Artist Support | Writing Advice | Music
Helpful Techniques for Artists Who are Stuck
Breaking the Sameness With Rick Rubin
Have you ever been creating something and end up smacking into a brick wall mid way through the project?
Whether it be writing, playing, drawing, painting, singing, dancing, directing, acting or something else; every artist can fall victim to a clog in creative expression. I think it’s safe to say in a platform of writers, that everyone here has experienced writer’s block.
I am currently facing this foul beast. I once described this feeling as being lost at sea, but now it feels like a boss battle that I’ve attempted one too many times. Yet again, it’s the level I don’t want to restart.
The scenery is starting to look drab and the mini challenges leading up to the boss don’t surprise me anymore. What once felt like a series of strategic stepping stones, now feels like a lonely little sidewalk. I’ve seen too much of the same thing— this is what writer’s block is like, the same boring level over and over again.
A Method to the Madness
The famous music producer, Rick Rubin, is well known for his success in aiding artists in creating their best music. From the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy to Kanye and Adele, Rubin’s methods helped them all prevail in the music industry. There’s no doubting that he’s witnessed many different creative processes crumble in the face of sameness.
In his book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rubin outlines what it means to perform a creative act — to make art. He also speaks on how to live as an artist, which may be the double entendre that I see it as. The life of an artist is an art, like an act on a stage.
During any performance, there are hiccups. Writer’s block is one of the many set backs all creators face. Half way through his book, Rubin offers some techniques he uses with artists in the studio to slay this type of monstrosity.
“In the recording studio, I occasionally suggest exercises to artists with this goal in mind. We attempt them without expectations regarding outcome. The intention is simply to rekindle excitement and access new ways of performance”
Small Steps
This exercise is described by “offering a small task” such as: writing one line to a song a day. It doesn’t matter if it’s seen as good or bad, as long as the task gets done. This allows the process to be broken down into bite size pieces that will eventually reopen the “creative channel.”
When you’re feeling overwhelmed about starting a new piece, write one line a day and soon enough, the paragraphs will fall into place. This is how I started my journaling habit — I have a one line journal that only requires one or two lines to be written each day! In time, I developed a steady journaling habit and now write in four journals daily.
Baby steps are the way to go when just starting out, but I never thought about returning to this pace when caught in a slow current of ideas. In a way, the time following a creative high could be a creative low or a block. It is the beginning of a never ending cycle, so start slow and keep building momentum.
Change the Environment
The objective of this exercise is to change an element of the normal environment one creates in. Rubin gives examples like turning the lights off, holding the microphone over using a stand, and recording early in the morning or late at night. This can naturally yield a creation different than what’s been produced in the past.
Aside from changing the lighting or time of day, a writer could change how they write by switching the medium they use(pun intended). I usually type my work on my phone or my laptop. Opting for writing by hand or using speech to text could help shake things up.
There are a lot of variables to be changed when thinking about altering the creative space. Rubin mentions that one singer chose to record while hanging upside down. It’s a little meta-project to find out what you can change around you to break the chain —take a deep breath and get creative with it!
Change the Stakes
If changing the external environment doesn’t help, Rick says you can change the internal environment. He suggests raising or lowering the bar by having a group play a song as if it’s the last time they’ll ever play it or by having a practice run before recording. This is a way to think deeper about how one can change the environment and adjust the stakes of the task.
A writer could write a rough draft as a final copy or vice versa. Alternatively, maybe whatever you write is going to be posted or never posted at all, regardless if you like it or not — you are challenged to do your best and avoid any possible self-sabotage. Personally, I never considered myself a writer until I began posting on Medium, which really changed the contest for me.
This exercise reminds me a little bit about adjusting expectations around creating. Despite what the Medium gurus tell you, Every piece can’t be your best work. Everyone has to start somewhere and it’s okay to over think a little bit when imagining if the circumstances were different — it might be what you need to get it right.
Invite an Audience
Rubin mentions how being observed changes how an artists acts, some even thrive on having an audience present. Even one person who has no stakes in the project can make a difference. Some people may overdo a performance or hold back, but Rubin says most become more focused when an audience is watching.
It sounds kinda weird to do this with writing. I don’t know many people who would like to watch while I write. Writing in a public place like a park or a cafe might bring out your best, at the very least, having others read your work is always helpful.
