Dealing with Creative Block? A Deck of Cards Might Help

Ricardo Cavolo, from the series “Tarto Del Fuego,” 2016. Courtesy of Station 16 Gallery.
"Geeta Dayal was stuck. Back in 2007, the music journalist was working on a book about Brian Eno’s 1975 album Another Green World, but ideas and drafts kept piling up with little forward progress. The project, she wrote later, had started to weigh on her 'like a ten-thousand-pound albatross.' So she picked up an Oblique Strategies deck—a set of instruction-based cards written by Eno and artist Peter Schmidt to help overcome creative block—and let them guide her. 'Work at a different speed,' one commanded. Dayal jotted down her ideas without hesitating or overthinking. 'Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate.' She ripped up the chapter she had been working on. 'Take a break.' She stopped writing for a while—long enough to take up cycling and read both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. ..."
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