How to Keep Your Creativity Flowing

Hello, my lovelies!

November is almost halfway gone already! I hope you're all doing well and keeping on track and having a blast.

But whether you’re doing NaNo or not, it’s easy to fall into writing slumps. Your writing starts to drag, you find yourself procrastinating, hitting a brick wall every time you try to write. It’s hard to focus, hard to find the energy to write, hard to get anything done. You’ve hit a creative slump.

It’s time to kick that creativity back into drive.

What Do You Need?

One of the most important things to do when trying to boost your creativity is knowing your cues. They’re different for everyone and only you can really tell what you need. But when it comes time to start taking action you need to know which you need- drive, inspiration, or to disconnect.

Drive:

Sometimes all creativity needs to get going is for you to sit yourself down and force yourself to write. The writer who doesn’t write if he isn’t inspired is going to find himself inspired less and less.

Sometimes you just need to make yourself write. Whether you want to or not, you need to sit down and force yourself to put something on the paper. Anything. Just put words on the paper until you find it easier than before to keep doing that.

Word Wars or Word Sprints:

But sometimes just forcing yourself to write doesn’t work. You’re distracted, you can’t focus, it just doesn’t work. Which is why Word Wars or Word Sprints are a thing.

I first learned about Word Wars from the OYAN community. They’re pretty simple- you find someone to war with you (either in person or via the internet. At the moment the NaNoWriMo group I'm part of has a Word War group in Facebook messenger for this purpose). Then you agree on an amount of time and write until the time is up. Whoever wrote the most words “wins.” NaNoWriMo Word Sprints work the same way, just with a different name.

But sometimes there aren’t other people available to war with and that what are you to do?

NaNoWriMo does have it set up so that you can sprint withyourself. Or you can just use a regular timer. Or, if you’re like me and you like having random apps on your phone, the Forest app is pretty cool. You set a timer and if you don’t use your phone the entire time it’s running you grow a little tree (or a bush, if you set the timer for a shorter amount of time). It’s really adorable and I like having all my little trees.

But regardless of how you do it, the idea of the timer is to give you pressure to keep you focused on the story. You don’t have time to think about other stuff or you can’t work on other stuff if your phone is “locked” (the Forest app doesn’t actually lock your phone, but it does know when you use it so the moment you open something else it asks you if you want to kill the tree!!)

Break It Into Pieces:

But maybe timers aren’t your thing. Or maybe you just don’t want to do that right this second.

Something I use all the time is to break it into small little chunks. It works better if you have something like NaNoWriMo or Pacemaker to keep track of your progress, but I have done it without those before.

Basically how it works is I take the number of total words I’ve written on the project and the number of words I’ve written that day and I’m constantly trying to get one of them to a rounded number. So if I’m at 12,258 words and I want to reach 13,500 words for the day, instead of just setting my goal for 1,242 words and getting stressed I break it up.

I start with the 12,258 and I tell myself that I only have to write 242 words to get myself to 12,500 words. Then when I reach that number, I look and see that I ended up writing 257 words so if I write another 243 words I’ll have written 500 words today. But once that’s written I only have 242 words until I reach 13,000 words.

It just keeps going like that until I reach my word count for the day and then some. On days when I do this, I usually end up doubling my word count because I just keep telling myself to write another 200 words or so. And it usually goes by pretty fast- on Saturday I wrote almost 3,000 words in less than two hours by doing this.

Inspiration:

But sometimes just sitting down and writing isn’t enough and no matter how many tricks you have up your sleeve, it’s not enough. Sometimes you need inspiration.

Inspiration comes from finding things connected to your story to help you get excited about it all over again. You’re missing a piece of the puzzle and you just need to find it again.

The first step is identifying what piece you’re missing. Sometimes you have some research that needs done or you need a clearer direction on what happens next. Or sometimes you don’t know what you need, you just know something is missing.

Research:

Research is a rather easy fix in that if you know what needs researched then all you have to do is take the time to do it. Go to the library or start Googling until you start to feel inspired to write again.

If you’re retelling a story sometimes your research might be as simple as rereading the original tale over again to remind yourself of the details and look for things you might have missed the other times you read it.

Think it Through:

Finding direction is a bit more difficult. Sometimes it helps to have a friend help with this- someone who is willing to talk the story through with you to offer advice or suggestions or just a sounding board for your ideas. Try outlining or going back over the notes you originally made about this story (if you’re like me and you made those notes in the first place).

Character Sketches:

Try doing some character sketches to help ground who your characters are, solidifying them in your mind. I really like Charahub’s questions. I’ve also used a journal with writing prompts before, with things like “What does paradise look like for you” or “What are some things you would like to pass onto your children?” I answer them as if the character is the one writing the entry and that helps me not only get to the heart of their thought process but also offers me insight into aspects of them that I might not have tapped into before.

Plus it’s just a lot of fun.

Know What Inspires You:

I love having a Pinterest board for each of my stories to pull up at the moments when I need a quick inspiration fix. My boards are usually a mix of pictures that remind me of the aesthetic and tone of the story along with quotes that fit the characters and themes.

Music also inspires me so listening through a playlist for my story or trying to track down some new songs to add can be the much needed inspirational recharge that I need.

Know what inspires you most and partake in that- if I’m writing a sci-fi I might watch a sci-fi movie or immersing myself in a fantasy might be helpful if that’s what I'm working on.

But be careful- it’s easy to blur the lines between plagiarism and inspiration. Make sure that you aren’t even inadvertently stealing elements from someone else’s story to fix your own. For example, while I might watch a sci-fi show while writing a sci-fi, I always try to avoid retellings of the fairy tale I’m retelling. This month I’m writing a Snow White/Robin Hood story so I avoid all kinds of Snow White or Robin Hood media. It’s easy for me to get confused on what is part of the original tale and what is someone else’s interpretation and to keep it from getting all muddled up I just avoid those things for the duration of my writing process.

Disconnecting:

But what happens when the drive tricks aren’t working and the inspiration is just stressing you out? You try disconnecting.

To disconnect you need to step away from the story entirely and work on other things. This is hard if you’re like me and your stories take up a good portion of your life.

But sometimes it’s easy to get so immersed in your story that you get overwhelmed. Sometimes what your story needs it for you to take a step back, breathe, and come back to it later with fresh eyes and a new perspective.

Find a Distraction:

Sometimes you just need to step away and do something else for a little bit- take a shower, finish a chore, read a book or watch a movie (preferably something outside the genre you’re writing), bake something. Find a task that isn’t linked to your story and throw yourself into it for a time.

Sometimes when I’m particularly stressed I’ll even set a time limit for myself- I can’t think about this story for the next hour or four hours or even the rest of the day.

Walk Away:

Sometimes the physical act of walking away from your story is all you need. Go for a walk, make plans to go out with friends, do your grocery shopping. Get out of the house and breathe. I write in my house most of the time so most of my stories are tied to my house mentally- when I leave without a notebook or my laptop it’s easy for me to disconnect completely from the story since it’s my house that I associate with the story.

Know the Difference:

The biggest thing to know though, with all of this, is whether you actually need inspiration or to disconnect or if you’re just procrastinating. My greatest enemy is putting off writing simply because I don’t feel like doing it. It’s easy to mistake lack of desire to write for lack of inspiration.

Sometimes there comes a point, after you disconnect and look for inspiration, that you need to put your butt in the chair and you need to write. You can only make so many character sketches before it becomes time to stop putting it off and just start writing.

So learn your cues and know what you’re doing- since I often take Sundays off, Mondays can be hard for me to get back into the writing groove, so on Mondays I know I need to give myself an extra push to write. I rarely allow myself to take time off on Mondays because I know those days that I’m not in need of anything other than a kick in the pants.

But forcing yourself to write when there is legitimately a problem will only produce more frustration and can often be bad for your story in the end. So if you aren’t sure what you need, it won’t hurt to take a little time off from writing to work on something else. Just make sure you don’t take too much time off and you recognize that there comes a point where you have to kick yourself back into gear again.

Conclusion:

Writing is hard and it’s always good to know what you need to keep from burning out. And if you feel you might be in danger of that, make sure you take the time to take care of yourself. Writer self-care is very important.

But also know what you need and don’t use “writer self-care is important” as an excuse to put off doing the things you know you need to do. Your words won’t get written unless you write them.

I’ll be back on Friday for another movie review and I hope to see you then. Until the next time we meet, don’t forget to live happily ever after <3

~Jennifer Sauer, the Ivory Palace Princess

P.S. Let’s Chat! What are some ways you find inspiration? What are your favorite ways to disconnect from your writing?