getting

unstuck
nine ways to
escape from
creativity
halting goo

By rick benzel, M.A.

Every artist gets stuck from time to time in “creativity-halting goo.” It can
happen at any phase of your work: when you’re beginning a project, in
the middle, or close to completion. The goo can overcome you in many
different ways – it can prevent you from finding an idea, or cloud your
mind when choosing among many ideas, or pull you downwards into a
creative void.
Whenever it happens and whatever form it takes, creativity-halting
goo is frustrating, energy draining, and harmful to the self-esteem of the
creative mind. It feels like a sticky poisonous tar that envelops you. No
matter how much you try, you simply cannot escape from the gooey spot
you have gotten yourself into – and your creative work stops dead in its
tracks.
Keep in mind that there are times when losing your creative momen-
tum is not because you are stuck, but rather that you are entering a valuable
phase of the creative process referred to as an “incubation” period.
During this time, your mind unconsciously processes new ideas and
feelings that will eventually drive your project forward. Many creative
people actually nurture such incubation periods, letting themselves
remain fallow for days or weeks without trying to force ideas. They stop
painting, writing, composing, dancing, acting – and instead sit back and
attend to other business in their life, all the while letting their uncon-
scious intelligence gently process images and thoughts in the back-
ground, without any attempt to track them.
How can you know if you are in an incubation period or a gooey
mess? Actually, the most telling cues come from your body. When you

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incubate, your physical being is at ease. You feel calm, in a relaxed state
of mind without nervous energy or anxiety. You eat and sleep well, and
have no problems performing the other work of your life. You enjoy
friends, reading books, going to movies – because behind the scenes,
your mind is hard at work “considering.”
When you are stuck, your body also lets you know it – but in very
different ways! Your mind races, your stomach hurts slightly (or a lot),
and your muscles become tense. The goo on your mind and body weighs
you down, and at the end of a day, you feel like you need an expensive
full-body massage. When you are stuck in goo for several days, your
stress level mounts and often transforms into anger towards yourself or
those around you.
Being stuck is no way to be creative – or to live. It saps your energy,
your vitality, and your joy in creating. While artists and creators cannot
get rid of all moments of stuckness, the solution is to minimize their
effect on you. You need to learn techniques that allow you to break out
of the sticky mass that holds you back, leading you back to health and
productive creativity.
In this article, I present to you nine approaches that I have found to
be useful in getting unstuck. They synthesize a range of ideas and tech-
niques that I have used with my clients, as well as with myself. Think of
these approaches as a toolbox that you can open whenever you need
something with which to pry yourself free. Keep in mind that you may
encounter various types of stuckness. Try out different techniques and
see which are best for each individual situation.

The Reframing Approach

This approach to getting unstuck is based on the psychological con-
cept of “reframing” a problem, which means learning how to change
your view of the problem. Given that your reality is shaped by your
thoughts and interpretations, reframing is based on the concept that you
can abandon negative self-talk, replacing it with positive statements and
attitudes that lead you to a more fruitful interpretation of the moment.
Consider the following situation. You have just spent a week writing
a chapter of your novel, but now you’re stuck. Somehow your protago-
nist has ended up in a position that doesn’t make sense for her character.
You begin to curse at yourself, upset that the last week feels like wasted
time. You can’t figure out how to salvage the chapter you worked so hard
to write. Your mind is going blank and the goo slowly begins to ooze all
over you, making you feel like an author who’s been tar and feathered.
Many writers, painters, and other artists who invest large amounts of
time on a project experience this type of gooey remorse. They become
so invested in an idea that they find it difficult to accept when it doesn’t
work – and they become stuck trying to salvage the idea although they
know it is taking them down an unproductive path.

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 This is when reframing can help. Rather than cursing yourself and
viewing the experience as “wasted time” or as proof that “I lack talent”
(both of which are nothing but thoughts you place in your own mind),
why not reframe the experience in a way that inspires your creative
juices instead of draining them? You might say to yourself, “This plot
twist is a great one; let me save it for another character later in this
book.” Or you could think, “Wow, what a great idea for another story.”
Or perhaps you can tell yourself something as mild as, “Well, I guess I
know my character better now. I’ll rewrite this chapter and learn from
the experience.”
Reframing is an extremely valuable tool for artists who feel frustrated
and stuck at the beginnings of projects. If you believe you are going
nowhere, it often indicates that your inner critic is halting you from try-
ing out ideas because you fear making a mistake. It can be useful to
reframe your early work entirely, viewing whatever you do in the con-
text of “This is a good start for my project and I can always come back
and revisit it,” rather than thinking, “I don’t think this is the ‘right’ start
for this book (painting, song, etc.) so I’m not going anywhere until I can
get it right.”
It is always useful to remember that you can alter your thoughts
about many situations. You can feel angry, frustrated, tired, upset with
yourself – or you can transform your feelings into patience, understand-
ing, and self-respect for the efforts you make.

The Marcel Proust Approach

The great French writer Marcel Proust (1871–1922) is known for a
style of writing called stream of consciousness, in which he poured his
feelings out onto the page like water over a dam. Proust’s novels are long
extensions of his thoughts and memories, with thousands of words
devoted to the smallest of incidents. For example, in his famous novel
Remembrance of Things Past, Proust devoted 30 pages to simply
describing rolling over in bed at night.
For creators, the value of the Marcel Proust approach to stream of
consciousness lies in the fact that when you are stuck, you need to
release your mind from rules and formulae so you can open yourself up
to fresh ideas. If you are at an impasse when writing your novel, stop
thinking about writing your novel per se, and begin writing just about
anything. If you are painting and don’t know what color to use next, stop
thinking about painting the piece in question and head for a new canvas
where you release all preconceptions into a stream of consciousness of
colors and shapes. If you are choreographing a dance, go off into a studio
and simply dance your head off using whatever movements occur to you
in the moment.
Stream of consciousness allows you to reconnect with your innermost
feelings and thoughts, a veritable “brain dump” that lets your creativity

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hang out without regard to correctness, appropriateness, or brilliance.
You simply lay all your thoughts bare – and in doing so, you let yourself
tap into authentic feelings and ideas that arise from deep inside you. By
relaxing yourself into stream of consciousness, your mind easily and
quickly floats from one idea to another, surging in feelings and memories
that often contain the seeds of the solution to your stuckness.
The Marcel Proust approach is similar to what you may already do
in your journaling or in the “morning pages” associated with the book,
The Artist’s Way. All three methods are aimed at the same phenomenon:
releasing your mind from your inner critic that halts your creative work
– that little voice that claims a certain passage you are writing is “stupid”
or that your painting is “ugly.” As Proust taught us, it’s very creative to
simply let your mind spill out, and even your ramblings can turn into a
world-renowned piece of literature.

The Pottery Approach

When I was 25 a few decades back, I decided to try pottery as a form
of artistic expression. I signed up for a summer course at a small pottery
studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Within months, I was sitting at the
potter’s wheel, throwing vases, sugar bowls, and pitchers. During this
time, another student potter suggested that I read a book called
Centering in Pottery, Poetry and The Person, by M.C. Richards, which
has turned out to be one of my most inspiring reads.
In Centering, Richards uses the potter’s wheel as a metaphor for life.
When you try pottery, you quickly learn that if you do not center the clay
on the wheel, it is nearly impossible to pull the clay up into a balanced
object. For Richards though, centering clay means far more than simply
plopping it down in the middle of the potter’s wheel. Centering also must
take place in your mind, in your feelings, in your entire physical being.
In talking about knowing how to center, Richards wrote:
Wisdom is not the product of mental effort…. it is a state of
total being, in which capacities for knowledge and for love, for
survival and for death, for imagination, inspiration, intuition,
for all the fabulous functioning of this human being who we
are, come into a center with their forces, come into an experi-
ence of meaning that can voice itself as wise action.
When you are stuck, it often means that you are not centered in your
being. Your inner artist is at odds with something in your life that does
not support your art. Something is awry that tilts your “clay” – that is,
your ideas, your projects – and you will not be able to get unstuck in the
same way that a potter is not able to fashion a nicely centered pot.
The Pottery Approach is thus oriented towards finding ways to center
yourself. Perhaps you need to meditate, go for walks every day, or have
a talk with someone who is causing you emotional pain. Perhaps you
need to create a nice spot of color on the wall at which you can stare to

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re-center yourself. Whatever you do to get centered, your goal is to be
able to approach your artistic endeavor by being fully there – mentally,
emotionally, spiritually, sexually, physically – as one integrated, wise
artist. When you are in this state, you will be capable of working with
your creativity in the same truly blissful way that potters work, becom-
ing one with their clay as it spins around the wheel, their hands becom-
ing the pot and the pot becoming their hands. In short, when you and
your art merge into one “beingness,” there is much less opportunity to
get stuck because all of you, including your inner critic, become one
with your art.
And if you cannot find an activity that centers you, I highly recom-
mend taking a pottery course!

