Regardless of what the creativity pundits say, most artists rely on inspiration for their impetus to work. That inspiration may come in the form of the traditional lightning bolt of creativity or simply a niggling idea. Whatever the form, artists rely on them to move them to create. And we all know that one idea can generate others, so that ideas can stack up, and we are forced to jot them down so we can keep working on the current project. But sometimes that doesn’t occur; sometimes inspiration doesn’t strike; ideas don’t happen.

There has been a lot of conjecture on the causes for lack of inspiration or “writer’s block” as it is sometimes called, and some psychologists have provided methods for overcoming it. We can look those up and try them out and they may or may not work, but when inspiration has left the building, we are at a total loss.

How long inspiration stays gone is also a mystery. It could take a brief overnight trip, or it could be gone a week, or a month, or even longer. No matter how long it’s gone, it will seem like forever, and we often do nothing—except bemoan the absence of inspiration. We seem to be helpless without our inspiration.

So when our muse goes on vacation what should we do? Well, we could go on vacation as well. Of course this works only for those of us who are independently wealthy. If we are working artists, we must keep producing, inspiration or not.

Exactly how do we do that? There are number of books dealing with artistic blockage. Some try to identify the sources of the problem or the places we are likely to “hit the wall.” Some are overly general and some overly specific. Many are aimed exclusively at writers, albeit of various genres. And while some have some interesting exercises, most come down to the same advice.

And that advice is that we go regularly to the theatre, studio, office—our place of work, and we pick up the brush or pen or pencil or chisel or keyboard or notebook or camera and we do the work—we essentially pretend that we are inspired, that our muse has not temporarily left us and we do the work. Yes, it may be uninspired, but unless we give into depression at the short-term loss, hardly anyone will know. They may realize that our work is not up to our usual standards, but then everyone has ups and downs. And the next day we do that again, and the day after, and the day after that if need be.

Essentially, we are performing a variant of “fake it ‘til you make it.” We crank out our work, knowing that it may not be our best, and the work moves forward, and we keep doing that until one day—and it may or may not be long in coming—a new idea appears, then another, then another. And finally our muse is back; our inspiration is again at work, and now we can really move forward with far less effort and do our best work yet. It’s just a matter of continuing to work while our muse is on vacation.