How To Break Out Of A Creative Rut

Comments

1. sam middlebrook says:

   June 20, 2012 at 5:24 pm

   The most often-used word for rut is….

   “career”.

   Reply
2. Dee Andrews says:

   June 26, 2012 at 11:05 am

   This is a good “article,” Wade. I missed it when it came out because I just discovered it went into my junk mail by mistake. That’s the only one of yours I’ve seen there. Don’t know what the problem was.

   But, anyway . . . I suffer from many of the maladies mentioned in reading down through them all and so really need this to help me. One thing I too often do is try to create and edit at the same time. Not a good habit. I also have often been prone to WAY over thinking, which is also not good at all.

   My three years as a journalist/community-lifestyles editor were a great beginning for me in the work place for my writing because of the constant, daily deadlines, the news format for writing and also the constant need for writing within fairly strict space boundaries and limitations.

   Then, working on, writing, editing and having published a long piece for Loyola of New Orleans Law Review when I was in law school was really challenging, as well, when it comes to being creative enough to “be different” and “stand out,” while at the same time writing within a specialized field of writing. As was my entire legal career!

   Writing lots of poetry helped me be much more creative and to let my mind flow. What’s interesting to me about my poetry is that, even though I wrote most of them a very long time ago and during an intensely dark time in my life, many came out positive and I also have nearly total recall of many of them in my mind, yet today. I find that fascinating. I’m not sure why that is and have thought about it a great deal. In some ways, it’s my most creative work, so maybe it’s “stuck in my head” because I, as you say, “birthed” the work.

   Glad I found this here this morning.

   God Bless!!

   Dee

   Reply