The Complex Conundrum of Creativity

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Time is a gift we all have. Each and every person is given the allotted time of 24 hours a day seven days a week.

Even with this beautiful gift of time, 12 days into the new year I find myself trying to allocate this time to be a more productive person with the gifts and talents God has given me.

I want to create. It's what I long to do and when I think of creating, whether that be with words, drawings, or dance, there is this swell of excitement I feel within the depths of my heart. There is so much that can be created, designed, and crafted when a person understands their innate ability to create as God designed humanity to do.

So, today when I opened my poetry notebook to to pen something incredible I stared at the blank page for about 10 seconds and closed my notebook.

The expanse of the page kind of just loomed above me and I didn't feel like thinking of words to begin a poem I might not like. To be honest, I have found myself in this same situation for the last month or so. At one point I wrote on my blog how writing poetry used to come so easy to me. Inspiration was only a pen and a sheet of paper away and words seems to always show up.

Now, I find myself having to sit, contemplate, reflect, and try to write anything that will resemble words in a stanza of free verse that I will find myself loving later. It is moments like this where I try to push past the doubt of blank pages and try to come up with something.

This sort of "lack" of encouragement or creativity can be dampening if I allow it, especially now as I am in the process of completing a manuscript of poetry.

I have been reminding myself that inspiration should not be my motivator for productivity. Productivity, for me, and I believe for most creatives, should come out of discipline and habits of writing and journaling everyday. Even doodling one thing or another to get into the habit of creating daily on whatever scale of time or energy fits your day to day life.

Creativity happens when creators work from joy, love, and ultimately discipline(I also include identity in this list). As I said before, discipline is what helps the water of creativity keep flowing when inspiration feels lacking.

Ergo, one of my goals this rainy and perfectly cold and cloudy weekend is to write at least 2 poems. I'm challenging myself to write and to write even if I don't like it.

Sincerely a girl wanting to write a good poem,

~ A