The Top 10 Ways to Ignite Your Creative Fire and Keep it Glowing

Originally Submitted on 2/16/2004.

Are you someone who starts creative projects with great enthusiasm and then loses momentum half way through? Do you have wonderful inspirations in the dawn only to have them fizzle by noon? Do you feel you just need more time, money, love, appreciation, and support to realize your creative dreams?

In a recently published book "The Creative Habit, Learn It and Use It for Life," choreographer, Twyla Tharp gives an inside picture of the creative process and how to keep it moving. The following are ideas from Ms. Tharp and other creative fire starters.

1. Invoke magic with a preparation ritual.

The writer Isabel Allende begins each new novel on January 8th when she sits down at her computer and writes the first sentence. From that small ritual an entire story evolves. Every morning Twyla Tharp goes for a two hour workout at a gym to warm up her body for her day's creations.

Invoke the muse. Light a candle, ring a bell, or designate a sacred space for your beginning. Start your creation with a special song, a meditation, or a ritual of gathering your materials. Wear clothing that signals to the world that you are about to leap into the creative ferment.

2. Cook with what's at hand.

Limits on time, money, and/or space can actually focus your creative energies. Don't have the perfect studio? Barbara Kingsolver wrote her first book in a closet. Don't have enough time? John Grisham got up two hours earlier every morning to work on his first novel, then went off to a full day's work practicing law. Need more money? How much do you really need? To write, to sketch, or to compose takes only a pencil and paper to begin. Maria Martinez made exquisite pottery with hand-dug clay, home made vegetable dyes, and a hand made fire. Let your limits inspire you to create with what is at hand. Limits will stretch your imagination.

3. Capture your ideas when they are hot and contain them for easy retrieval.

Keep a notebook, sketchpad and/or minature tape recorder with you at all times. Creative ideas can be fleeting, much as dreams. They frequently appear when we are looking the other way involved in our daily routine. Record your ideas when they first light up your imagination. Even a few words or a brief sketch can capture an idea that can be fleshed out later. Hum a melody into a small tape recorder and you can refer to it later when you want to develop the song.

Mozart, who was reported to have moved 42 times in and around Vienna, kept a series of notebooks. In one set he recorded the germ of a composition, in the next set he developed it, and in the third set he polished it to a brilliant finish.

Twyla Tharp uses cardboard boxes to hold her ideas. She labels and dates them and keeps them on a set of industrial shelving for easy access. In each box goes anything and everything relating to her current project.

4. Simmer with unstructured time in your day.

Great ideas often start as mere whispers or inklings. Stillness invites them to speak up. Busyness is noisy and will chase them away. Take time to listen for those creations bubbling up from deep inside you. Writer, Brenda Ueland said, "the imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering."

5. Spark your creative thinking by exposing yourself to other art forms.

If you are a writer, listen to the rhythm of music to suggest conversation. Or look to a painting for a subject. "Girl with the Pearl Earring" is a fictionalized account of a young girl portrayed in a painting by Vermeer. If you are a potter look at other art forms to stimulate ideas about shape and space. If you are a musician listen to the rhythms of conversation or at the themes in paintings to see what they suggest about music. For more inspiration, search outside the arts. Cross-fertilization can keep your ideas fresh and lively and can kick start your creativity when you lose momentum.

6. Ignite your energy.

Walking, running, dancing, or biking not only energizes us, these and similar activities can also produce a relaxed, meditative state which invites creative ideas to reveal themselves to us. Doing something physical when our motivation flags may be all we need to give us the boost to keep going.

7. Unearth the spine of your creation.

Defining the framework of your creative effort provides a reference point to get you moving when you lose creative steam. What is the theme that your creation is expressing? When you get completely stalled, put your hand back into whatever box, basket, or barrel you've stored your inspirations for this project. Pull out the first item that lit your imagination and bring that feeling into the present moment.

8. Sizzle spontaneously.

One of Tharp's favorite exercises to pull her out of the creative doldrums is called "do a verb." Pick any verb, either one that represents a piece of your creative effort, or the first verb that comes to mind. Let your body express it through spontaneous movement. Your brain will be stimulated into new ways of thinking.

9. Kindle support with a creative buddy or a playgroup.

Much creative work is done alone. As artists on our own we need and deserve playmates and support. Often it is isolation, not lack of good ideas, that causes our work to stall. Find a creative buddy or playgroup that encourages and supports you to be your own work of art and watch your creativity soar.

10. Hire a creative coach.

My coach, Verena Aibel (http://www.renaissance-coach.com) is a continuing and delightfully unpredictable source of creative stimulation and support. It was in the context of her coaching that I first began writing Top Tens. Identify what you need from a coach then search a database, such as the one on www.coachvillereferral.com to find a coach who fascinates you. Don't settle for less than fascination. Take a teleclass or a free introductory coaching session. Trust your instincts. I discovered Verena when we were both members of a teleclass. I knew after a few minutes of fascinating conversation that I'd found someone I wanted to try as my coach.

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