Everyone, everyone, sooner or later reaches a place where all ideas and motivations dry up. I’m always looking for ideas to pack away for a gray, I-suck day. On the ISO50 blog, I found an article in which one of the blog contributors asked 25 artists and creatives how they get out of a creative rut. The answers, while they may not pertain to everyone, are still fascinating and might just get your ideas flowing again.

If you missed this PBS series on contemporary American visual artists, as I did, you can view full episodes on the Art:21website. Each episode is built around a theme, such as Memory, Compassion, Fantasy, Transformation, Loss and Desire and so on. Watching the artists at work and hearing them talk about the way they work gives you an intimate look at the creative process. I loved the episodes featuring Susan Rothenburg (Memory) and Jenny Holzer (Protest) and the opportunity to discover artists new to me like Nancy Spero (how did I miss knowing her work?!). And I haven’t even scratched the surface of this series–I’m doling it out to myself as a treat.

I love the Eye Fi memory card for my camera. Take photos, turn on computer, turn on camera, and the photos upload automatically, wirelessly. I also have an Eye Fi app on my iPhone. Find the version that’s best for you. (You can also use it for videos.)

I wish I could pull all the stuff off my mood boards, throw it in a juicer and come up with some fresh ideas. But it doesn’t work that way. I have the walls in my office covered with photos and quotes and ads that should be inspiring, but when you’re a writer and you find that your job has become more about Excel spreadsheets, job interviews and the dreaded bottom line, it’s more of a burr than a spur. I find myself cramming writing an editorial or cover copy in between holding sales meetings. And since we’re prochoice and liberal, we attract nuts like a pecan pie, so occasionally I have to write polite fuck-off letters when I really want to stab someone with my gel pen.  So it’s hard for my spark to survive in the office, as cool and terrific as it is, as cool and terrific as my coworkers are. And when I get home from work, I don’t want to think or make a collage or start an essay. I know lots of poets did their work while holding down mundane jobs in mainline businesses, so why can’t I suck it up and do the same?  It’s the age-old dilemma of being forced into a niche that’s so narrow it squeezes the life out of your work. It’s the sadness of not being allowed to try something new because that’s not the way it’s done. It’s the frustration of being hemmed in by rules instead of being handed a hall pass. Does anyone out there have the same experience of being tugged between right and left brain every day?

I keep a little bowl of “treasures” on a table in my living room, and I shuffle them around and add to them periodically. If you sorted through them, you’d find, among other things, a Mahjong tile, a pipe bowl shaped like a skull, a marble eye and the glitter bird from last Christmas. Some of the objects have personal connections, and some I collect like a magpie just for their shiny beauty. The little goddess presides over all. I don’t have collections of things because I’m not single-minded enough or focused enough to follow through on creating a herd of elephants on a shelf or a wall of Chinese export plates. None of my treasures have value except to give me a shiver of inspiration whenever I sort through the bowl or add a new piece. Why did I save the fossil or the tiny blue mummy or the crystal from a chandelier? What are they saying, what life force do they hold? I’m never completely sure why I’m driven to keep one thing and toss another, but I think it’s because the ones I hang onto are silent, iconic messages from my unconscious.

I love this quote by Albert Brooks about the internet and its effect on creativity that I found on Creative Creativity:

“I think the internet is slowly going to take down all creativity. Great art of any kind needs a gestation period. It needs a period where people keep their opinions to their fucking selves. You take any artist from the history of the world, from Michelangelo to Bozo the Clown – and if you can have widespread opinion on their first time out, you can kill the great spark that makes them who they are. That is what the internet is allowing. It’s allowing millions of opinions on Day One. It’s almost like, if you show me your newborn baby, and I do complete genetic testing, and I tell you in the first week of your baby’s life that he’s going to make $18,000 a year and work in Africa and be an explorer, and he’s gonna get bitten by a tiger, and there’s a good chance he’s gonna have leukemia. I’m gonna take the joy out of his early child birthdays. Large amounts of opinion too early in an artist’s life is like a cancer.”

Right now I have the TV on, I’m blogging and I’m making notes at the same time. Tomorrow I will pack up my computer, throw in some magazines and books and try to read, research and write at the same time. It just doesn’t work. I love technology — I want an iPad and a new computer and instant feedback on my blog — but it’s screwing with my brain. Maybe my brain will adapt, but what will be lost in the process? Long lunches over crazy ideas, unplugged daydreams, quiet do-nothing afternoons. What do you think? Agree? Disagree? On the fence?

Muse to Muse morphed into Fridaville after my friend got pregnant and had to chase two kids instead of staying up late to post blog entries. But looking back, I can’t believe we did it on the spur of the moment and had it up and running in three weeks. Her enthusiasm swept me along like flash flood. And I didn’t allow myself to think about taking trapeze lessons long enough to talk myself out of it, either–I just signed up and showed up. I think that may be the first step to any endeavor, but I don’t always take my own advice.

I buy journals, books on writing and art, and I long to be inspired and find the perfect formula for being a creative person. I’m so caught up in my (often narcissistic) search that I rarely consider the flip side — inspiring others to use their talents. That’s why I love this essay from Zen Habits on Why You Should Think About Encouraging Others to Be Brilliant .

“Dear Muse, I call your name.

Will you come to my side and

stir the visions that lie within?

If I offer my time, my hands, my

deepest desire to make a thing

that matters, will you help make

a whole from the pieces I’ve gathered?”

I was going through some old journals this weekend and found this invocation to the Muse scribbled in it. I don’t know who wrote it or where I found it, and I feel like I posted it on my old blog, but I think it’s worth repeating. When we are trying to create from the heart, we need to invoke all the benevolent, magical spirits that used to inhabit the earth before they were thrown out by science and mechanization and all the little god men who think the soul is nothing more than a double helix and some chemical reactions in the brain.

It’s not too late to join the Yoga + Writing Challenge offered by Bindu Wiles. It lasts 21 days and involves committing to 5 days of yoga a week and writing 800 words a day. The yoga can be as simple as lying in Savasana (corpse) pose and the writing can be anything you want. Check out her site before you say, “I don’t have time!” I’ve signed up a few days late, but better late than never trying!