6 Ways to Keep Your Creativity Alive During Hard Times

You’re doing what you do at your day job. Taking care of your kids. Supporting your parents. Keeping up with geopolitical events when you should be sleeping. Dealing with the aftermath of severe weather. Encouraging friends and friends of friends to resist fascism. Stifling frustrated noises when ads pop up over parts of the articles you’re trying to read when you should be sleeping. Managing background feelings of worry, frustration, and oh-hell-no fired-upness. Making cringy faces at your budget. 

In other words — having trouble writing right now? 

Or even reading? 

Same. 

If you can’t sit down to write right now, or you feel the stress of everything pushing on your brain, don’t be hard on yourself. Writing is much more than composing sentences, and there are ways to maintain a creative spark and low-level momentum when the thought of writing more than three paragraphs feels like oof.

This week, I offer eight simple but effective strategies to help you maintain a productive writing minimum when other more vital needs are calling, whether family, health, a week’s worth of laundry, saving democracy, or all of the above.

Free yourself from time productivity expectations. One of my wise English professors during my university years once told me that all you need to get some writing done is about 20 minutes each day. Even if you only stare at the screen or your notebook for a few minutes, you're still in the process of writing. Whether we want to accept it or not, much of writing is about being still — or, as I like to call it — incubating. Even if you think you're not doing anything, you're giving your brain space to work out issues in the text or come up with something new.

Brainstorm for 5 to 10 minutes. Brainstorming keeps the creative spark alive. If your inner critic likes to interrupt, mentally elbow that critic out of the way. Don’t hinder or dismiss anything you jot down. You can use mind mapping software or a piece of paper, or a notebook that’s easy to carry with you – whatever you prefer. Even if everything you write down is silly or weird, a quick brainstorm will warm up your aha! muscles. 

When you're not actively writing, read what you can. In case you're wondering, reading news articles does count. If you have a tendency to doomscroll, give yourself a time limit. (Mental health professionals recommend no more than 30 minutes of news consumption per day.) If you’re in the mood for a little fiction, you can take the same approach you do with your active writing time, and give yourself just a few minutes to read each day. 

It's safe to say that most of us are struggling with multiple forms of distraction. That's perfectly reasonable. Make sure to be reasonable with yourself. If you can only sustain attention for 5 to 10 minutes a day on some fun reading, that's OK. If you want to read a novel you’ve read before, go for it.

Focus on just one aspect of your project. If you can't commit the mental energy to compose, feel free to write a rough outline instead. You can also simply focus on one aspect of an idea that's brewing, and sit with it awhile. You can spend 5 to 20 minutes brainstorming the structure a story or novel could take. You could conduct a short interview with a character in your mind. You could brainstorm options for pivotal scenes and compare them to see which have the most impact and forward momentum. Focusing on one aspect of a project reminds us that writing is a process and a journey.

Try a different approach. If you normally use word processing software, and you prefer a digital approach to writing, try using dictation software instead. Taking advantage of speech-to-text software can help you get your thoughts out faster, even if they aren't fully polished (which doesn't matter in a rough draft or brainstorming situation anyway). Dictating what’s in your head can also keep you from editing yourself if you have strong over-editing tendencies. If you’re wondering, human transcribers still exist. If you have the means and you want some human interaction while you work, give that a go.

If you’re experiencing screen fatigue, you can also try a notebook or legal pads. Writing in manual mode can help your brain relax and help your thoughts connect more naturally, and help you slow down when necessary. Writing by hand can also help you avoid lit-screen stage fright. 

From another angle, if you’re normally a pantser, try a little planning. If you’re normally a planner, try some pantsing sprints to nudge your creativity.

Remind yourself that’s it's OK to just live your life. When we’re excited about a work-in-progress, it’s easy to get caught up in “have to do it now” thinking. When that happens, it’s important to remind ourselves that writing is a choice. We write because we want to. So if you're busy and can't write, that’s genuinely okay. In the meantime, stay open. Tune into your senses. Pay attention to everything around you. People-watch. Connect with others wherever you can, especially IRL. We all need connection right now. Interacting with others, and observing how they perceive the world and behave, feeds both us and our art.

In Closing 

If your writing is flat right now, don’t be afraid to put the work aside. Focus on what you most need to focus on, and rest when you can. In times of stress, it's important to lower the bar and congratulate yourself on anything you can do to maintain your creative spirit. Any amount of effort matters, even if it’s only a minute. Hopefully you feel a bit of joy, too.