Are you struggling with ideas for your writing? What to do when your creativity is gone
Have you ever found yourself feeling drained and all out of ideas? Wouldn’t it be great if we could just plug ourselves in and charge up our creativity again? This has happened to me a lot. Which is why I have put together everything I have learned about what to do when your creativity is gone.
You have a full day of working, driving your family everywhere, cooking, tidying and getting ready to do it all again the next day. You eventually manage to sit down at your desk to write but you can’t think of anything. Does this sound familiar?
When you repeat this cycle again and again you can start to feel afraid that you have reached the end of your creativity and ideas.
Imagine what it would be like to be overflowing with ideas. To struggle to write fast enough to keep up with everything that your brain is producing.
I know the fear of feeling like your creativity is gone for good. That is why I have been researching how to improve my creativity levels while also going through the stress and struggle of living life.
And what I found has really helped me to relax. Not only is it possible to improve our creativity levels but a lot of the strategies can be included in our daily routines.
If you struggle with what to do when your creativity is gone then keep reading. I included five of the blog posts that I wrote about creativity below.
What everyone needs to know about creativity
First of all, it is possible for everyone to be creative. Some successful creatives – artists, authors, etc. make creativity sound like some magical, mystical event that only a lucky few are even able to experience.
I think creativity is more accessible than that. And it is a bigger part of our lives than many people presume. I want to demystify creativity so that it does not become a mental block that stops you from writing.
You have to work at your mindset to help you get started. If you are worrying before the pen even touches the page (or your fingers touch the keyboard etc.) then it will be even harder to feel creative. And feeling creative is still not a guarantee that you will be creative but it gets you closer to it. I wrote more on mindset here in this blog post.
Creating periods of rest for the brain is essential for creativity. What I found really interesting when I was researching this is that rest for the brain does not equal rest for the body. In fact, certain activities that require physical movement are ideal for allowing the brain to rest.
These rest activities for the brain include anything that requires repetitive actions like painting a wall or taking a shower. Something you do every day that feels automatic and does not require your brain to be actively involved.
Walking in nature is soothing for many people as well as being a physical activity that requires constant repetition.
Check out the full post here for the action steps.
How to increase creativity
Increasing creativity sounds like creativity is a dial and all you have to do is turn up the dial and creativity levels are increased. Well, if that image works for you it is not too far off.
When you understand what affects creativity then you are able to control your creativity levels. Like anything to do with the human brain, there will be times when it is very difficult and times when it feels incredibly easy. I am going to go through a process that will help you understand what creativity is and how to increase your creativity levels more often.
Ideally, you want to be creative when you sit down to write and create. While that might not happen every time by following this process it will help you to feel creative more often.
We are creative at lots of different times during our day. If we acknowledge the other areas in our day when we are creative it can increase how creative we become when we sit down to write. We also start to think of ourselves as ‘being creative’. For me, I like that being creative is not restricted to when I sit down to write. There is less pressure to be creative when I write when it is spread across the whole day. Writing just becomes another way to express my creativity. It is not the only way.
Click on this link to read the full post that includes the process I use to increase creativity.
9 steps to boost your creativity and improve your novel
Creativity is an essential part of writing fiction. Sometimes this is easy. Your brain is throwing out ideas and suggestions faster than you can write. It feels like a river in full flow. But, then there are times when there are no ideas. Your brain feels empty. The river has completely dried up and there is only a dried out river bed.
There are ways to boost your creativity so that it does not become a mental block. Especially if you have started writing your initial idea and now you feel stuck because it is hard to push through and turn one idea into a full-length novel. Being creative is what helps us to work through blocks in our story. Or to fix problems like lack of action, or not enough dialogue or any of the many other various problems that are part of crafting a narrative.
You can choose any (or all) of these 9 steps and try them out. It’s less of the explanation and theory behind creativity and more of how to immediately start becoming more creative. It really is that simple.
Check out the full article here.
Learn how play can help improve your writing
A lot of the recommended activities are what I consider ‘writing adjacent’. Check out this post where I discuss all about writing adjacent activities. We are not sitting down and adding words to our work in progress but our writing still benefits from the activity.
Sitting at our desks staring at a blank page is only good for building frustration levels. In this article, I include many alternative activities that you can do when your creativity is gone. My favourite is Rory’s Story Cubes.
Play is just as important for adults as it is for children. But the benefits are different. Children play to learn about the world around them. When adults play they improve their mental health and their ability to manage stress. Not all play needs to be outside to be beneficial. Computer games and board games still count as play.
Better weather can make us reminisce about what we did during our younger summers. The freedom of unlimited time to play with no constraints felt amazing. What if you could capture that feeling again, even if it was only for a short while? You can use play to help improve your writing.
That is what I discuss in this blog post. Not only is play beneficial for our mental health but also for our writing. And if you have children in your house on their summer holidays then they could join in.
Read the full post here.
How to find your writing niche
Are you writing what you want to write or what you think you ‘should’ write?
The stories that I want to write all fit into the fantasy genre. Trying to generate ideas for any other genre is a struggle for me. It is one of the reasons why it took me so long to just sit down and write. Even though I had qualifications. I had ideas. But I did not feel that writing what I wanted to write was valid.
Writing for yourself first makes creativity easier. My experiences of writing in school definitely affected how I felt about writing fantasy.
In this blog post I include action steps to help you figure out where your interests lie. Check them out here.
Your creativity might be gone but you can get it back
Even when we are not writing we can still improve our writing. When we are stressed it is a lot harder to be creative. When we are feeling under pressure using our imagination feels impossible. We can improve our creativity by stepping away from our desks
By now, I hope you know that creativity is possible for you. After reading the blog posts you should have at least one technique for how to work towards increasing your creativity levels when your creativity is gone.
To help you here are 3 action steps to get you working towards increasing your creativity.
Action steps for what to do when your creativity is gone
Let go of being critical towards yourself when your creativity is gone
Decide on which techniques you are going to try in the next 24 hours
Do the activity (learning about how to increase creativity is great but action is required to see results)
I hope you feel inspired to take action.
Check out these posts for help with your writing
The comprehensive guide to finding time to write