8 Ways to Unblock the Creative Mind

* Share new work through voicemails with another writer friend, especially one that writes differently than you. Fiction vs. poetry, traditional vs. experimental, verbose vs. minimalist, etc. If nothing else, you’ll have new work to listen to at the end of a long day. My good friend Karen over at Conceptual Reception and I have done this a few times recently and my work has been inspiring hers the way her work has been inspiring mine. Plus, hearing the written word spoken aloud gives it a special kind of energy.

* Find two or more friends. All of you write a paragraph on a particular topic. Once everyone’s finished their paragraph, trade them around and add to the piece, giving it your own voice. Depending on how many people are involved, do this until everyone has added their own paragraph to every piece. Read the results out loud.

* Via email, give your writer friends a writing prompt (a story based on a single word, the inclusion of certain phrases, focus on a single color, etc.) and have everyone share them. Allow each person involved to create their own prompt for the next round, so on and so forth. Create word limits, page limits, formats, whatever. The sky's the limit here, but I've found that the more constraints there are, the harder I have to work at a piece, which makes the end result much more worth my time. And typically, the story ends up being fairly interesting.

* Take a day out of your normal routine. Visit a park with a bottle of wine and simply converse or air out creative grievances with other creatives whether they be artists or musicians. The creative mind gets blocked the same way, no matter the medium. Luckily, it can be unblocked just as easily given the right circumstances. Every creative needs an outlet that doesn't involve their primary focus. For instance, visiting a museum for a few hours tends to unblock me the best.

* Watch a movie by a more out of bounds/experimental filmmaker (Lars Von Trier, Terrence Malick, Darren Aronofsky, Ingmar Bergman, etc.) and deconstruct it with each other after. Discuss what worked and what didn’t, what was confusing and what made perfect sense. Honest critiques of other work can lead to more honest critiques of our own while giving us ideas on how to improve stories. The goal here is to get out of your wheelhouse, submerse yourself in something with which you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable.

* Write in a group. This may sound weird, but I know that I’m almost shamed into writing if there are others around me writing as well. Not to mention, you’ll have a built-in critique session once everyone’s reached a good stopping point with their work. I found this incredibly vital during my first two years of grad school. 

* Cross-pollinate with other disciplines. Find a photographer or artist or musician whose work you admire, see if they’d like to collaborate; your words inform their art or vice versa. Superimpose both creative halves to create one supra-whole.

* Take classic passages from timeless books and rewrite them with different and iconic characters from other novels. How would Ender Wiggins act in the time of Huckleberry Finn? How would Gregor Samsa fare in the Hunger Games?

There are obviously thousands upon thousands of ideas that can be beneficial in breaking down creative blocks, but these are just a few that have worked for me. When I first started taking writing classes in college, I would shrug off the idea of brainstorming exercises or things that would elicit story ideas, firmly believing that I didn't need them. Now, 15 years later, I utilize them all the time. Maybe it's because I take this discipline more seriously than I did as a 19 year old sophomore, but I think it's because they've simply worked.

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