I attended a creative writing workshop last year with work and some really interesting tips came out of it to encourage creativity when inspiration runs dry. I write social media posts for my job every day and I write them for my blog, also every day. Sometimes it’s hard to force my brain to work in a creative way and I notice that my writing becomes boring and brief, everything looks and reads the same.
One of the tips offered in this course was to write out a train of unconscious thought, I always find that when you have to do something like that the thought becomes suddenly very conscious. But none the less, just sprout out random words and see what they make you think of, colours, food, names, animals, whatever comes into your mind. Then pick one of those words and write a short paragraph based around it. If you have the time I think this is a brilliant way to inspire some creativity. Of course we’re not always at the mercy of plenty of time to write out a short story at work or on a day to day basis, so other alternatives perhaps?
There’s two other places I go to for inspiration; Twitter and outside, quite different right?
Twitter is a brilliant place for me because my writing is for social media, it is full of inspirations. I follow a variety of people offering me really varied content and I love seeing the different writing styles. This is such an easy and fast way to scan across different types of content and take some inspiration from it. You’ll find your own social channels will benefit from taking a look at other people’s, but you can also see what other people are sharing, blogs, articles, books. It’s a great way to discover new writing and new websites, you never know where you inspiration will peak from!
The outside seems like a fairly obvious choice, it’s hard to be inspired by an environment you see everyday such as your office, your bedroom etc. Whether you take a stroll for ten minutes, a hike for an hour or drive to a coffee shop, getting out will show you a little moment of the world that you could feel inspired by (although it might not look quite like this). I love people watching, sometimes I will make up stories for strangers in my head, give these people a different history. It’s fun to let yourself get carried away if you can manage it, but if that’s a bit too silly for you then just focus on being out of the house. Have a goal in mind, you can’t go back home without a solid blog post idea or you can’t leave your cafe without having at least planned out your next weeks worth of content. Whatever works best for you, utilise the change in environment and work with it to your advantage.
What tips do you have to get your creative juices flowing?
