CREATIVE RUTS & INSPIRATION - By Autumn Boyet Stinton (Original Article Written August 2010)

John Cleese on overcoming a creative rut:

"This applies to writer's block or any other time you need to figure out a problem and just aren't motivated.

I knew a wonderful teacher once—a tutor. He tutored my stepsons and my elder daughter. He said to me, "Always start where the energy is."

People make an awful mistake by starting where the energy isn't. If you're feeling very world-weary—and sometimes we're all in that boat—you have to sit down with something that's going to engage you. That doesn't mean you just switch on the TV and watch a cartoon, but it does mean asking, What would be fun? Maybe take a piece of paper and a pencil and start drawing silly things. Go for a walk. Just sit very quietly watching your breathing. Anything. Just allow the whim to get you going.

Now, you can't do this all of the time; it's too disconnected. But I think in that particular frame of mind, when you run out of energy and motivation, I think you have to go right down to the instinct, right down to a whim.
I'm coming up on 60, and I'm wondering where my life will begin to go. I need to take a slightly different direction. I talked to a very wise man, and he said, "If you're trying to find a new direction, don't plan it, because this [pointing to his head] has been planning your life up to now. You can't plan something new with the same old apparatus." He said, "Leave a gap. Leave a space, and just do things on auto for a while. Just see where these whims take you."

It's like creativity. You have to follow it without knowing where you're going. If you try to control where you're going, you're back in the same process. It's like asking a piece of machinery that's broken to mend itself."

My thoughts:

That was a great article...I would have liked to read the entire thing. 

I totally agree with doing what moves you...that is what inspiration is....it is whatever it is that moves you! 

As for the last statement...I agree with that too...energy or inspiration....whatever you want to call it...it is FLUID and that isn't something that you can stop....you just follow it around and go where it takes you.

For whatever reason...probably because of the way that I was taught...I don't have issue walking away...and I am pretty comfortable with just "letting" things take their own path and turn out the way that they will.

It is probably a combo of the way my first art teacher was, the environment that I was raised in and the belief that I have that things happen for a reason...

Don't get me wrong....I have MANY projects that don't turn out the way that I originally envisioned...that happens all the time....BUT, I think that art has a flow and that it isn't necessarily me that makes the art...I am just the vessel that the art comes through...and the lucky part is that I can try and put my interpretation on it...but ultimately, it will be what it will be!