There’s a specific kind of creative stuckness that doesn’t get enough credit for how awful it feels.
It’s not dramatic, or even a proper creative block, and you don’t have to be that classic ‘tortured artist’ archetype to experience it.
No, it’s much quieter than that and more subtle. More insidious.
It’s the moment when you want to make something —genuinely, tangibly— but when you try to reach for an idea, your whole system jams. Nothingness, along with a blank page that somehow feels accusatory.
People assume that blankness means you don’t have ideas, but it’s almost never that.
In fact, how would you even know if you were out of ideas?
Most of what we create starts in the places we’re not consciously tracking: the scraps, flashes, micro-impressions, half-thoughts, the emotional weather patterns moving under the surface. Creativity doesn’t begin with a clear concept; it begins with the felt-sense of something wanting to move. So when you feel blank, it’s not that nothing exists. It’s usually that something is there and you just can’t access it yet.
What actually happens is the machine voice shows up early and blocks the bridge before the subconscious material even has a chance to rise. Blankness isn’t emptiness. It’s interference. And the moment people realize that, they start to recognize how much is actually bubbling under the surface, waiting for safer conditions.
The subconscious doesn’t speak in ideas—it speaks in urges, textures, flashes, and impulses. And those get shut down fastest of all.
We’re trained to evaluate faster than we imagine. Imagination is a tool that many adults have forgotten how to use. So for most people, the critique impulse activates before the creative impulse even forms.
SO OF COURSE it doesn’t feel safe to create when the ideas that have come through get labelled as: Wrong; Too boring; Too ambitious; Too embarrassing; Too meaningless.
This is the part of you that evaluates, critiques, self-surveils, and demands justification waking up all before anything has even begun. Before the pencil touches the paper. Before the idea has a chance to have a shape or even a crooked line.
And because the idea arrives into a firing squad instead of a studio, it dies immediately.
No wonder it feels like there’s “nothing.”
The Real Reason We Get Stuck
We think we’re stuck because we can’t think of anything to make. But more often, we’re stuck because we can’t think of anything that feels safe to make.
Safe from judgment.
Safe from failure.
Safe from the fear of making something cringe, trivial, wasteful, or off-brand.
Creativity doesn’t require safety, but starting does.
Especially when the shame-voice is loud. Especially when you’ve internalized that art must be purposeful or aesthetic or meaningful before it earns the right to exist.
And we internalize the demand that art must justify itself because we’ve been raised inside systems that treat creativity as output, branding, or productivity—not expression.
So what do we do?
We hack the system, bypass the gate and we outsmart the machine—by refusing to give it anything to evaluate.
This is where the idea of a menu comes in.
A menu lets you begin without having to decide what you’re beginning.
You’re able to respond and react because you’re following a tiny thread, a prompt. It allows a side door entry point into creating without performance, and in a way where we can set down expectations more easily. And no “good idea” is required.
The menu is just a starting point, and one small enough to slip past the gatekeeper unnoticed.
How These Menus Work (but not in a rules way)
Pick one prompt. Or let it pick you. Or roll a die.
Or choose the one that annoys you the most— that’s usually fertile ground.
Spend 2–5 minutes. Stop early if you want.
Let it be unfinished, unremarkable, unimportant.
Let it be bad in a way that feels honest.
The goal isn’t the art itself.
The goal is the crack in the wall, the moment the pressure drops and something inside you can breathe again.
That’s it.
Alright. Here are the first three menus.
Not the full spread, just the ones I think are the best entry point when your brain is tired, self-conscious, or overfull.
The Low-Stakes Starter Menu
For when your hands want to move but your brain refuses to participate.
- Make a mark with your non-dominant hand
- Draw something without lifting your pencil
- Scribble until you see a shape and outline it
- Use only two colours
- Make the tiniest drawing you can
- Draw the edge of a shadow
- Make a texture, not a picture
- Close your eyes and draw a line that feels like your mood
- Fill a page with circles
The Anti-Perfection & Rebellion Menu
For when the shame-voice is loud and trying to drive the bus.
- Draw the same simple object three times badly
- Make the “ugliest” thing you can in 3 minutes
- Break a rule you were taught in art class
- Copy a childhood scribble with reverence
- Draw too fast
- Draw too slow
- Make a drawing using only mistakes
- Ruin a clean page courageously
- Start something you refuse to finish
The Somatic-Sensation Menu
For when meaning is too heavy but your body still knows how to move.
- Draw at the speed of your breath
- Make marks that match the pressure in your chest
- Let your hand wander without planning
- Draw your fatigue as a shape
- Draw a line for every ache or twinge
- Map the temperature of your body
- Make marks that reflect your heartbeat
- Draw the space behind your eyes
- Draw with your grip being too soft
If you try any of these, I’d genuinely love to know what happened; especially if you hated the prompt at first and it still cracked something open.
If these menus help, tell me.
I’m considering turning them into downloadable cards or a free starter kit for subscribers.
The Bad Art Teacher philosophy isn’t about becoming a better artist. It’s about the liberation.
It’s about breaking the chokehold of evaluation so your creative life can move again, even when the first marks are messy, strange, pointless, or unfinished.