The Mirror, Not the Maze
You’re not blocked because you’re out of ideas.
You’re blocked because you haven’t decided who you are in the creative process.
You haven’t decided who you are in relation to AI.
Once you know that, the work begins to flow.
We spend a lot of time talking about inspiration, strategy, productivity hacks. But before any of that can matter, there’s a deeper truth to face:
Your work is shaped by your identity, your beliefs, your artistic influences, your passions. And if you so choose, your relationship to AI.
Are you the vessel, letting ideas flow through without judgment?
Are you the sculptor, chiseling meaning from raw chaos?
Are you the outlaw, breaking forms to find truth?
Or are you the lazy prompter, cut-and-paste guy? The guy who put his brain in sleep mode, then asked AI to spit out something that favors the latest algorithm trend?
If you haven’t claimed who you are, what your role, your voice, your position is, then of course the process feels like a maze.
Or worse.
You become the puppet through which AI express its function.
You’ve put away your inner compass, and completely turned over the process to AI.
And you’ll sound and read like everyone else who does this with AI if you let it take you on the digital mazes it travels through.
I didn’t use AI to create my suspense graphic novel, but the creative process was similar, a give and take of my ideas against the ideas that appeared during the writing and drawing process.
You can get your copy here.
But once you claim your position, when you say, “This is who I am with the work, and this is what WE’RE going to do,” then everything begins to shift.
You’re establishing that this is a partnership guided by your unique creative vision.
Rituals emerge.
Resistance takes form.
The creative terrain becomes navigable.
Not easy.
All new creative partnerships have an awkward phase.
In mythology, identity is never given. It’s forged through tests, through trials who you really are.
The same is true for artists.
You don’t find your creative self by sitting still. You find it in the fire.
Writing. drawing, experimenting with technology.
But you’re also not going to find it if you give AI a prompt and then post that without finding your vision through a series of prompts and edits.
You’re guided by a vision, but remain flexible to that element of unpredictability, the random x-factor AI will bring into this creative game you’re engaging in.
Where you engage as a creator, using technology.
Not a passenger of the technology.
You may not know immediately what you want, but the process of discovery mimics the same as without AI.
Try something, see what you get, refine the prompt, till you get something that resonates with the Muse.
Something that makes you say, “We’re done. For now.”
So, you’re not stuck.
You’re just not anchored in your unique, un-reproduceable human voice.
Retain this voice in the process, and the process becomes a mirror, not a maze.
What kind of creator are you when you sit down with the work?
I agree 100%.
"You don’t find your creative self by sitting still. You find it in the fire.
Writing. drawing, experimenting with technology. "