Please help me connect with my creative side

[springbabydays]

I'm feeling some big feelings right now but I'm struggling to express them in some useful way. I'd love to write a poem or song, something that will do those feelings justice. But my brain is being lame.

How do so many writers manage to put so many words down that resonate, and I can't even start one thing??

Is there anything I can do to kick-start something like this?

ramble in the moment with words. Short descriptive ones. Make a poem later

Morning pages. Fill 3 pages of A4 every morning, first thing. Stream of consciousness. I think the original concept was longhand writing but I've seen it that you include doodles or whatever too.

Don't think about it, don't try to achieve anything, just do it every day.

Just write something down first of all. You might get some momentum. If not, you can always go back and revise afterwards. There's no wrong way to express yourself!

Agreed, just start writing. All the words that come to you. Then try to sort them

Thank you I appreciate the advice! I will start small and jumbled and see what comes after that. Maybe it will start to flow. 🙏

Use ChatGPT- you can talk to it if you don't want to type! Just to give you some ideas. "Help me make this into a poem" or "I want to write a poem about this topic. XYZ. help me with a format"

Ooh that feels a bit left field @JellyRains ! Not sure I trust AI with my strong feelings but thank you for the suggestion! 😄

I've been listening to Ed Sheeran today. He's a fantastic lyric writer isn't he? How does he put all that stuff down and not get self conscious though? I guess he's just that cool.

I've written a few notes now (woke in the night and jotted them down before I forgot them) and I looked back a few hours later and it's all very cringe 😬 I'm keeping them all though!

Yes this. You can read about it in more detail in a book called The Artist’s Way, too.

Write down your random musings either in your phone notes or in a little notebook that you always have handy. I currently got 100 pages of notes for ideas for my novel I'm working on.

I find doing arty stuff for the sake of it helps me be creative. I've taken up all sorts like painting, stitching, felt work. Learning to play the keyboard. Listening to music that have intricate lyrics or melodies.

I can to say the artists way too @sparebooks. You can pick it up cheap, second hand and it really helped my husband who is an artist.

I also like to make up lyrics to existing pop songs. Most of them are silly and upbeat that come about when I'm cleaning, bored driving or when I'm playing with my cat.

I just did this one since my last comment. It's Taylor Swift - My boy only breaks his favourite toys.

Oh here we go again
The voices in my head call an end to my days of life
But you should have seen me when I'm real happy

My mind only wants to break me down, break me down
I'm queen, of grandiose dreams in my head
Oh oh oh
Cause it's easier to pretend, that I'm put together right oh oh oh
My mind only wants to break me down

Yes to trying the creative exercises (especially Morning Pages) in Julia Cameron's The Arts's Way: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Artists-Way-Discovering-Recovering-Creative/dp/0330343580

One of the best books I've ever read in terms of making a difference to my creative life. Good luck.

One of the best bits of advice I got was to use rough old bits of paper or a half empty note book to start.

So many people go out to buy a beautiful new note book to start a project and then find there is nothing more intimidating than making the first marks in that book. The fear of messing up the beautiful book is a lead weight on creativity.

I haven’t read it myself (probably should), but a lot of artista highly praise The Creative Act by Rick Rubin.

Thank you thank you all, this is so helpful.

MN always knows the answer!

In case anyone was interested, I've been putting one or two lines or thoughts down each day. And I've just sat down with them all to try and make something more substantial. I've spent about half an hour on it and the words are really working for me now! It's come together quite well, although I'm still tweaking here and there. Would love to make it into a song so I'm humming away. I don't play an instrument though so this may be the trickiest part!

thanks for updating OP. Good luck with it.