For The Creative Who’s Not Feeling Creative

with special guest Holly Chayes

You’ve got a project you’re working on and it feels like you’re trying to nail down fog.

You’re just Not Feeling Creative.

Maybe you could just not today. But what if you’re on a deadline? Or what if this project’s calling to you and you’d be letting yourself down if you opted out?

I asked Holly Chayes, a personal stylist and consultant for creative business, to share her best tools for overcoming creative resistance when not being creative today is just not an option. Holly majored in theater in college, then worked in theater and creative businesses before starting her own business. She’s creative professionally, so she has a big ol’ bag of tricks she turns to when she's not feeling creative.

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What if you’re panicking?

Before we dive in, Holly is practiced at moving past this feeling of “not creative,” so it’s easy for her to call on her tools. But maybe you aren’t. So I asked if she ever feels any amount of panic or frustration when she’s on a deadline but the work isn’t coming together.

Most of Holly’s moments of panic and frustration happened in school, where she could go to a teacher who’d remind her “Work the problem. You can get a solution.” And maybe we don’t have that, but who can you ask for help? Who can be a sounding board? Who can remind you that you’ve got this?

Holly also shared:

“I’m generally not worried that a piece won't come together because I've had so many experiences where it always does.”

Maybe you don’t have a long list of finished past creative projects. But have you overcome challenges in other areas of your life that can help you remember that you are someone who can solve problems?

How else can you remind yourself?

“So if there's a piece from something that you've worked on, or a piece that I got at the end of a project or a piece that I wore often while making something…

“Clothing has such a visceral experience. It's so multi-sensorial that it brings back moments in time, kind of in the same way that, like smelling bacon, cookies, lavender, or perfume that somebody wore, can trigger memories in that way.

“I use tokens to remind myself: ‘you've completed things in the past, you will complete this again, even when it feels like it's never gonna happen.’”

What can we do once we remember we’ve got this?

1: Remind yourself of what you’re trying to do.

If this is a professional project, you might have a design brief or a defined scope of work to return to. If not…

“What is the point of this piece? Why are we creating this? What is its intent in the world? What's it trying to do? And that helps me kind of connect back into what this piece is trying to achieve, or what this piece is trying to communicate, or what this piece is trying to express.”

2: Switch the level you’re working at.

“If I've been working in a really detailed, like editing process, like a very nitpicky refinement process, I try to zoom out to get a sense of the whole thing of maybe the outline needs to change, or maybe something at a higher level in the project needs to change.

“Or if I've been working on a whole project basis, I try to zoom in on something that's very clear in the project already. What can I build off of? How can we start with what we know is working and build from there? So getting a different perspective on the piece.

“And sometimes that involves reviewing where I am, reviewing what's happening, reviewing what the problem is, and then going for a walk, because sometimes, distance is the best perspective.”

3: Remind yourself you’re a creative person

As a personal stylist, Holly does this with clothing:

“We naturally reinforce our image of ourselves to ourselves with what we wear. When we intentionally adjust that image we can begin to adjust how we see ourselves, which impacts what we do and how we do it.”

So if you’re stuck on a project, you might zoom out even further:

“…outside of this project, do you think of yourself as a creative person? And if you do, is that reflected in what you're wearing?”

If this idea of reflecting your identity as a creative using your clothing is new to you…

“If you want to take this as almost a creative expression prompt: remove everything that you naturally reach for from your closet, and put it in a suitcase for a week, so that you can't default to what you always grab and that will force you to be creative in your closet. Pick things that you don't normally wear, and put them together in a new way.”

Jumping off of Holly’s clothing prompt, I’m imagining there are other ways you can reinforce your image of yourself as a creative person. Like removing your staple ingredients from your pantry or buying an ingredient you’ve never used and seeing what new dinner you can cook up.

How else can you remind yourself how creative you are?

4: Remember you don’t have to be inspired to be creative

“I've spent a lot of time with a lot of creative people, and they are not always inspired, and they can still produce really good work. Sometimes you just need to sit there and work on a problem even when you don't feel like it.”

5: Go back to the basics of your chosen medium

“Sometimes we feel like we have to create everything from scratch, or we get into this space of like we need to reinvent the wheel every time as opposed to going with a color palette that is really well known. We think we need to develop a new one or if you're writing something you need to be completely unique.

“And I think that outfits have basic recipes that we can mix and match and repeat and go to again and again and again, and so does writing, and so does design, and so does painting and pottery and landscape, like all creative mediums have frameworks that you can rely on.

”...a landscape has a point of view, and a horizon, and a foreground, and a middle ground, and a background. These are really important foundational structures that can be really helpful in creating something new.

“...especially if you're feeling stuck, or stifled, or uncreative, or like you're in a rut, and you can't really get out of it sometimes going back to those basics… ‘Oh, this project might be stuck because I'm missing the middle ground in my landscape.’”

And if you’re a creative business owner…

Holly works with creatives to build businesses that work for them, and she shared two extra bits of advice for you:

ONE:

“Often we think that when we have a creative business that messing around in our art form isn't a revenue generating activity. And I just want to put into the ether that messing around in your studio is kind of the equivalent of R&D (research and development) when it comes to creativity. And if you have a creative business, you need to keep messing around in your studio, so protect space and time for that.”

TWO:

“Building systems to support you and your business and your creativity is a really good use of resources, because creative burnout is really bad for a creative business.

“Often, I see creatives rebel against support structures because they've had structures that were imposed previously, and that can be really stifling. But building systems custom for you and your business and your creativity can be very supportive instead of stifling.”

I asked Holly to share some examples:

“...consistent branding is a creative system. Consistent communication with customers is a creative system. If you plan to send a newsletter every single Thursday, you will probably come up with an idea by Wednesday or Thursday morning. Creativity does love a deadline in that way.

“The other thing would be around things like launches and promotions and sales. You don't need to reinvent them from scratch, and if you understand the structure beneath your launch plan, or your sales plan, or your marketing plan, or your operations and fulfillment plan, then you can add the creativity on top of it without missing key pieces.

“...going back to our landscaping example. You're not missing the middle ground of your landscape like you're not missing one of the key pieces.”

🧐 We’ve covered a lot today, what’s ONE thing you’re going to try?

Holly Chayes (she/her) is personal style coach and creative business consultant. She helps individuals find their genuine personal style and become brave enough to wear it. And business owners build and run businesses they love.

She has a background in costume design and wardrobe supervision for theater and knitwear design and pattern writing for handknitters.

You can find more of her work here:

• WhoWearsWho.com for personal style related work

• Poetry & Practicalities on SubStack for short essays on living a creative life – finding the poetry inside of practicalities, and the practicalities inside of poetry.

• If you’re interested in working together, schedule a call here.

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Until next time,

Ryn

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