The other day I was talking with a very well known radio personality about how weird it is to have a creative-type job that requires feeling “inspired”.
My dad is a barber. He doesn’t have to be in a creative or inspired mood to cut hair. He just does it. Sure, you have days where you don’t feel like cutting hair, but no worries. You don’t have to be in the zone… you just have to do your job.
Lots of professions are like this.

But when your occupation revolves around preparing sermons, writing books, developing scripts or composing songs, you can’t just create quality stuff non stop. You’re not a machine. Sometimes you feel the flow and sometimes you feel nothing.
When you are feeling it, you might come up with the entire 3 point outline for the sermon in 3 minutes.
When you’re not, you might stare at your computer screen for 3 hours and come up with less than 3 words that are any good.
But you can’t just wait until next week when you might be “feeling it” a little more. This isn’t a hobby.
For the preacher, Sunday’s coming every week, whether you’re ready or not. The production department needs your outline by Thursday, regardless of your mood.

And on Sunday around 11, the people will be looking at you, expecting you to say something. And it had better be good. And serious. And funny. And motivational. And concise. Every single week.

Another example is this blog. I’ve committed to post here at least 5 times weekly. It started as a hobby. Now it’s a serious discipline.
This blog is a major component of my ministry. I speak to thousands of people every week here. It makes my life accessible to people at Elevation that I’ll never personally meet.

Sometimes my biggest concern is how to keep the entry short enough that you’ll actually read it.
Other times I’m tempted to make Lori write something and pretend she’s me because I have absolutely nothing I want to say. You’d never know it was her, would you?
Unless she started talking about really girly stuff or country music.

I’ve heard all kinds of helpful tips for how to deal with creative brain block:
Take a walk, see a movie, listen to U2, listen to Carman, work on something else totally different to clear your mind…
None of these approaches is bad.

But I’ve noticed that a lot of my creative friends (I won’t call any names) who blog take a pretty extreme approach. If they can’t think of anything to post, they just don’t.
They duck out and don’t post anything for weeks, sometimes months at a time.
This is a bad approach.

I mean, if you just set up a blog so Aunt Karen can see pictures of the kids, you’re excused from this discussion. Blog when you want to, and only when you want to. When you’re “feeling it.”
And I’m not saying never take a break from blogging or other forms of creative communication.
Strategic Sabbaths replenish your bandwidth and allow some of your best content to upload.

But you simply can’t just stop creating every time you’re feeling uncreative.
Consistency is a key component of creativity.

Those of us who are in creative professions have to show up whether we feel like it or not, just like the mechanic, the accountant, and the receptionist.
Successful songwriters have one hit song because they wrote 1000 crappy ones.
And eventually, the creative breakthrough happened.

One songwriter told me this:
Half the battle is just showing up.
I think that has profound implications for the blogger and the preacher.

To all my blogging buddies who haven’t posted in over a week:
Just post something.
Anything. You’ll eventually say something good.

To all my preacher pals who are feeling the Monday morning hangover and don’t want to dive in this week because you think yesterday’s sermon flopped:
You’ll be ok. Go download a friend’s sermon on your iPod, take a walk, and start preparing. God will meet with you and speak to you. Wait for Him.

You know what?
I didn’t feel like writing this entry today.
But I just proofed it, and it ain’t half bad.
Glad I showed up.