Christoph Niemann on creation, inspiration and craft

"Your general notion is that doing something nice makes you more confident. With ideas I often find that it’s the opposite. With every good idea you have, it actually becomes more difficult, because it’s so hard to repeat. Of course you can’t repeat… this is where the pain comes in, when I talk about not being good enough, being afraid that you’re out of ideas. You mesure yourself against a lucky moment. And this is really, really painful. You had this one spark three years ago, and then a client asks you to do it again. And you think: “How can I… I won the lottery then. How can you ask me to win the lottery? Under pressure? With a gun to my head?” And this is something, before I consciously thought about it, I just realised: “I’m miserable”. But when I realised that my fears threatened to take a toll on my work, I decided I had to deal with them. “Relax, don’t be so hard on yourself. I actually totally disagree. You have to practice and become better.” Every athlete, every musician practices every day. Why should it be different for artists?"
From Morgan Neville’s Netflix documentary.