In my Facebook group Fearless Writers (a community of support and accountability for writers - feel free to join us!), I recently asked what the members found to be the biggest barrier to their regular creative practice. Time was the winner, with 35% of the vote. Energy wasn’t far behind with 29%, and the two are closely related.
I have two children, a business to run and all the general life stuff to manage, and I’d quite like to have a social life and a relationship with my husband on top of that. When you’re busy with a million things, finding time to regularly show up to your creative process is hard. But even when you do schedule the time, having energy left over to give to it when there’s so much else going on can be even harder.
It’s very easy for us to treat our creative time as a luxury, as less important than all the “real world” stuff we have to do. But I hope by now I’ve convinced you that your creative practice is vital. It’s a necessary way to understand and express yourself, an important form of self-care that keeps you able to do all that other stuff and central to that feeling of purpose that is essential for all of us.
So get your diary or whatever calendar system you use right now, and schedule some time for your creative practice. Even if it’s only 15 minutes each day, on your lunch break, when the kids are in bed, first thing when you wake up, whatever works for you. Make sure it works for your personality and your energy levels - if you’re not a morning person, you’re probably not going to manage to get up at 5am every day. But you might be able to slot in some time before you go to bed. Or maybe you could slot in an extra block of time before you start work or after you finish.
Get that time scheduled, and protect it like it’s an essential appointment. Because it is.
Then make it as easy as possible for yourself to pick up your chosen activity or get into the flow once you start as you can. Get yourself some prompts ready (ahem, see below) or stop your activity before you’re finished each day so you know what you want to do next when you start. If you’re writing, leave your final sentence unfinished. If you’re drawing, don’t finish those final lines. Leave yourself some notes on what you plan to do next. Then when your next pocket of time starts, you can pick up the thread and it will be easier to carry on.
With that in mind, here are some creative prompts for the week ahead. Use these to fill your creative time, treat them as a warm-up, or scatter them in your day to bring you a bit of extra creative magic.
Saturday 19th August
Go somewhere you’ve never been before.
You can go as big or as small with this as you want. You can plan a trip to a far-flung country, you could look for places in your own country you’ve never visited, you could find a tucked away village or forest near where you live, or you could just walk along a street in your own town that you don’t normally go down.
Spend some time soaking up the sights, sounds, textures, smells and atmosphere.
Sunday 20th August
Use this as a prompt to inspire some writing / painting / collaging / photography / anything you like:
Finding a sense of direction.
Monday 21st August
Reflection prompt.
Journal, meditate or just spend some time thinking about this question:
How do you find your sense of direction in life?
Do you have a purposeful sense of direction, or do you feel reactive to what’s going on around you? How could you be more intentional about your direction? What would having a clear sense of direction mean to you?
Tuesday 22nd August
Move your body.
Put some music on and dance around, if you can. Shake your arms and legs, as much as you are comfortable to. Just move around and shake up your energy, releasing any blocks, worries or negative thoughts. Feel it all flow into the ground, like lightning conducted into the earth.
Wednesday 23rd August
Start an ideas board.
Get a large piece of paper (as large as you can find - I have an A1 flip chart pad for this very purpose). Put down five ideas for creative projects you’d like to work on. (If you can think of more than five, feel free to keep going, but push yourself to come up with at least five.)
Have a look at your ideas and see if there’s a theme that links them or any connections that jump out at you.
Keeping adding to this ideas board every time a new concept occurs to you, and if you ever feel stuck with a project you’re working on, you can always set that aside and take something from your ideas board to work on for a while until you feel ready to go back to the first one.
Thursday 24th August
Reflection prompt.
Journal, meditate or just spend some time thinking about this question:
If you had unlimited time available to create, how would you use that time?
What would you want to achieve, and how would you go about it?
What small steps can you take with the time you have available to work towards that goal and those actions?
Friday 25th August
Write down as many examples of “movement” as you can think of.
These can be literal or figurative, and can have as tenuous link as you like. No one’s going to be judging your list, there are no right or wrong answers.
If you’re struggling, here are a few to get you started:
A bird in flight
A child running
The waves breaking on the shore
Not choose one item from your list as a prompt for whatever creative activity you would like to engage in.
I’ll be back next Saturday with another week of prompts. Make sure you’re subscribed so they land in your inbox. In the meantime, feel free to share in the comments any of what you create in response to these prompts - I’d love to see it!
I especially love go somewhere you’ve never been before! I’m on it, thanks.