Three Ways To Spark Creativity When You’re Feeling Uninspired

In the before times, you and creativity were on fire. You snuck off and hid out under the bleachers, passionately penning a poem. You spent long nights together in your room pouring your heart out about being young and misunderstood. Lit up by inspiration, you bravely released your stories out in the world and swelled with pride when people raved.

Then everything fell apart.

Now, you can barely get through writing the grocery list. 

You sit down to start a blog post, cupcake ipsum (it’s a thing!) reads better. 

You seduce creativity with colored gel pens, light candles, pour wine, and whisper, “ . . . let’s write a poem.” 

Ghosted. 

How did your incandescent imagination turn into a cinderblock? 

As you got older, the little writer inside of you who viewed the world with rosy wonder and marveled at emotions got rolled a few too many times. Playfulness and creativity caused unwanted attention and left you open to be judged or get your feelings steamrolled. 

Your inner explorer morphed into your inner critic.

So, you locked up your imagination and got serious. You dulled your colors, dimmed your lights, and fell in line. You went from playing in a box and calling it a castle to working in a box and calling it a cubicle. 

So then, this the end?

Nope. 

It’s never too late to rekindle your brilliance and let it shine.

Here’s why: Creativity is a mindset, and you already contain 100% of what you need to move past resistance and reactivate your creative spark.

To get to the other side, you will have to sift through your messy mind, littered with fear piles and coated in doubt dust. I know this sounds totally stressful, and no way is doubt dust good for your sinuses. 

So, why bother? Because. . . 

At some point the pain you experience from not expressing your ideas hurts more than the discomfort you feel when some blowhard judges them (spoiler: the judge may be you).

When you step up and own your voice, writing becomes a liberation instead of a liability.

Let’s get to work.  

Here are three steps you can start doing today to shift your mindset and welcome creativity back home.

1. Freewrite

If you believe that creativity flows in a neat and orderly line comprising bullet points of truth and wisdom, you are in for disappointment––and missing the point. Creativity is a wild ride, and your challenge is to embrace the whole process. Our minds are cluttered, uncharted territory. If you want to access the gems, you have to mine. And your pickax is freewriting.

Freewriting is simply sitting down for a specified amount of time and writing anything that comes to mind. Anything. 

Seriously, you can start off with lalallalalalalalalalalalawritingsucksihatewritinglalalalalalalalalalalala.

Start writing and don’t stop. Write about the color of the sky out the window, or the unfortunate spot your cat chose to perch and groom himself. Next thing you know, your mind might start pondering how quickly the sky color changes, or if cats are alien life forms sent to Earth to lord over humans. Then, it’s anyone’s guess how weird things get from there. 

You don’t have to be silly with freewriting. If there is something on your mind, start exploring the idea—a memory from your past, a fear about your future. You might even ask yourself to reveal what’s blocking your inspiration. What’s scaring you? What’s fueling your resistance?

I promise, if you let the words flow freely, your mind will take you places that you were never aware existed. If you just do one thing, let this be it.

Set aside twenty minutes each day for freewriting. Consistency is key here. I like to do it first thing in the morning to loosen up my brain for the day. But, if your mornings are not your jam, then by all means write at night. Use a notebook, iPad, laptop, whatever you want, and invite the words to come out. It doesn’t have to be pretty or poetic. It doesn’t even have to make sense. Do not even consider editing or wordsmithing this! No one ever has to see it, and you never have to look at it again. 

You will be blown away how this sparks your imagination. If you write, things will come up. The more you commit to this and make it a daily habit, the more you will be able to access your creativity on command.

This simple step is the beginning of cultivating a forever writing practice.

2. Nice gals finish, period 

We are all wicked individuals when it comes to the way we talk to ourselves. If we’re honest, there isn’t much that some stranger on the internet can say about us, some judgement they can make, that even comes close to our inner critic. We are experts in our own insecurities, so our self-criticism cuts the deepest—and it brings the salt, lemon juice, and staph for good measure. 

We are paralyzed by the fear of others judging us, thinking we are stupid, or ignoring us completely. But what’s really holding us back is that mean girl in our heads. Our first job is to muzzle her and get her over to the bright side by rewriting the nasty, negative stories we tell about ourselves as writers.

What if being a writer and telling your stories isn’t about you at all? What if instead it’s about the reader on the other end who will find humor, comfort, identity, solace, motivation, or resolve in your words? Would you still be so hard on yourself if you thought that writing is less about you being seen and more about others seeing themselves in your words?

Let’s review some facts. Creativity and writing are not exclusively for a chosen few—it’s your birthright as much as anyone else’s to express yourself and tell your unique story. Brilliant writers aren’t born that way; they are a product of practice and curiosity. Everyone has to start somewhere, and I invite you to start right now, where you are at. 

We are conditioned to think that heroic tales and extraordinary circumstances are all anyone is interested in. But, to a woman in her 40’s that is trying to figure out what the f*** to do with her life, a heroic feat may just be getting through the day. Reading stories with pages like mirrors helps us wade through the confusion. 

No matter who you are, your voice and your story matter. And you have the right to tell it. I would even go a step further and say that you have an obligation to tell it. The narratives readily available to us are sorely lacking in diversity and do not represent the breadth and depth of our societies. Imagine for a minute if women from every station in life flooded the world with their experiences and wisdom. My guess is that compassion would crush judgement.

So, if you have been told (or told yourself) that your ideas are self-absorbed or boring or commonplace, I’m telling you that is a lie. Someone just like you is out there waiting to know that they are not the only one. You are not writing for vanity; you are writing for connection. 

3. Practice covers imperfect

If you are feeling called to write, don’t wait to be a master grammarian or have a vocabulary the length of a yard stick. I encourage you to start now right where you are—everyone starts at the beginning, and it’s a badge of honor to be brave enough to start at all!

But you have to start. (Today works!)

To become a better writer, you have to write, make mistakes, learn, and write more.

There are no shortcuts. There are no substitutions.

Write. Release. Repeat.

The idea of writing something and releasing it without having loads of experience and proven skills is terrifying. Oh, I get it. Being a beginner sucks. But it’s also magical because there are no outside expectations––you have room to experiment and explore. Your work won’t be perfect, but you have to put it out there anyway. 

 Remember what I said earlier about great writers being a product of practice and curiosity? This is the intersection where you can begin to develop your skills. 

The secret beauty of putting out lots of imperfect work instead instead of just one glittering masterpiece is this: if you make a mistake or regret an idea, it’ll be buried in the volume of work you produce. If someone judges you on one thing, they’ll forget about it when you impress the hell out of them with the next thing. Just keep writing! 

Don’t get discouraged when writing is hard—whoever decided hard was a bad thing anyway? The happiness you experience from sharing something beautiful that you’ve created far outweighs any discomforts you experience along the way.