Just say "No" to anything that keeps you from being creative

Interesting article on the reality of being creative: while there are a very few figures in history that sat down one night and just scribbled out a masterpiece or painted something that created an entire genre of art or transcribed an epic tale straight from their imagination onto the page, there are even fewer who can be said to have sat down the next night and done it again. The rest of us need to sweat and toil, cry and bleed, beg and plead with our muse to inspire us, try and fail and try again and again until we create something we feel is worthwhile, inch by painful inch. It takes work and perseverance, and often the casual observer at a gallery or ticketholder at a concert or a reader of a great novel will never know of nor grasp the full depth of the work it took to produce the art they are now at liberty to enjoy.

I struggle with this myself all the time -- when I get home from the day job, a very vocal part of my psyche wants to sit down and play a game or see what's on TV or make myself a snack -- in short, anything except working on my art, because in a very real way, it is work, regardless of whether I enjoy it. I just got home from working one job, so starting to work on another doesn't seem that appealing.

What I always have to focus myself upon is the satisfaction that comes from creating something new and beautiful, and that it is ultimately more fulfilling than killing a screenful of zombies or watching videos of people's cats. I do this sometimes by stopping to look at the prints I've chosen to hang on my wall, and appreciate the things I did right as well as lessons I learned when I took each shot. Sometimes I take a moment to look up the work of other artists, to see what directions my own work might go, either in relation to or in reaction to what I see other people are doing. Sometimes on my way home from work, I'll stop by the grocery store or local park and take a moment to really look and see what colors or textures I can find that catch my eye, and this can give me ideas of what I could do in other aspects of my art.

So when you're tired or bored and want to inspire yourself to do something creative, how do you do it? What things in your life take away from your creative focus that you must say "No" to?.