I’m stuck. Dried up, dulled down, depleted. Thudding through creativity’s long drought.
Do you know this state, and how do you get through?
A Note on What Not To Do: A few years ago, during an especially deep well of sadness, a “friend” offered (unsolicited) advice: Find your joy!
I gave a tight smile, snarled inside, and scratched her off my list. Because when you’re deep in the well, pushing a peppy platitude is just another punch to the gut. But I digress. Or do I? A deep sadness, after all, creeps into the mind in the same way a creative block bars the doors of expression. And because they share so many traits, perhaps the remedy is the same: Be gentle, be patient, move your body, and kick the inner critic to the curb.
I like this advice: keep trying.
Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.
— Susan Griffin, from Thoughts on Writing: A Diary, an essay in The Writer on Her Work.
When I’m feeling down and stuck and creativity feels in a rut, I need encouragement and tricks. What gets you going, hand moving, words flowing?
Here’s a favorite writing prompt that I’ve been leaning on lately:
Lift A Line
Getting into the music and pace of a poem you like can help stir your own ideas and leaps of possibility. This exercise is borrowing a line, but also borrowing a rhythm and confidence that nudges you forward in a reminder of your own creative power.
1. Read a poem.
2. Borrow a passage or line as a launch to your own poem.
3. Write. Don’t think, just keep writing.
4. Give attribution to the line.
My poem above borrows the line — it has saved my life — from Mary Oliver’s poem, Loneliness, from Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.
Your turn: Pick a poem, lift a line, write on!
More Writing Prompts:
Try This: Word Catching
Try This: Where I’m From
Try This: Make A Scramble
Try This: You Know the Gnaw
•••
If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered directly to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend.
The world turns on words, please read & write.