What To Do When the Idea Won't Show Up

Creative ideas are funny creatures. They are more like cats than puppies. They will most likely not jump up and down when they see you; tail wagging, wanting your attention. They notice when you arrive at the page/screen/studio, walk by you, rub against your leg, and then jump on the kitchen counter, then on top of the refrigerator and stare at you. Laughing. Proving to you that you will not control them. 

I wish I were an idea pied piper. I wish I knew the special music, tune, tone to play to get an idea to come out and dance on command. Creative ideas require patience and wooing. If they sense desperation, that I’m pressed up against a deadline, or that I’m trying to reenact the magic that happened in some other creative time, the ideas quit on me. They sit on top of the refrigerator with paws crossed and stare at me, daring me to try and create without them. 

Whether you are a poet, creative, leader, parent, student, or spoons player, here are some tips on what to do when the idea won’t show up: 

1. Give yourself plenty of time.  

I have learned to stop making unrealistic promises to people. The creative process takes time whether we like it or not, so we need to be fair to our ideas and to ourselves. 

2. Be patient. 

The idea is going to have its say, and sometimes it’s not going to have its say while you are sitting at your desk, pen in hand, with open moleskin. Sometimes the idea is going to have its say right as you are about to drift to sleep, in the middle of a meeting, or by interrupting a conversation. You are better off not forcing its hand, but riding with its rhythms. 

3. Walk away for a bit. 

In the same way muscles can experience fatigue, your creativity can experience fatigue too. Give yourself and the idea a rest. Come back in a day or two. Then the idea might be ready to see you. 

4. Free write. 

Take a word or two from your topic and time yourself for five minutes, riffing on those words as if they had nothing to do with what you are working on. This will sometimes give you ideas you can keep and even if not it gives your creative brain a new place to travel to. 

5. Let the idea be itself. 

Ever since junior high we have all been on a constant quest to be ourselves. To prove to people that we’re cool, awesome, hipster-y. The coolest thing we can be is exactly who we are without trying to become someone or something else. Your idea wants that same courtesy. Let your idea be itself. Eventually, it will sidle next to your leg, jump in your lap and let you know it’s ready to become a reality.

When Collaborating Gets Messy

I married my deejay and music producer. Since we said, “I do,” we’ve been traveling, working, creating, and performing together, sticking closely to our respective processes.   

Recently, an idea sent the electric feeling of a brainstorm through both of us. We talked about themes, beats, stage versus studio, rhymes, and decided to come up with a name for our duo. All of this sounded really cool and then we sat down to actually collaborate. 

He closed the door to the office and started building the music we’d use. I sat at the dining room table buried in scattered lines of poetry. He let me listen to what he was building and it wasn’t what I’d imagined the music would sound like. I read him my scattered lines and they didn’t make much sense. This quickly turned into an argument. 

My husband has a mind full of beats per minute, keys of music, sounds, bass, and instruments. I have a mind full of metaphors, story, and verse. We frustrated each other and it seemed there was nothing we could do to see each other’s opposing points of view. 

So we decided, even though it might be messy, him banging on an MPC, me scribbling random lines on paper, that if we were going to collaborate we couldn’t do it separately. I listened to the stutter and staccato process it took him to build the music. I relaxed and tried to do what writing poetry always is, listening to hear how the words want to be said. 

We stayed in that room for hours and our frustrations unraveled into a piece of poetry and music that made all the messiness worth it. 

Here are three things to consider when collaboration gets messy: 

• Pull Back The Curtains 

Reveal ideas that are unfinished, unrefined, and unedited. When people want collaboration they don’t want your perfection, they want your reality and they want you to bring that to the creative table so everyone can get their hands dirty making the idea the best it can be. 

• Control Freaks Don't Make Good Collaborators  

Collaboration and control DO NOT mix. The more I try to control, the more I miss out. Sometimes creativity is in the accepting and the letting go. When I have relaxed, used the “yes and” approach instead of the “no, that’s not MY way” approach, the ideas arrive faster and better. 

• Conflict Is Good 

Use conflict to your advantage. Don’t resort to name calling, not listening, becoming defensive or anything else we do when we feel insecure. Conflict during collaboration is not about being right or getting your point across. Dig beneath the conflict to discover how different perspectives and ways of thinking, processing, and creating, can complement each other, create a strong idea, and make that idea an even better reality. 

Inspiration and creativity are waiting to be found in the messiness of collaboration.  

Why You Need Friends Who Are Different From You

Recently I have had the honor of sitting at a table with a diverse group of women for the sole purpose of talking about racism, culture, privilege, and reconciliation. These words within the last year have filled social media posts and fueled worldwide trending hashtags. So a few of us gathered at a table to listen to each other’s stories, learn how these words affect us, and how can we personally and collectively heal, stand for justice, and live in peace. 

As the headlines and viral news videos tell stories of beatings, deaths, riots, and protests, it can be overwhelming to know how to not only process the information and experiences there but how to find hope and peace in the midst of everything. 

When I sit at the table with these women it doesn’t solve racism, it doesn’t change discrimination or put an end to ignorance, but as we talk and get to know each other, it changes us. As we listen to each other, look into each other’s eyes, view the beauty of each other’s various skin tones, our biases and prejudices are forced to change. Through our time at the table, we learn to really see and hear each other, to empathize with each other’s experiences, to admit what we don’t know or don’t understand, to humble ourselves. 

Ignorance, prejudice, and many societal ills in our world can begin to change through relationship. We ignore, prejudge, and assume a lot about people we don’t know or don’t understand. One of the ways we can change our own ignorance to knowledge and our prejudice to understanding is to build relationship with people who are different from us. 

If we look in our community or circle of friends and only see people who look like us, think like us, or believe like us, we do ourselves, our families and our communities a disservice. We leave ourselves vulnerable to becoming close-minded, ignorant, and unloving, online and in real life.  

Changing the world starts with being willing to change ourselves. When we begin to expand our circle of friends we will find ourselves less likely to hide behind “us and them” statements because in our friendships with people who are different from us we discover the beauty in our differences and the humanity in our similarities. 

Think of one person in your life who is different from you. Take time to get to know them and listen to their story. Don’t make friendship a science project or a checklist of action items. Be humble. Be present. Be willing to be wrong. Take the time to listen, learn, and grow from the lessons and experiences of someone else.