It has happened to me quite frequently that I have allotted a certain time of my day to be creative and then, once I sat down, I was just out of ideas. I sat in front of my blank, empty page and simply did not know what I should write about. And the more I forced myself the more some kind of inner block hindered me from having any ideas at all. This is, of course, only too well known for many artists.

The opposite also happens occasionally:  you have an idea in your mind, and you simply must execute it, there is no other choice – you are literally burning with it. Its time has come. But this is not what I’m writing about in this post.

For a song text or a poem, or any artistic piece written at that, you will need creative seeds, because usually it is very difficult to come up with ideas (at least good ideas) instantaneously when you are sitting in front of an empty piece of paper, the proverbial blank page or the white canvas. If you arrive at the blank page in an unprepared fashion you will face untold horrors, blank is the page and blank is your mind – a situation, which many talented writers and artists found so unbearable that they started to drink, dreading the mere sight of the starting point of their art. Writer’s block is real, and it is devastating for any artist.

In order to avoid the horror of the blank page it is useful to write ideas or partial thoughts down as soon as they come to mind, even if you don’t intend to do anything with them at the given moment. The more importance you give to those thoughts, the more will come. It is as if something inside you will feel validated if you pay attention to it, and will produce many more ideas at an ever accelerating pace. Don’t dump ideas only because they seem to appear at the most inappropriate moments, usually when you do completely unrelated stuff, like taking a shower, going for a walk or even shopping: note them and return to whatever it was you were just doing. You will find that within days or weeks recording your insights you will have a self-filling repository of good ideas, thoughts and proto-themes etc., which you can consult whenever you you want to be creative. Reading through your ideas and thoughts can set the mood, the bed of creativity. Additionally there will be most likely some idea whose time has come and it will leap immediately back into your mind when you re-read your notes and energize and inspire you to take action and make it happen – the incubation period, the unconscious mulling over it, has ended, the fruits have ripened: be it a song, song lyrics, short story, novel, poem or whatever, it is now time to execute it. Your brain has subconsciously put all the pieces of the creative puzzle together so that you will feel invigorated by the thought of attacking it.

The incubation period is over, the fruits have ripened.

Write the ideas down immediately when they appear because they are very weak and will drown quickly in the torrent of other thoughts in your head, to be forgotten forever. Don’t think you will remember them later, for you won’t. It happened to me many times that I tried to postpone writing them down because I was busy with something else. Those ideas never came back again. It happened to many other people as well. I wonder how many master pieces, novels, symphonies and other marvelous pieces of art and creations have been lost to the world because the artist who had the inspiration has not noted them immediately since he was working on something else. Probably a mind-bogglingly large number, indeed.

Soon you will also find that it is quite useful to pool thoughts in sessions. For me, going for a walk helps tremendously to listen to these inner voices and, watch those inner images. In addition to the health benefit of being outside, walking and breathing fresh air I usually return after one or two hours with several pages of ideas for cartoons, poems and short stories and other creative endeavors as well as solutions to problems I currently face in my work.

When I go for a walk it is as if a torrent of ideas and proto-themes is unleashed. The only thing left for me to do is just to fill my buckets, to write all those ideas down as they come. I try not to be judgmental or critical, just to note them. It is my experience that the more I write them down, the more will come.

And when I need more I will just go for another walk and simply replenish my reserves by writing even more down.

The more you write things down, the more thoughts you will have, because the first ones will not circle, pester and bite your brain any more. They are out, written down, captured on paper for a later review. They do not disturb your brain any more, freeing it up for further creative finds. They are secured safely on a patient sheet of paper – the natural memory extension.

The act of writing those initial creative seeds down is like preparing a fertile ground in your subconscious mind. It serves as a signal for your mind that this idea, this creative seed, is important enough to be evaluated in more details. In the same way you plant a seed in the soil so will the creative seed be planted into your subconscious mind. This is when the incubation period starts, the time when a lot of things are going on underground, so to speak, without you being consciously involved. By periodically re-reading your notes of ideas you will go through your mental creative garden, looking at each of those seeds individually, and select those seeds, which have produced visible seedlings already, tiny leaves, ready to be elaborated, worked on and brought into the real world. This is where the conscious, executing part of the creative process starts. And if you have given those creative seeds enough time to grow into seedlings in the unconscious soil, your mind will give you all the support you need to make them happen in the real world. If on the other hand, you did not let them grow and take roots, you will face a lot of resistance, fear and dread. Execution will be hard if not impossible, you will find all kinds of excuses not to do it and the results, if you complete the project at all, will be at most mediocre.

Does it mean you have to execute all ideas you write down? No, of course not, but surely you can try. No seriously, it just gives you a very good place to start, so that you will never ask again “What should I write about”. It’s all about proper preparation, so that the blank page is an enjoyable place to start a new creative endeavor and not something you dread.

The creative plane is very fair

The creative plane is very fair. The more you work at it the more you will get out of. The more time and honest effort you invest the more fruits of labor you will carry away. It’s all up to you. Just do it!