The answer to writers block: big courage

Constance Hale — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:22:14 +0000

In my last post, I wrote about seeing a performance of Mozart Dances by the Mark Morris Dance Group. A few days before that performance at the Boston Opera, I listened in on a conversation between Morris and Richard Dyer, a former music critic for the Boston Globe, which took place at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. I reported on that conversation with a group of Tweeting journalists #markmorris. Check it out!

My ears perked up when a dance teacher asked the choreographer whether he ever feared being blocked, and what he did when he “dried up.” Morris described being creatively blocked as a kind of occupational hazard: “Successful artists always have this certain fear of being discovered to be a true charlatan,” he said.

Morris’s advice to those who find themselves blocked: “Just make up a dance a day. Change it. Then make its opposite. Then throw them both away. Watch something else. Make another dance. Read more books and learn more music.

“My courage is bigger than my fear,” Morris added. “But I have big courage.”

We can’t all have courage as big as Morris’s, but we can cultivate it. There are two other important kernels in his advice: First, don’t let your inner critic stop you from making more art. Just keep making things. Second, don’t stop reading and learning—connect with the things about your art that you love, and that set you on fire.

Sin and Syntax » overcoming fear

The answer to writers block: big courage