October 2022

The creative life

We all get stuck, blocked. Usually because we’ve opened the door to doubt. Many of us wrestle with the challenges that our current tumultuous time imposes on our creative process. If you find yourself stuck, easily distracted, here’s some ideas for muting those snarky jabs and doubting voices, and help shake things up.

Play

• Turn off your phone.
• Take a walk. Bring a pen and notecard or your digital camera. Gather surprising things–a note on a telephone poll, a face in a log. Collect lovely images–the brilliant red of a fallen leaf, an unusual bird, the way sun rains through a grapestake fence or branches, the scent of late roses. Open your ears. 
• Read in a different genre. Read a children’s book OR a favorite poem aloud.
• Turn off the news. Turn on music and shake your booty instead. Sing. Sing loudly. Dance like your character would dance. Like you danced in Jr. High. Dance like your grandad.
• Do a jigsaw puzzle. Fit pieces together and let your mind wander. Let the shapes, colors, and images inspire new ideas. Play with your kids blocks or Legos.
• Draw, paint, doodle, or do crafts. Take a sensory journey, tactile and visceral, uncover something you haven’t yet seen in the poem or story you’re crafting. What memories might emerge for your memoir?

A writing prompt for you:

Henry James said: My idea of paradise is a perfect automobile going thirty miles an hour on a smooth road to a twelfth century cathedral.

Write your idea of paradise, or your character’s. Use all of your senses. Or, write from the POV of someone you’ve never met but simply nod to on your morning walk, standing in line for coffee, imagine the paradise of the butcher in your grocery story.