Making it Rain Inspiration: Get Busy

By Jessica Albon

This post is part of the Making it Rain Inspiration series. You can read all the posts if you’ve missed any.

If you’re in an inspiration drought, there’s one obvious way out: Make it rain. But how do you make it rain? Especially when you want not H2O to fall from the sky but big drifts of lovely, ready-to-go articles and content?

If all you need is a bundle of enjoyable exercises for getting creative in your writing, you’re not in a drought, and you’ll find these tips to be way too much work. Instead, get a copy of my tiny guide and ignore these tips. But if you’re in a full-on, desperate drought, you’re going to have to buckle down and sweat a little. The tips that follow won’t be easy, if you do them right, but they will bring the rain when applied repeatedly.

In the next few days, I’ll reveal the “hard” approaches. But first, whenever you find yourself in an inspiration drought, start with these three:

1. Stop. Get up from your computer (shut *down* your computer) or notepad or wherever you’re writing or taking in information and give your brain a break. Maybe you’ll head outside to rake the leaves, or perhaps you’ll just take a nap. It doesn’t much matter what you do as long as you stop doing what you were doing.
2. Color. Sometimes your brain needs a creative release that’s very, very defined. Coloring in a coloring book, sewing a quilt, painting a wall… Whatever tends to make you feel like you’re a) creating something; and b) not *being* creative will usually work. Something that results in an actual physical creation is usually the best choice. I’ve been doing all three and find that a coloring book and some colored pencils is the best way for me right now because there’s plenty of flexibility (I get to choose the colors!) but very little creativity (I don’t have to draw something first).
3. Exercise. No matter how often you exercise, unless you never drive in a car or sit at a computer, it’s probably not nearly as much activity as your body craves. So, get outside and go for a walk or a run. Head out and play tennis. Go for a swim. Unless you really can’t exercise outdoors, though, I think you’ll find a treadmill (or, in my case, rowing machine) won’t be nearly as effective. Don’t listen to a book on tape, don’t take a notebook, just let yourself get completely caught up in the moment of movement. When you’re in an inspiration drought, you don’t need more input and you don’t need more output. You need more silence and you need more motion. No more, no less.

Remember, you must do these three things (and all three!) before you pick and choose from the suggestions I’ll offer over the next few days. Don’t take a shortcut by not starting here. Don’t think, “Oh, those things never work for me, so I don’t need them.” I don’t care that these three things never work for you (if that’s the case) because it’s not really about these three activities so much as it’s about following the rules. Just as a rain dance is an intricately choreographed ritual, so is this inspiration rain dance. It will work if you begin at the beginning and do the work straight through to the end.

So, today, begin at the beginning with me, and make time to take all three of these action steps. Then, tomorrow, join me here again for the “real” work of inspiration.