Creative Block: Searching for a breakthrough
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
It has to restart somewhere…
Starting a new blog was easy. The idea was “Unscripted”. There were no rules, no boundaries, just content, unscripted. However, it’s so easy to get caught up in the ideas of making generic content, sieving ideas just to come up with something that is “perfect” and can get more clicks. Setting up my own trap!
A couple of months in, I started to struggle with ideas on what to write. As a person who also sold her soul to academia, this is very common, and I just thought that I needed a break and regroup and get to It later. But later never came. Every other week passed, and I became more unsure of what I wanted to do with this thing. I really have always wanted to be a blogger, but that creativity block was just not leaving. It took me a while to remind myself what I had always wanted to do, so I started to look for solutions.
I cannot prescribe these solutions to anyone yet since as I am still searching for a breakthrough… but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Stop Trying
Try doing something else for a bit. Have a break. The conscious mind is much more likely to get up and running if you let your conscious mind just switch off for a bit. This is also a great time to tap into your subconscious. Exciting things always happen in a semi-sleep state. One way to do this that I have been trying is through guided meditation, one specifically to help tap into your subconscious. It’s a unique experience that allows you to discover things about yourself that might not even be related to what you want to work on. These experiences create a sense of clarity, which puts you in a better space to see what could be.
Change Your Environment
Sometimes all it just takes is shaking up the surroundings a little. Go somewhere different; allow yourself to get a different perspective on the world and your work. It's very easy to get consumed in the world that immediately surrounds you. Just because it's all you see doesn't mean that's all there is.
Spend time with people
All about perspective again. You can always learn from other people and draw inspiration from being around other individuals.
Try Something Different
Again, perspective, sometimes it doesn't have to come from someone else but can come from other creative disciplines. Skillshare is a great place to shop around and just feel something out of your comfort zone or out of your own creative domain. You can always draw inspiration from other creatives.
Stop Worrying
The motivation will return. Your creativity, your passion, your motivation that will return. No one runs out of ideas forever. Everyone goes through this, and worrying about it will just prolong the problem. Trust your mind because it's a lot cleverer than you think.
Don’t Retread Your Steps
You may have had some very successful projects, but there can be dangers when you try to reproduce how good a project happened in the past. The results may never be the same, so embrace doing things differently.
Write around a brick
Someone shared this one with me when I was going through the different steps I was going through to get my breakthrough with this creativity block. So let's say you are struggling to find creative solutions around an issue. You take a step back and then take on a very mundane task, for example, a brick. Explore the different things you can do with a brick. These things can vary from building a house or using it as weights. Tap a little more into your imagination, go crazy with the ideas like "I can use the brick as a pillow", "I can crush it and use it as a blush for my cheeks"… the crazier, the better. After this task, go back to the problem. Basically, what this task has done is to trigger the creative process. That ridiculousness of the task sparks something in your imagination that helps to see the problem in a different light.
These are some of the things I have decided to try out to find my breakthrough. This article is also a stepping stone to get into the habit of writing again, so I hope I will be able to follow through and create content again.
