How to Stay Creative
After 15+ years working in the creative industry, there are days when I'm just plain done coming up with one more creative idea. And yet — I also know that being creative breathes life and energy into me. When I push through the creative block, I easily lose track of time as the ideas flow from one to the next.
The following principles have helped me keep the creative fire going, drawn from my own experience and from David Duchemin's ebook The Inspired Eye.
Inspiration Comes With Working
Creative ideas come after you start doing the creative work — not before. If you wait for inspiration to arrive first, nothing gets produced. Work brings results. The act of writing produces more writing. The act of being creative produces more creativity. Two books that address this better than anything I've read: The War of Art and Do the Work, both by Steven Pressfield.
Increase Your Inputs
If you're not careful, you gradually retreat to only what's comfortable and familiar. You stop being stretched. The antidote: do something different. Travel farther. See a different kind of film. Study paintings, logos, photographs, websites. Go on a walk. Listen more. See more. Inputs feed outputs.
Incubate
I don't think any meaningful creative piece I've done was completed in a single sitting. A piece of an idea might come from a walk, another from a commercial, another from a logo on a passing truck. Give the idea time and space to grow. Forcing it to completion too fast often produces work that feels rushed — because it was.
Know Your Creative Space
Some people work well surrounded by activity and chatter. Others need quiet and order. Find what your creative space actually is — both mental and physical. Negativity and "no" tend to close down creative energy. Positivity and "yes" tend to open it up. Physical space might be a coffee shop, a quiet library, or a home office with music or complete silence. Protect it.
Embrace the Constraints
Technology limitations, client requirements, skill level, logo colors — all of these constrain creativity. But as architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, people build most nobly when limitations are at their greatest. Work with constraints rather than spending energy fighting them.
Be Open to Serendipity
Live with "yes" more than "no." The first rule of improv is: say yes. To be open to creative possibilities, you have to be open to what comes — even if it wasn't in the plan. Saying yes produces more ideas, more creativity, more forward motion.
Make More Mistakes
Creativity is risky. Being creative pushes against boundaries. You must risk. You must be willing to fail. Art is not for the perfectly safe. If you always operate within the comfortable and familiar, your creativity suffers. Try something new. Risk. Try. Fail. Try something else. Do it all again.