I've been writing about the challenges of finding enough time to do your creative projects and today I'd like to mention another option that can keep your creativity flowing.
There are times when you can tackle a big project, usually by chunking it down into smaller pieces. But there are also times when the pieces would have to be so small that they don't feel like they're worth doing. During those periods it's tempting to do nothing creative and after a while that becomes the norm. A year later you wake up and realize you've let your creative impulses lapse.
An alternative is to acknowledge you're in a period when you can't tackle a big project even in small pieces, and find other ways to express your creativity. For example, you could:
* write a haiku every day.
* write a short short short story--set a word maximum like 25 words or even ten words. Remember Hemingway's shortest short (sad) story: "For sale: baby shoes. Never used." If you draw a blank, pick three words at random from a magazine and build your story around those.
* Write a ten-words-maximum portrait of someone you saw on the street that day: "Dapper businessman with umbrella and scowl."
I'm sure you can think of others. The point is to keep your creative brain ticking over. You may find when you have more time again some of these short exercises feed into a larger project. Try it and, if you like, send me a sample or two of your short-short pieces, either as a comment or directly at [email protected].
