#low creativity

🌿 ⇢ give some advice on writer's block and low creativity

Be fucking kind to yourself goddamnit. Life happens. Shit happens. An idea you think you totally had in you may actually be something you can't/won't finish simply because that's how it fucking goes.

I have a Ted Lasso fic I never finished because it turns out I was writing it to ignore a shitty personal situation I was in. It was really hard to give up that story because I truly loved what I did with it, but it's so wrapped up in outside shit that I can't enjoy it or add to it. So, it stays there, unfinished, and it always will.

I've been writing since before I can remember. It's something I've always done. It's taken a long time to realize that just needing to let yourself rest is perfectly normal and GOOD FOR YOU.

I'm in a major uptick of creativity thanks to Masters of the Air, but for the two years before it aired, I wasn't writing a whole lot. I just didn't have any ideas or real motivation. I could noodle on a short fic here and there, but for the most part, I was doing other things I enjoyed. I read. I crocheted. I watched movies. I made videos for my youtube channel.

And you know what? I'm so glad I did that. I'm so glad I saw that my writing energy wasn't there and went, "Okay, let's radically accept this and see what happens if I point myself at things that are doable."

The result? I missed writing. But I got to spend time being creative in other ways. I was able to write without expecting anything of myself besides enjoying the process if something came to fruition. I was able to enjoy the feeling of writing even if nothing came out of it that I wanted to share.

Be fucking kind to yourself. Give yourself space to enjoy your other hobbies. Remember it's about enjoying what you're doing, not turning out X number of stories.

A few things.

1. We finally got our roof fixed. Woo-hoo, we did it. Well with a lot of help of course but we did.

2. However, we still need to get the interior done. Which means my room is still uninhabitable. There's black mold and still a big hole in the ceiling. We have someone to do the interior but it might take a little while since the room has to be completely cleared out. Meaning I still don't have a space of my own, im still sleeping in the living room.

This...is exhausting. My whole existence as of late has just been exhausting. Even on my days off im tired emotionally and mentally and I don't really want to do much. Im not saying I'm doing terribly, but I'm not doing the absolute best either. Its hard to find inspiration to write, create, or rp when your whole existence is exhaustion and you don't really want to do anything.

On top of that I don't feel im getting everything I want out of Tumblr. This isn't to say that I don't like Tumblr because I do. This has been my main place to go for years now. I can't even remember when I first started here lol.

But I honestly don't know what to do. My inspiration is incredibly low but I don't want to stop RP-ing altogether. I just wanna be given some time to get my inspiration back. Not helping matters is that I only connect with a few people on here and its not that fun anymore. I can count on like one hand how many friends i have on here. Its even worse when you're too anxious to reach out to try and talk to people.

I don't know why but I find a lot people on here to be kind of unapproachable. But not because I think people on here are assholes or anything, oh no! Far from! It's mostly because I think a lot of them are like super talented and stuff, and I feel I don't deserve to interact with them if that makes sense. I generally don't believe in "leagues" but I find a lot of people id like to write with are kinda...beyond me, if that makes sense? I know this is purely a me thing and im trying to work on that. No easy feat im afraid.

All this to say im not dead, but more like dormant. Im exhausted, especially mentally. My focus has been on trying to get by, and plus I have trauma surrounding the holidays which also doesn't help. I'll probably be taking a break for a short while, I really just wanna get my life in order.

I’ve been in a weird creative slump recently. It’s really hard for me to get myself to do any of my original stuff.

This might be related to me learning coding ((Javascript, specifically. We hope to upgrade to Unity after we finish our RPG)), but either way, I have been having issues drawing and writing.

I have, however, been editing like there is no tomorrow. I’ve been splicing pixels, critiquing work, reviewing my own, all that good stuff. I’ve been flexing my photoshop skills a lot in the past couple months as well, and that’s just been a joy to do.

This is a subject that many others have talked about since pretty much everyone feels uninspired, dried out at one point or another. As much as I try finding patterns and reproducibility in regards to inspiration and finding ideas, it's almost guaranteed that over the course of a project, you'll find yourself without a good, exciting idea and a schedule to meet (if you're following my advices).

How to handle no inspiration

This topic has been addressed by several others and one of the recurring advices is to continue the work. You simply cannot stop and wait for inspiration. I've said this in one of my recent posts: working feeds inspiration. While you don't have a clear idea, take this opportunity to experiment a little bit. It might just shape what's could be coming around the corner.

What to do to minimize the chances of that happening

I've had my moments recently where I didn't have any good ideas for a post and looking back, I see now that the problem was I simply lost focus for a day or two. My background thread listening and watching my surroundings was on pause. It's not that I had ran out of ideas, I just wasn't being receptive. Put simply, I was distracted.

That's not a big deal when that doesn't last long but you can't let yourself be distracted for too long if you want to keep on progressing with your project.

What I'm trying to do now is try to remind myself regularly of when my next post needs to be ready. Just thinking about this leads me to asks myself what's going to be my next theme and it then flows naturally that I start watching and listening for new inspiration. It's not bulletproof but it does work most of the time.