Need Help Refilling Your Creative Well? (Penny Rader)

Since we’re discussing our creative writing wells this month, I thought I’d poke around the Internet and see what sort of advice I could find. Below are snippets of a few articles I found.  I hope you’ll read the authors’ entire articles.

5 Ways to Boost Your Creativity --  And Generate More and Better Article Ideas (Linda Formichelli)

• Read magazines -- but not the ones you usually read.
• Get literary.
• Go away.
• Get outside.
• Find another way,

The Artist’s Date: Take Time To Refill Your Creative Well (Joanna Penn)

This idea comes from Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” which is a fantastic book. It is basically some time alone absorbing and refilling your creative well. It can be something entirely different, like a pottery class or a show, or could just be a walk or a new gallery exhibition. Anything that gives your brain some new stimulation and takes you away from your work in progress and your ‘normal’ life. It should be alone so you have time to reflect and can be an hour, a day or longer. (I am hankering after a writer’s retreat one of these days!)

How to Recover & Recharge from Creative Burnout (Alexia Petrakos)

• Dump it all out.
• Escape for a while. Leave your studio as it is, messes & all.
• Read a book. Make sure it’s something you enjoy, and not a self-help book.
• Take a walk outside.
• Sleep!

Don’t take too long recharging. Sometimes too much rest can lead to laziness.

How to Refill Your Creative Well (Cindy Barrilleaux)

For a couple of days or more, change your writing routine.  Instead of working on your manuscript, experiment with a variety of writing exercises. Do free writes, a la Natalie Goldberg, guided exercises, play around with poetry.  The main thing is to let loose, drop your inner editor, and write freely, unconcerned with results. After all, they’re only writing exercises.

Recharging the Creative Well (Linda Andrews)

• Look at art.
• Read.
• Stare at the stars.
• Cook.
• Scrapbook.
• Watch HGTV.
• Watch a movie, documentary, or TV show.
• Sew.
• Garden.
• Learn something new.

Refill & Recharge (Dani Wade)

• Artist Date
• Reward Day
• Go to the movies
• Girls Night Out
• Share a movie or game night with your family or some friends once every couple of weeks
• Minute Saviors – ideas that can take as little as 1 minute, or as much as 60.

Refilling the Well (Rox Delaney)

From WARA's own Roxann:

• Find a quiet spot to think or just "be"
• Spend time with friends, both writing and non-writing, especially ones I don't see often
• Sleep or take a nap without interruption
• Go outside and watch the clouds drift by
• Find a place away from the street lights--away from the city--to once again enjoy the beauty of the night sky
• Take a leisurely walk in the park, not for exercise or any reason other than the sheer joy of it
• Go to the park and swing
• Sit by the water and listen to the sounds it makes
• Find a new and unusual shop and explore
• Watch favorite movies for a full day

Refilling the Well (Mistina Picciano)

• Read fiction.
• Read about craft.
• Connect with other writers.
• Write anyway.

Refilling the Well (Kerry Schafer)

And so, I look for healing and refilling in the little things, in the odd moments scattered throughout the day. A picture that I love, hung where I see it every time I walk by. A hummingbird watching me hang out the laundry. A purring cat. A hug. Reading a great book. Talking to friends. Even just taking a moment to stand on my front porch barefoot, eyes closed, soaking in the energy from the world around me with every pore.

Ten Ways to Fill Your Creative Well (Catherine Castle)

• Visit nature.
• Take a long bubble bath.
• Read a book by an author you love.
• Get your favorite movie and watch it, dissecting it as you go.
• Meditate on your writing,
• Free write.
• Brainstorm with another writer about your story.
• Stuck for an idea? Read your Writer’s Market to come up with ideas.
• Read a writer’s magazine.
• Write an article for your blog, someone else’s blog or a newsletter

~~~

Do you have any favorite way to refill your creative well?  I'd love to hear them.

REFILLING THE WELL or FILLING the PAGE J Vincent

Water well’s run dry for many reasons:  overuse, poor structure, careless use, obstruction, and drought are a few.  When the water well runs dry we call a professional to come and fix.  Water, after all is life.  We cannot do without it.

Some of the same problems can happen to that well of words we draw on to write our stories and tell our tales.  And words, the flow of them onto monitor or paper, onto whatever medium we use, is life for the writer.  We cannot continue to exist without that flow.  When the words start to stutter, to hesitate, to refuse to drop onto that blank page in our minds we seldom think to call a profession.  We may try to ignore the problem or more likely try to fix ourselves--write in a different place, write on another topic.  Then I hear, think, or say “write” and I sigh.  The sigh summons distractions easily latched onto and I avoid facing the problem.  But sooner or later, a I come face to face with that blank unyielding page.  But the page isn’t really blank.  Let’s look at mine.  The words aren’t listed in any sort of order.  I just wrote word associations after thinking about why my well went dry and how to refill it.  
 

Schedule.  There are only so many minutes in an hour, hours in a day.  At times I have scheduled almost every one of those and not with writing activities.  My fix for this one is to evaluate my priorities, and writing isn’t the only one on the list.  One of the most important items is often not on any of our priority lists and that is SELF.  A worn out, over-worked, ill-fed, poorly rested person will have difficulty writing--or more succinctly, cannot write well.

Goals:  How long would the Jews have wandered in the desert if they hadn’t been headed to the Promised Land?  Probably more than forty years.  I do not have that kind of time.  Success breeds success just as failure does the opposite.  When I’m stuck writing I start with a tiny, cannot fail goal and work my way up to larger ones.  A goal gives a target and I’m always more libel to reach it if I have one than if I don’t.

Nurture/Freedom:  These two are parts of many of the other.  For example, one of the best ways to nurture your writing is to read and read a lot.  Take time to do that, to marvel at other author’s, to let their enthusiasm renew yours.   Or give yourself the freedom to cultivate your writing by not writing.  Take some time to let go.  Any repetitive act makes one weary; a forced repetitive act leads to dead ends.  Not that there isn’t a time to push through no matter what but that is for another blog.

Stimulate/Relax:  Again this is bound with others and it’s also a two-head coin--one  where you won’t lose the toss.  Many things can stimulate but also relax.  A visit to the art gallery, a day of browse shopping, a favorite restaurant with favorite friends, travel.  “Travel?”  You read that and think, I wish or Get real.  No time, no money--go on a YouTube trip.  Browse YouTube inspirational videos--here are just three I find refreshing:

Gregorian Chant with Scenery,  Cathedral of the Pines  or  Flowers in October

Create/Fun:  Bake a decadent cake.  Color a mural with a child.  Play hopscotch or run through a fountain.  Write a limerick, a pun, an impromptu paragraph about bats in the belfry.  Arrange flowers, quilt, sew, crochet.  Lay back, close your eyes and dream.  Think of the most carefree, non productive activity you can conjure and do it.  Just do it.

Reward:  All of the above have rewards built in by their nature.  They may or may not be directly writing related but anything that renews the spirit, refreshes the soul, and revives the will has a blessed way of planting seeds of growth.  A word, a phrase, a sentence.  Bit by bit, filling the well, filling the page.

For a wacky fix to refilling your will visit  Recharge your Magick.  It’s for witches who need help refreshing their spells.  Writing is sort of witch/spell/magic-like.  Get a chuckle while you get inspired.