series of work when we don't feel inspired. But we can all play in a sketchbook or on loose sheets of paper. We can all make collage papers or do some drawing or mess about with some paints.  Maybe if we shift our mental state from 'stuck' to 'in progress,' we will find our inspiration much more quickly?

It certainly worked for me with this email!