Creativity

Does anyone else feel that you've lost your creativity since going on an AP?

Mine is totally gone, which sucks because I'm halfway done with a novel and I would like to finish it.

I don't know if I'd say I lost my creativity so much as the spark is gone. I don't create as often. And because any creative person will tell you it takes a lot of duds before hitting a winner, it seems like I'm less creative.

Spark is gone...

That's a great way to describe it, gs! I so feel that way. I used to write and get a writer's high... and now when I write I don't get that.

And I'm afraid to get it. Last time I got it I went psychotic!

I wonder if other people have the same spark, though. Like people who claim that writer's block didn't really exist, you just have to put your ***** in the chair and write.

I tried to yesterday. Granted I tried a short story which has never been my medium but I spent a lot of time staring and only got a paragraph and maybe a plot outline done.

That's so my problem right now too. I stare at the page for awhile. I write a paragraph. I write another paragraph. I stare at it for awhile. One time I was mid scene and I just stopped it and didn't pick it up for two days.

I'm a vomit writer. Usually once I get started I'm good for at least ten pages. Not now obviously.

I just have zero writer's high now. Non at all. I have zero passion for it too.

I was a prolific writer until I almost died (given 2 hours to live), well I survived the AP was increased and I have not felt like writing since. Not even a hint of spark remains.

You will get it back, I am also a vomit writer, it drives my wife(proofreader) crazy. She always tells me that I need to slow down and keep my grammar mistakes in check so that I can follow my thoughts.
I go through spurts where I can develop characters and plot lines in one sitting, shoot I have a whole short story completed in my head, but when I go to put on the page. The blank white page just eats my thoughts, its like the blankness wins out over my thoughts.

The only way I have found to combat this is to jack myself up on caffeine and hope. That doesnt always work. I hope you find your passion again.

Thanks for the responses guys.

I'm actually really devastated about this.

But I suppose I went insane (literally!) during the first half of the novel. So now I feel like I can either be a completely insane writer who produces a lot, or be on an AP and not go insane, produce little, and be able to rejoin my family.

Obviously I'm choosing to be able to rejoin my family.

It's just really depressing. Like I need more things to be depressed about.

I've lost all desire to do any cross stitching like I was obsessed with until about a year or so ago. Now that desire is gone and I now have all of these half finished projects sitting in my storage closet.

I feel the same way. It's been three years of AP, and since i started that I have significantly reduced the amount of photography I shoot. I can still go out and shoot landscapes and nature and birds and things, but my ability to conceptualize any real projects has suffered greatly. I'm trying to figure out how to get it back without dropping AP.

I was rippin' ribbons of voluminous paint on canvas until I started taking seroquel. Now for three months I have not picked up a brush. That creative surge that used to be so accessible is gone. Where did it go?

Do you think the stuff you produced while "insane" is any good? Maybe with a clearer head you'll produce better work, if less of it.

I've been told you can't wait for inspiration, you just have to slog through it until it hits. So keep writing, even if it's only a paragraph at a time, and maybe if you do get a little spark you'll have something to work with.

I actually just wrote a paragraph.

I have to finish this novel! I just have to, even if it gets done a paragraph at a time. I have never started a novel and not finished it.

I think the sane writing and the insane writing is pretty much the same. Just one was a lot more fun to write and the other not so much.

Though admittedly, I wrote a sane novel and an insane novel before, and my husband told me that the sane one was a lot better. When insane I tend to go all over the place and produce too much because I'm not as focused, so afterwards I have to take a machete to it.

Yes, I feel I have, I use to take a lot of photos, that was my thing, no I dint even have a desire to do that, I also have 4 coloring books collecting dust that I bough what hypo back around Christmas last year...

Whether I'm on an AP or not my creativity comes and goes with the cycles of my life. Yeah I'm pretty sick of the cycles and instability they produce . my creativity is amazing hypo but none existent when depressed and the work I produce while manic seems so good at the time but er...not so much

I think parenthood put the damper on my creativity and bipolar meds killed the last dying ember.

Seventeen years ago when i lived in Vancouver recently i was too poor to afford meds and, yes, i was more creative, but i was miserable and irrational. I much prefer the easy-going, peaceful person i am now even if my walls are bare and i'm about as creative as a sack of hammers.

I am a part-time professional musician (I have a bachelor of music in performance, but just couldn't handle the stressful lifestyle of a freelance musician...) Anyway. My very best performances, the transcendent ones where I felt the spark of the divine come through me and my instrument, where I have connected with something beyond me, where people who have heard me perform for years have said "wow! I've never heard you play like that before, that was so emotional and moving!"... have been when I'm hypomanic. I'm still a good enough musician when I'm stable... but the spark is missing. So yeah... I feel you.

That's why I think so many of the greatest artists, musicians, writers in history were so great... so many of them were reportedly bipolar. They could tap into the divine, think outside the box, create things truly transcendent. Because of course, they weren't always sane when they were creating.

What a gift and a curse we're given.