Free Flow: Get Up and Create

Water: Free Flow: get up and createIf you’re stifled at the keyboard unable to find your free flow: get up and create.

It’s a common thing with authors and other creative types. You want to create but the creativity won’t flow.

Right-brain wants to tap away and get practical things done, like add to the word count. Left-brain refuses to be bullied into delivering awe-inspiring content like some dance-monkey prodded with a stick. So what do you do?

Get up, leave the desk, leave the keyboard ad go do something mundane. This occupies right-brain enough that left-brain gets the peace and tranquility to tick over and zapp! The ideas begin to flow.

It’s happening to me more and more. Repeatedly looking at the outline for Book Three and knowing that Act Three is waaayy short really wasn’t helping. Decision: wash up, brush my teeth, go to bed. Sleep on it. Start over next morning.

Except twenty minutes after getting into bed, the notepad had two pages of hastily scrawled plot points and dialogue.

You can look up a whole library of psychology texts analysing what goes on in the brain to create and break down blockages at whatever work you’re doing. There are really only two answers.

Method one:

Keep practicing, nose to the grind stone, put in the hours and power through. Yes, you’ll produce a lot of garbage on the way to becoming a master, but that’s part of the process. It has it’s merits.

Method two:

Step away, clear your head, let the sub-conscious throw some rocks over the fence. You’ll find some inspirational notes wrapped around some of those rocks. Sometimes you only need one to create a new character, a new scene, a new plot line or a plug for a plot hole.

The true creative brain is ticking away on ideas all the time. You just have to let it breathe occasionally. RC

BTW: the left-brain/right-brain thing – it’s not really a thing.

1 thought on “Free Flow: Get Up and Create”

  1. Ellie-May Tonisonto

    It’s how you clear your brain of all the real-world c*** in order to do your best work. Have you tried meditation of mindfulness methods?

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *