How a Consistent Creative Practice Helped Me Listen to My Intuition
I talk a lot about how to create a consistent creative practice. I believe this is THE way to build a body of work as an artist, no matter your medium. But what if you’re not necessarily trying to build a portfolio? What if you don’t have a goal to make a big pile of paintings or write 100 poems? I believe you can still benefit from a creative practice. In fact, I believe everyone can benefit from a creative practice.
How to Stay Creatively Inspired
Let’s pretend for a moment that your art, whether it’s writing, music, illustration, making jewelry, or something else entirely, is a plant. Like any plant, it needs a little bit of care in order to thrive — you usually can’t just throw a seed into your backyard and expect it to grow into a strong, beautiful tree. Plants, of course, need things like sunlight, water, and healthy soil to thrive. What about your art?
How to Create Rituals that Nourish Your Creativity
There’s a lot of talk in the wellness and personal development worlds about morning routines. While I don’t think there’s any one routine that works for everyone, I do think there is a lot of value in creating rituals that we can come back to each day. This is one way you can set up structure around your creativity — and even though artist-types like ourselves tend to resist it, structure can really help us be more creative.
How Embracing Structure Can Help You Be More Creative
As artists and creative beings, we often resist structure. After all, it’s more fun and glamorous to be struck by inspiration out of the blue, and be in a flow state for hours creating something amazing, than to sit down at a desk every day trying to make something happen. But what we neglect to acknowledge when we resist structure is that structure and creativity are not mutually exclusive.
How to Be Open to Creative Inspiration
If you have creative dreams and goals, chances are you already know that you need to be making time for your art consistently. Creating structure around our art is how we make progress towards our goals. But you probably also have an inkling by now that consistency alone may not be the only thing that’s required.
How to Make Time for Creativity in Your Busy Schedule
As a creative person, you probably have lots of ideas for the kinds of things you want to make. I’m guessing that if I asked you what was stopping you from actually taking action on those ideas, you might say something like “I don’t have the time” or “I’m too busy with work” or something along those lines.
How to Set Up a Creative Workspace
I have a theory that creative people tend to need a lot of space. Whether you have a collection of art supplies, musical instruments, poetry notebooks, or cool dance moves, you need some room to play. As artists, it’s important that we have space in our physical environments to explore and express our creativity.