The Buddy Approach

Creativity-halting goo can sometimes be thick and viscous, and get-
ting out of it on your own is just not possible. Your inner artist is going
nowhere, spinning its wheels, like a car stuck in mud or snow.
Sometimes you need a “buddy” to get unstuck, a colleague who can
push or pull you out, by listening to you and perhaps by sharing some
ideas. Simply talking about your creative block with another person is
often enough to get you going again because in the process of articulating
your ideas to someone else in a non-judgmental conversation, you can
often stumble upon a fresh way to explain your concepts or an insight
you didn’t have before.
The Buddy Approach is best done with a partner who is, like you, a
creator and thus can understand the artistic difficulties you may be going
through. It is best not to choose a family member or spouse based simply
on the fact that he or she knows you well. This can backfire, causing
more problems than it solves if you do not like the advice the person
gives you. Instead, select as your buddy an artistic peer, someone who
does the same type of art as you or even someone who works in an
entirely different art.
The Buddy Approach is useful for several reasons. First, your col-
league’s comments and listening provide an outside view of your work
that can be beneficial when you are lost in your own ideas. The buddy
may see the proverbial tree through the forest that has become your
mind. Secondly, a buddy can help you silence your inner critic, by being
more sympathetic, encouraging, or just plain honest in telling you that
your ideas are fine, keep working. Finally, if you are willing to listen, a
buddy may have suggestions to enhance your own ideas or that provide
you with solutions to your creative problem.
Many artists are reluctant to share their work with others before it is
completed, and that is understandable. However, there are times when
there is nothing better than a colleague or friend whose shoulder you
can lean on in a time of need. Artists who shy away from making com-

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munity with others may be missing out on the valuable resources that
other artists can provide. One way to combat a reluctance to talk to
other artists is to take a class. Even if you decide not to share your ideas
with others, you can listen to other people sharing ideas and vicarious-
ly partake in an extended buddy system that supports you in the back-
ground.

The Matrix Approach

When your getting stuck involves indecision or an inability to
choose from among what seem to be too many good ideas, the best solu-
tion may be the Matrix Approach. This solution is based on resorting to
logic to evaluate your ideas and choose the best one according to a set
of criteria you develop. The name of the approach refers to the fact that
you construct a “matrix” or grid, with rows and columns in table format.
In each column, you write one of the ideas you have, and in each row,
you list one of the criteria that will help you decide the best choice. For
example, if you are writing a non-fiction book and you are trying to
decide whether to write a book based on, for example, 7 steps to better
health, 30 days to better health, or 10 secrets to better health, you would
need a matrix consisting of 3 columns. Then in the rows, you would list
criteria such as names of competing books in Row 1, spin-off opportu-
nities for each title in Row 2, the editor’s preference in Row 3, and so
on.
The Matrix Approach, in theory, can help you get unstuck by simply
checking off which column and row intersection makes the most logical
sense. Then you can count up the X’s and see which decision wins.
However, given that art is not science, the Matrix Approach often
requires a level of subjective analysis and feeling that might lead you
back toward your quagmire. You could end up with a grid that has X’s
everywhere – and you’re back at indecision.
Nevertheless, the Matrix Approach can prove useful when you have
a large number of choices because, at the very least, it can help you
eliminate a few lesser choices from the crowd so you can focus on just
the one or two best ones. In this way, the Matrix Approach can help you
get out the quicksand a little faster and without as much pain as you
might have experienced.
The Spiritual Approach
In the last decade, the role of spirit in creativity is resurging, as more
artists are turning themselves over to a “higher” power to direct their
work. For some people, the higher power is embedded in a religious tra-
dition, while for others, their spiritual approach is rooted in a profound
respect and appreciation for human creativity within a mystical cosmos.
Whichever the case, a spiritual approach to overcoming stuckness sug-
gests that you stop thinking about your creative problem and simply give

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yourself over to whatever higher power you believe in to provide you
with the answer.
It is of course impossible to ascertain if the spiritual approach works
because a higher power truly exists and answers the prayers of artists, or
if there is something about releasing your worries into the cosmos that
allows fresh ideas to come to you. Perhaps it is a combination of the two.
What counts is that the spiritual approach seems to help many people
feel that their creative work is linked to forces in the universe that guide
us into a more harmonious, peaceful existence. By releasing their cre-
ative blocks into the ether or to their worshipped God, they lighten their
own anxiety about creating, which may indeed be an opportunity for
new creating to occur.
If you are not religious, or are agnostic, your spiritual approach need
not be any more than going up to a mountain top and contemplating
your creativity as you sit among tboulders that have been on this earth
for millions of years. I often go camping at one location in the Sierra
Mountains in California where, at 12,000 feet, I experience profound
insights into my place in the cosmos, which reinforces my love for the
creativity that I possess.

The Reward Approach

The Reward Approach can be an effective method to get out of stuck-
ness when the creativity-halting goo is thin and leaves you with a sense
of power over your situation. This approach requires you to be brutally
honest with yourself in evaluating whether your stuckness reflects factors
that you can control – if you truly wanted to. For example, we all expe-
rience times when we simply don’t want to get to work; we would rather
watch TV or go for a walk than feel the pain of writing, painting, or prac-
ticing our instrument.
But in these types of situations, if you are truthful with yourself and
are able to admit that the problem has more to do with your own nega-
tive attitude or your laziness, you might realize that this is the right time
to adopt the Reward Approach. As the name implies, you simply offer
yourself a reward for committing to get your work done or for achieving
certain milestones along the way to total completion.
For example, you might make a contract with yourself that for every
chapter you complete on your novel, you will allow yourself a nice dinner
at one of your favorite restaurants, and you won’t go to that restaurant
unless you do complete the chapter. Other rewards could be buying
yourself a desired piece of clothing, or a night out, or that new electron-
ic device you desire.
So many of us are not good at abiding by contracts we make with
ourselves. It is easy to tell yourself, “I know I said I was going to work
tonight, but I’m just too tired.” The problem is, of course, if you let your-
self off the hook day in and day out, you accomplish very little towards

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your creative goals. You thus must find a new way to abide by your self-
made contract. That is where the rewards come in.
In general, the more meaningful the reward, the more success you
will have in fulfilling your commitment.

The Hero Approach

One of the most intriguing ways to learn how to get unstuck is to find
yourself a hero, that is, a luminary in your field after whom you might
model yourself. If you are a writer, pick a living or historic writer whose
life or work you admire. Read everything you can find about the person,
including his or her work habits, thoughts on the writing life, and prob-
lems with writing that may be similar to yours. Then, each time you sit
down to write and especially each time you get stuck in the goo, ask
yourself, “What would [insert name of your hero] have done about this
situation?”
The value of the hero approach is that it spotlights for you a work
ethic and commitment to quality that you will slowly internalize as your
own. Finding a hero among the greats of the creative world – whether it
be Michelangelo, Monet, Mamet, or Maroon Five – builds your self-
esteem and your passion for art, both of which are instrumental in
defeating your inner critic and helping you get unstuck.
In addition, as one of the other articles in this Anthology points out
(see Michael Mahoney’s The Hero Within: Using the Mythic Journey to
Discover Meaning in Your Creative Work), you are effectively a hero in
your own creative journey, which requires you to survive many battles
with the evil forces of non-creativity. In order to return victorious from
your journey, you must think of yourself as a hero, with courage, ambi-
tion, and daring to get through the combat. But as your own hero, even
you need allies, and the best ones are those who have made the journey
before you. They know the danger zones, the pitfalls, and the secrets to
coming out alive.
However, be careful about selecting a hero and turning him or her
into an object of negative comparison for yourself. It is not productive to
make an accomplished artist your hero if the person constantly reminds
you of your lack of commercial success. Choose your heroes based on
their human qualities and the values they bring to their craft, not based
on how famous they are or how much money they made. Make them
real heroes in your work, not celebrities you blindly worship.

The Hire-a-Professional Approach

The last approach to getting out of creativity-halting goo is, of
course, to hire a creativity coach. Like hiring a doctor when you are sick,
a lawyer when you need legal advice, or an accountant when you need
your taxes done right, a creativity coach can fashion a comprehensive

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program for your specific stuckness – i.e., the nature of your goo, its
thickness, stickiness, how deep in it you are, and so on. A creativity
coach is trained to analyze your concerns and problems, and to work
with you to devise solutions that get you out of the quagmire and back
into happy, productive creating again. A coach can help you decide
which of the approaches above –or many others they may have created
themselves – might work in your situation. You can find creativity coaches
at www.creativitycoachingassociation.com, which lists coaches avail-
able to artists and creators in many locations throughout the world.
Coaches can also work with you by email and phone, so you are never
far away from having professional assistance available to you to analyze
your creative problems and propose solutions to get you unstuck.

Rick Benzel is a creativity coach, writer, and editor in Los Angeles with
a passion for helping all types of artists get unstuck. He enjoys brain-
storming with creators to help them develop, articulate and organize
their ideas. His coaching practice has helped writers, screenwriters, and
visual artists. He offers various workshops in the Los Angeles area, a
one-day brainstorming Inspiration Tour, and 7- or 10-day retreats in
France. He is the creator of this Anthology and the founder and Publisher
of Creativity Coaching Association Press, the publisher of this book. He
can be contacted at creativitycoach@verizon.net or at his website,
www.personalcreativitycoach.com.

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