Many, probably all, dedicated artists experience slow periods when the creative juices don't seem to flow. Everyone knows of the writer who sits, day after day, waiting for the flood of `inspiration'... then the passionate outpouring of ideas, before they drain away... to another drought.

I have experienced many such dormancies. They do precede, or follow, (depending on how you see it), intense periods. They may be valuable rest and regrouping periods, or in fact, they may be the times when the hardest work is done: the questioning, assessing and reassessing, struggling about what?, where?, when?, how?, how much?, and why?

We should not dread the `dry spell', but see it as a necessary, welcome part of creativity. At the very worst, it is a little time we take out to live.
 

"The sudden inspirations of creative men seem to take place after insistent wrestling with the problem..." (75)
Rudolf Arnheim

 

75. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward A Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A. Cal., University of California Press, 1966), p.178