Getting Your Creative House in Order
-Darren Kehrer-
This may only be my limitation, but I find that it’s hard to
be creative when my actual daily life has “to-do” items populating the virtual
list in my mind. That list tends to muddy the waters of my creative wellspring
of ideas.
Knowing that limitation, I try to clear the plate of
immediate, necessary tasks so that my brain isn’t spinning away on those items
and soaking up available creative bandwidth. The way I see it, you only have a
few options to offset this logjam to creative productivity:
1. Get those tasks completed so you have that sense
of satisfaction and your non-writing slate is clean.
2. Get out of the environment that is “homeport”
for those tasks. Head to your favorite local coffee shop, tea joint, or cubby
in a corner.
3. Realize your limitation with this obstacle, be
honest with yourself, and then structure your creative writing time around it
to form a better navigation strategy.
Maybe for you it’s the laundry, fixing dinner for the
family, getting the kids homework completed, getting the lawn taken care of, balancing
your checkbook, or just other tasks from your “day” job (if that applies to
you).
There are SO many things that can clog up the creative pipelines.
Identify yours and put a plan into place to clear those out before your
creative writing time begins. The persons that will benefit most from this are
your future readers.
