The Two Creative Blocks: Are You in a Drought or a Flood?
Before you can find the cure, you must first understand the crisis.
“For creative people, a block isn’t just a bad mood; it’s an existential crisis.”
Hello, it’s Helen, coming to you from my studio.
I’m working on this great big, strange dinner party painting today. It’s nice to be back on the brushes. I couldn’t go without it. I love my writing, but there’s something about the paint.
Today, I want to talk about something crucial: creative blocks.
In my view, there are two distinctive types, and they are chalk and cheese. One is a Drought, and the other is a Flood. The drought is where there’s nothing there at all. The flood is an unstoppable, raging river—a volcano—where you can't contain or organize anything. It leads to this massive overwhelm, a brain fry, rendering you a simmering, hopeless mess.
The result is the same on both sides. You’re left with nothing you can actually show for it, just chaos. And it’s absolutely devastating to your sense of self-worth.
Why Creative Blocks Feel Existential
Creativity blocks are as common as moods in every human being. But they hit us, as creative people, so much harder for one simple reason: your creativity is your entire identity.
You’re not just having a bad mood.
If you're a bank teller, a lawyer, or a nurse—if you have a creative block, you can still go to work because you work within systems that hold you over. But imagine a surgeon who loses his sight. Or a pro football player who breaks his leg. So many people rely on their functions being functional. And yet for artists, because we use this subtle quality, we think it doesn’t matter. It matters a lot.
If you rely on this flow for your very sense of self, your wellbeing, your identity, even your income... then this blockage is a true crisis. It’s an existential one, and I never downplay it.
The problem is there’s very little clear information about how to fix it, because it’s a nebulous thing. It’s like someone asking "What's wrong?" when you're in a bad mood, and if you can't explain it, you start to feel weird yourself. You don’t want to talk about it.
So, let's talk about what to do. The first step is to determine which one you’re having. Is it a drought or a flood?
The Drought: When the Muse Packs Her Bags
The Drought is what most people think of as a creative block. It’s basically losing the Muse altogether, or at least losing touch with her. The enchantment just leaves, and you end up with this total, horrible void.
Usually, the cause is that we’ve scared her away somehow.
How do we do that? It happens when we try to control our output too much, when we dissect the mystery by being too intellectual, or by working ‘for the man,’ so to speak. It’s when the work becomes all about the holy dollar. And while that’s important, there’s a tipping point where it becomes destructive. When we work from a fear of failure, or like a robot, that sense of awe evaporates. She packs her bags and high-tails it out of there. You might get away with it for decades, until you don’t.
The solution is to examine what you were doing when she left. Was I working from a place of awe, or had I just become bored and jaded with everything?
Sometimes it’s criticism. Now, a lot of criticism is just crap—people projecting their nonsense. If you’re standing in your center, it just slides off your back. But sometimes, a criticism hits a nerve, and the reason it hurts is because some small part of you knows it might be true. That’s the kind of thing that can cause the Muse to disintegrate.
The medicine for the Drought is to seduce and court the magic back. You have to become a tracker, a faithful hound. Go find out where and how you lost her. You can get her back.
The Flood: The Raging River of Overwhelm
On the opposite side, there's the Flood. This was my problem. This is when you have too much wild flow, rivers of it. You can’t stop. It’s exhilarating, but it’s also paralyzing.
This happened to me when I removed all my extrinsic pressures. After 35 years and 60 solo shows, I took a break from exhibitions and went to my cave to "follow my heart." But I had no container anymore. It was too much Dionysus, and not enough of his brother, Apollo, to give it structure. It was like dreaming of freedom and then finding yourself a lost child in the desert.
I know so many artists have this problem. Maybe this is you:
· You’re in the early stages of a career, surrounded by thousands of artworks, a testament to your mad abundance, but you just can’t choose how to go forward.
· Perhaps you have another source of income, so there's no financial pressure to sharpen your focus.
· Or maybe you’ve chosen another job specifically so you don’t have to "kill your darlings" and give up any of that creative lava you love playing in.
The All-Important Question
None of what I just outlined is a problem… unless it’s a problem for you.
Unless it’s burning a hole inside you, the secret artist, the secret author, working in the closet and wanting to get out. Only you know that. You are the one doing the judging. If that thing keeps bashing on your door and giving you no peace, it’s real.
And don’t think for a minute that successful, professional artists don’t have these private wars. Every successful artist I know has struggled with being bound to keep putting out their "successful sausage formula" while seething with resentment or just bored out of their brains behind closed doors.
The medicine for the Flood isn't more freedom. It’s the exact opposite: it’s radical containment. It’s creating those strict, even annoying, rules that I talked about in my Gordian Knot video. It’s putting a timeframe on it. It’s applying your orderly Apollo to help your wild Dionysus.
So I'll leave you with this: look at your own creative life right now, with honesty. If you are stuck, which one are you in?
A Drought or a Flood?
~ Helen - 17 December 2025