Finding Inspiration

Have you ever wanted to create, but you just feel so… UNINSPIRED?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say yes, which is probably why you’re reading this right now.

Whenever I’m in a creative slump, this means that the creative part of my brain has not been working, or essentially has been asleep. The methods I use to find inspiration again, are mainly to get “the wheels in my brain turning”, as they say (Who’s they? Good question because I have no idea). Although sometimes, I’m just tired and in a bad mood of sorts, so I try to do things that put me in a better mood, and then I’m in a better space to create.

Now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, here are my methods for getting me out of a creative slump:

 

1.Writing Prompts- This is what I use most often when I’m in a slump. There are plenty of websites, apps, and books dedicated to writing prompts, though I usually find my prompts online. When I was getting back into writing a couple years ago, this was the best thing I did for myself.

 

 

Here are a couple of my favorite writing prompt websites:

https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises

I also go to the challenges section on Prose, where there are some very interesting prompts created by the users on there.

 

2.Exercise- When I wake up in the morning, I can be really cranky and not in the best of moods. Sometimes this goes away after a few minutes when I’m fully awake, but a lot of the time, it doesn’t. When I’m in a mood (Whether it’s crankiness, or stress) I walk around my neighborhood to clear my head, where sometimes inspiration strikes because of things that happen when I’m out. When I’m more stressed (this was more so when I was in college) I preferred going for runs, because I wanted to burn up all that stressed out energy pent up inside me all day. In college, I would usually go for a run during the day, and then at night, my roommate and I would go for walks.

 

 

 

3. Consuming Other Creative Works– Even though I write, whenever I am in a creative slump, I seek out books, photography, music, poetry, or art pieces, to transport me to another creators world. When I’m inspired here, usually I either want to expand on an idea introduced here, or improve a concept. The latter sounds pretentious, I’ll be honest, but you can’t tell me that you’ve never looked at a piece of creative work and tell me that you haven’t thought, “You know, it would be so much better if they did (insert concept here) this way instead.”  Instead of just thinking that, why don’t you create it for yourself?

 

 

4. Taking a Break- Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to get your creative wheels turning, your brain just is too burned out to do anything (And that’s okay). The best thing to do is to take a step back and have a day to yourself, whether that’s cleaning your house, taking a bath, meditating, having an entire self care day, or going on a day trip, sometimes you just need to give your brain time to just enjoy life. After all, inspiration can strike you at the oddest moments, especially if you aren’t forcing yourself to be creative.

 

 

 

 

Alright everyone, that’s all I have for you today, I hope you feel more inspired in some way! However, it’s important to find what methods work for you, because what works for me, might not necessarily work for you. There may be something I didn’t include on this list that helps you feel inspired that maybe just doesn’t work for me. A good rule of thumb is to always take any advice with a grain of salt, because it might not always work for you.

And on that lovely note, I hope you all have a great rest of your morning/day/evening/night and I will see you in the next post!

-Erin 🙂

Twitter: @ENordhof

Prose: https://theprose.com/ennord