Do the thing first thing in the morning. Just 5-minutes.

Otherwise, life will get in the way. If you can take it to bed with you and have it at your bed side, do it in bed first thing in the morning.

I think it was Jerry Saltz (How to Be an Artist) that gave this advice and it helps me when I need to begin my creative practice again. Basically the demons of the day will take priority eventually so you might as well cheat a bit and get some time to create for yourself. I think the rest of these tips actually came from this book

Some more advice: warm up, make a piece of shit, and take a break if you hate it.

Warm up: For me and drawing “warming up” looks like drawing circles or repeating shapes or lines or squiggles until I feel I have a good control for my pen/pencil/marker/etc. This can take a while but eventually those pen strokes get more confident for me.

Make a piece of shit: Make anything. Don’t let starting at zero keep you from trying anything (blank canvas fear). Eventually, even if you make something crummy, you’ll have practiced and used your creative problem solving skills and will be better for it next time. I see creativity in my drawing as constantly solving a problem: “how do I incorporate this errant brush stroke? How can I improvise with this ‘mistake’ here? Crap, I shouldn’t have used that color..but maybe now I can use this color I don’t normally use!” When drawing, I might just scribble all over or color the whole page to get over the fear.

Take a break: don’t take frustration as defeat. Sometimes you need water, food, to live life a bit to get over a creative hurdle. You can always come back to a creative project days, weeks, months, years later. And all the lived experiences that came in between working on the piece will come through in your creation. I think Virgina Wolf used to toss crummy stuff into a drawer for years at a time to come back and build on them later. don’t quote me on it.

Additional reading:

Art Matters Because Your Imagination Can Change the World by Neil Gaiman