Bet you guys didn't know I drive by the Bengal's Stadium every day when I, uh, drive into work.
In fact, I drive all around it every day, and I get to look at pretty bridges and stuff.
That's the nice part about living in Cincinnati.
I work at a company called Epipheo.
I'm a Creative Video Strategist here and I'm going to ask them, some of the people I work
with, this question about how do you get past creator's block, where you just don't know
what to make anymore.
You're not sure, uh, how to come up with ideas, what to do next.
I'm gonna ask some of the people I work with here because a lot of them are super creative
people.
And I got my little guy with me, my son.
You gonna hang out at Epipheo with daddy today at work?
Yeah, it's gonna be fun, isn't it?
Let's go in.
When it comes to writer's block with writing scripts, I, I find that it's very helpful
if I get into it a thesaurus, and find my own little thesaurus wormhole.
Um, eventually, I'm, I'm usually able to overcome my writer's block.
Usually, the first thing I'll do is like, I'll just, I'll just write.
Like, I'll write complete and utter crap until I get a line or two that works, and usually,
once I have a starting point, I'm pretty good.
If I'm just deadlocked, I'll talk to somebody else, like, what ideas do you have and usually
that's enough to rip off of something, or sometimes, I'll just do something else.
Like, I'll go for a walk or I'll, like, throw darts at a dartboard, just something to, like,
something that I can think through but be distracted by at the same time.
Usually, and I can't think of, like any good ideas, I'll just put up bad ideas on a piece
of paper, and I'll just write down any idea, good idea or bad idea, whatever, and I'll
let that kind of kick start me to eventually, hopefully, come up with a good idea.
The trick to getting through that is just keep your hands moving.
There's a reason that in Spanish, they have one word for to make and to do, hacer.
Ya know, like, you have to physically be doing something.
You have to keep on moving, even if it's trash, even if it's something that you're never gonna
show anybody, you just have to work through it because if you sit there and stare and
get paralyzed by the infinite possibilities of that blank thing that you're looking at,
then you will never get through.
It, it doesn't live up here.
It lives here, you know, in what you're actually doing.
So when I get writer's bloc k, I like to step away, kind of let my brain decompress.
So usually I eat something and then I come back to it, and if that doesn't solve the
problem for me, then I go and I ask somebody else for their input, get a little bit of,
uh, outside brainstorming help.
Get the juices flowing and then I can bust through it.
When I have creator's block, I pretty much don't get anything done until I realize that
I have no time left to finish it, and then when it's crunch time, it just always ends
up seeming to happen.
I have to do something completely different.
So sometimes I, it's, whether it's going to a cafe or just going for a walk, something
to completely distract me, watch, even just watching a TV show or an episode or something
completely different.
I can usually get back in the groove because I'm not thinking about the same thing over
and over.
Totally read everything, watch all the things, go to shows, even dog shows.
Seeing all of your stuff, seeing what you're doing, same things you see, seeing a script
you wrote.
Try to find like what the simplest thing it is that you're trying to create or talk about
in its simplest form, like even one word, and then build from that simple form out.
So, don't start with a ton of details and all these things.
Also, the more requirements you have to do something, the more creative you can be to
execute that.
I think for getting over a creative block, the Internet's a great tool for that because
it's, you've got to start looking at different things, like, looking in the news, or looking,
just like searching around trying to find anything that I can find.
Or like a really random thing is like typing a string of numbers into Google Images.
Then you just get like random images that hopefully, you're like sparking things, or
like, combining opposites where it's like I'm gonna tell a story.
I don't know, maybe I'll tell a story about a vegetarian lion or a fish that's allergic
to water, or something that is, like, just to help get something stirring and going from
there.
Just like looking at the stuff that inspires you, like movies, artists, whatever, just
looking through their work.
What do you do?
That, that sometimes works for me.
Yeah.
I mostly have to tough through it.
Yeah.
Right?
It's like you're dead.
You have no creative ideas.
Creativity on demand doesn't work, right?
You press through it.
You tough through it.
You keep on working, and then you come back to it the next day and hopefully something
fresh has happened.
I hope some of their advice was helpful.
It was for me.
The main thing I do is actually, I just keep like an ongoing list of ideas when I have
them, um, on my phone on an Evernote little document, and I just kinda, because sometimes
I'll have like a creative like spree.
I'll think of a ton of things, so I just like to get all those ideas down when I can, and
then when I come up against like, "Oh, I don't know what to do this week for a video," or,
"I don't know how to do this creatively," I usually go back to that document and I'm
like, "Oh, yeah, I could do that."
You know, and then I'll cross it off my list and go ahead and make it.
So that works well for me.
I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments below how you would answer this person's question,
how you get past creator's block.
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