I've tried and failed to finish the last three pieces I've started to write. I'm in a stuck spot where I can't seem to get things onto the page in a way that is useful or reflective of the ideas and feelings I want to impart. This hasn't happened to me much before, and I'm feeling kind of frustrated.
So I'm asking: What do you do to try and lift yourself out of a creative funk?
exercise. Seriously. Throw on some tunes, throw on some sweats, and run/walk/whatever and cogitate on it. Then take a shower and cogitate some more. If that doesn't work, get a hip flask and draw a tub (a spa is best). Failing that, sleep on it. The secret to writer's block is to recognize that the bulk of what you write won't really shine until you rewrite it anyway so don't be precious with it. Solve the problem and move on. And recognize that you might very well need to kill five days' worth of work with one days' revision but that the one days' revision is better than the five you're killing.
...but... but managers and professors have told me that you shouldn't want to code because all of the creative work is in system analysis! Coders can just be outsourced to India, right??? It's just gruntwork!! I guess that's what I get for going to college in the United States of Managers and Lawyers. I think eventually the US wants to just manage the rest of the worlds resources and people through wealth. As if we already didn't have a disconnect between employees and managers, eventually they want to push their employees out to different countries so they don't even have to know what they look like.
Your second point is where I tend to struggle. I get way too wrapped up in the idea of getting things exactly right the first time, which almost never happens.
Hit the reset button. Usually I get stuck because my mind becomes hyper-focused on something that isn't really that important. I take a break of some kind, that seems about appropriate to the problem: feeling frustrated at work? 15 minutes away from the desk. Bored by everything to do in my house? Go out for a run. If that doesn't work, I then break the task down into lists of its components until I have reached a point where one component seems easily doable - in fact, often I like to do with "laughably feasible." Once you get started, it's a lot easier to keep going. When writing, sometimes I just vomit words onto the page, especially if it is a first draft. I usually find I get where I need to start from once I've thrown up a page or so. It's okay if it's trash. You have to figure out where you want to start from first, and sometimes you can reach that mentally, but sometimes you need to get in there and write until the beginning just finds its way out. It sounds like you are writing prose pieces. Have you tried approaching them by building skeletons: write out the first sentence, follow with your thesis or major point (eventually, these two sentences will be filled in with your first full paragraph). Then write your first topic sentence. (This will be your second paragraph.) Write your conclusion for that topic. Progress. I did this for the GREs and hey, at least it fooled them - I guess I can brag I got a perfect score. Remember, you might not be happy with your writing, but that doesn't mean it's worthless or can't satisfy everyone else. It is more important to start getting the point down than say it perfectly. If you are having trouble being creative, what I like to do is find my craziest idea, and then stack on it so things become progressively crazier. Somehow, it works, at least for poems. Just go all the way out there, balls to the wall. It works more often than it don't.
As they say "motivation is unreliable, but discipline is literally indestructible" or something like that. Just write for the sake of writing even if it is a blob of thoughts, or you write an in-depth observation of the sandwich you prepared for lunch. Just learn to write out of discipline, and when inspiration strikes even when the motivation has left your body you will keep writing.
I use a pottery analogy for writing: You can't throw a pot until you put some clay on the wheel. Writing is just putting clay on the wheel. Write and write and write and write and - even if you think you might be off track, or if it isn't working: WRITE. Once you get a corpus of words all arranged on the page, you can finally get down to the story. Figuring out what the story is (because it is rarely what you thought you were writing!) comes from editing and rewriting, and moving scenes around, and making that character female instead of male, or moving the whole thing from a space-themed thing to an underwater thing, or whatever. Until you have some clay on the potters' wheel, you can't make a pot. And yeah, it sounds trite and unproductive, but you don't get more words on the page to work with, until you write them. So just write. (And maybe go for a walk. Or have a glass of whisky.)
For writing, I find making an outline of what I want to talk about very helpful. You mentioned ideas and feelings you want to impart - write those down as single sentences in some order that makes sense to you, then fill in your writing around those sentences.
I just force myself to keep going. I spent the other night frustrated that no song would come to me. I kept re-starting and began a number of awful ideas. Then, I had a stroke of inspiration. It happened because I keep at it.
- Just write anything down, even if it doesn't appear the way you want it to. Revise and edit later. - Take a break. If you put it down, and come back later, you may find you're refreshed and ready to work on it again. If you come back and you just go "ugh" every time you try, perhaps it was not meant to be. - Consider a different form to get your ideas out. Maybe you've been writing a piece of prose fiction but the idea might work better as a play. Maybe you're writing a poem, but it works better as a song. Perhaps something completely different that you would never have thought of; maybe your epic novel should really be a board game! - Doodle with words. Practice on nonsense or pieces that are just for fun. Get good at writing with practice pieces that you have no intention of showing anybody. Starry Night wasn't Van Gogh's first painting. - Write piecemeal. Don't just write from beginning to end, but write the part that you feel you want to write about right now. Jump around.
Write a paragraph totally unrelated to your current piece. An over the top cliche about one of your character, a completely wacky description, someone doing something crazy and irrational. Have fun. It wont make it to the final draft, but it will free your mind and let you explore new ways, and hopefully unlock something.
If I'm stuck on a specific thing, I try to get my mind off of it for a bit. I'll usually take a walk, but anything works as long as it isn't too close to what I'm doing. For example, I do something other than read if I'm taking a break from writing. When I come back, it's much easier to find a more productive train of thought. I also find it difficult to start a creative endeavour, which I'm trying to address right now. I've started carrying a small camera and notebook, at least when I remember to, and I'm trying to end every week having done at least one creative thing. I'm hoping to make creativity a habit and keep from getting stuck.