When I first read about this technique, I wondered how I could apply it well to writing. I think writers have it harder than other artists sometimes; listening to music, or looking at paintings and photographs are more popular, and not to mention more convenient, than reading. Okay I’ll take it back, most people only want to read things that they have a vested interest in, like their horoscope.
Change the Context
Like your audience, the meaning behind your work holds a lot of value. It’s where you pull the creative energy to do anything — what’s your why? Rubin sometimes has artists change the backstory around the piece like writing a love song to a soulmate, a stranger, or God in whatever form it appears to you.
Changing the context in writing poetry or prose might work as well as it does in music. I know a fellow writer who writes mostly poetry, and started with a couple of stanzas about what it’s like to create poetry. He next tried rewriting the poem in prose, then it eventually became a song he recorded while playing his guitar.
You might find that as the context changes, the form of art does too. This might not be the objective, but an artist’s job is to channel and bend creative energy into art, it doesn’t matter what shape it takes. I could also see how changing the genre might work well here too — a nonfiction piece could come out better with a little satire sprinkled in.
Alter the Perspective
One technique Rubin posits as being helpful to musicians is to change the volume of the music to produce the kind of outcome they want for the song. They turn up the vocals really loud to get singers to record a quieter sound or turn the vocals down really low to make the artist sing at a higher volume. He mentions altering the stage lighting to make it so the performer can or cannot see the crowd in front of them.
This might be a hard one to translate to writing. Maybe explore different font styles and sizes or experiment with a type writer. Anything that will shift your perspective of the piece your working on could help stoke creativity.
I don’t like this one as much as I like the others. It feels a little counter intuitive, but I can see how it works. It’s good enough to get the job done, nevertheless I have another way to alter your perspective.
Write for Someone Else
In the studio, Rubin sometimes asks musicians to write a song that one of their favorite artists would perform. It has to fit a different style and requires the writer to step out of their comfort zone. Trying this with a new genre or style of art outside of your expertise can garner an extra boost in creativity.
It’s rare for Medium members talk about reading by itself. Who are some of your favorite writers? Try writing for your preferred novelist or even a fellow Medium author.
I have always been more of a writer than a reader. It’s difficult for me to nail down my favorite anything let alone my hero’s in the writing world. Nonetheless, I did team up with Shakespeare and Chat-GPT to write a letter I was reluctant to send.
Add Imagery
There is a moment Rick describes where a member of a band, the keyboardist, couldn’t quite nail the solo they wanted for a song. They decided on creating a scene of the carnage following a bloody battle. “Play the solo like that” they told the keyboardist, then he played the part perfectly.
Imagery is a big part of writing and I’m guessing you’ve tried to use it in your work, but I wonder if we could reverse engineer this exercise. When struggling with a piece, throw on some music that fits the vibe you are shooting for. I find that fantasy music or certain film soundtracks can help me create my best fiction.
I really like this method. Playing with imagery and immersing myself in a scene is one of the things I love most about writing. At its core, this is raw imagination we are working with.
Limit the Information
It might sound counter productive to limit information, especially when working with others, but this is exactly the situation in which Rubin suggests using this technique. If a songwriter sends a demo of a song to the band to record, Rick will typically have only the guitarist listen to it while the rest of the band members add their own flavor to the guitarist’s recording. This way, the creative boundaries are next to limitless.
I would find it hard using this exercise alone, but it could work with a team of writers or when working with an editor for a publication. Give them the first paragraph, or just your outline, and see where they would take it. The other person doesn’t even have to be a part of the project — having people read your work in every stage adds more possibility for creative roundedness and flavor.
Letting others in on the creative process early on can definitely take things in a different direction. Though I have yet to contribute to one, I predict this is why the choose-your-own story genre works well when multiple writers take turns writing a chapter. If anyone is interested in building on one of my open-ended stories, try delving into this abyss.
Conclusion
At the end of this chapter, Rubin makes it clear that “these exercises are not set in stone.” These methods are for bringing in new perspectives with different conditions. He even challenges the reader to take these techniques and play around with them.
It’s completely okay to take these guidelines and find a way to make them work for you. If they were rules, they would run the risk of stifling the creative flow. This kind of current moves well in a wild landscape, adorning it with too many rules will make the river into a canal.
I pass this trial onto you. Give Rick Rubin’s tips a try and see what comes through. Please share all of your thoughts, failures, successes, obstacles, and new versions of these techniques that surface as you work on beating this level and breaking through the boundary of sameness.
