Ways to Free Your Creativity in Writing Essay

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When you are writing on a major project, whether the great American novel, a research paper, or a blog post, you may find yourself stuck. This can be merely irritating, or disastrous. In any case, you may need to take a break in order to free your creativity. You may need to reconnect with your own wellsprings of creativity, with your material, and with the world. Here are some ideas to get back to your accustomed effectiveness in writing by ceasing and desisting rather than perseverating.

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You need to reconnect with yourself

This can mean something very basic , such as food, drink, sleep, and exercise. Alternatively, it can mean something more intangible.

Remember, you need to care for your body in order to continue to produce decent, credible work.

This requires stopping for food at regular intervals – food of a sort that will support your brain’s intense activity. If you find that you cannot recall when you last ate, this is a pretty clear signal that it is time to do so again. Pick foods, if at all possible, that are nutritious. This may involve some planning, but it is well worth it to have items close to your work area that are rich in protein, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals.

Staying efficient requires stopping for hydration. Just because you are not exercising does not mean that your body is not using water to keep metabolic processes going. In fact, you may need more water! It is particularly important to avoid dry eyes and mouth, both of which can become troublesome health issues.

Caring for your body requires quitting regularly for a few minutes or a few hours of exercise. Sitting is ‘the new smoking’, in terms of its deleterious effects on the body, and the only way to offset it is to slot some movement into your schedule. The break can be brief – there are innumerable exercises that can be done even in a seated position.

However, you are going to benefit most from rising, moving about, and getting all the large muscle groups of the body involved in some vigorous activity. In addition, the gentle stretching involved in yoga moves (or equivalent) warrants a break in your writing. Practitioners of yoga assert that the increased circulation of blood and energy enhance intellectual prowess.

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Your brain will not work indefinitely without sleep. You have to stop writing to sleep – this is not negotiable. The loss in brain power from fatigue closely resembles the diminished capacity from being quite drunk. You would not get drunk to finish a paper, or a novel, would you?

Alright, unless you are F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, would you deliberately intoxicate yourself before trying to complete a challenging writing gig? Depriving yourself of sleep is just as dangerous. To prevent disaster, use one of the astonishingly sophisticated timing features on your phone, and give yourself a strictly limited period for snoozing.

You may need to reconnect with other aspects of your self – for example, if you have a regular dental or skin hygiene routine, it is wise not to neglect it too long. Stop and take care of your self for a few minutes. Nails, teeth, skin, hair, feet, and other body parts all can make us miserable if not attended to, and a break to perform this sort of care will leave you refreshed.

Stop as well to breathe in slowly and deeply. Use the technique of the ‘cleansing breath’ to recharge your mental engine and wash the vitiated air from your lungs.

You may need to reconnect with your material

Stop and step back from your work and your subject. Look at it differently. Change fonts temporarily, or read the material from bottom to top, to see it again in a fresh light.

Stop focusing exclusively on text! Search for images on Google using the main subject terms from your work. If, for example, you are writing about a philosophical movement or a school of artists, call up on your screen portraits of the men and women important to its development.

Seek out images that evoke the era, the architecture, the costume, and the machines and technology available to the people about whom you are writing. If you are creating a setting, re-examine a map and photos of the region that has inspired you thus far, its flora, fauna, geographic features, and weather. Immerse yourself in the world that surrounded your subject.

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If you are writing code, look at a program that works beautifully and note what makes it so effective.

Search on a contrarian point of view from the one you are taking in your own writing. Stop and listen to the opinions of those who differ radically from yours. You may find new arguments to strengthen your thesis.

Stop using your usual sources – search the popular press if your work is scholarly, and conversely, plumb the scholarly press if your project is more usually covered in the popular media.

Stop researching in the same channels and try using a different search engine – just to see what comes up.

Go back to the documents that originally set you thinking about this topic. Stop and re-read whatever it was that may have gotten you interested in the subject again, but this time in light of what you have written yourself. Include even textbooks from way back in your misty youth, because you may be reminded of some critical point that will unlock your tired brain and propel you to complete your opus.

Stop being solitary for a bit, and see if there are any online forums or discussions related to your topic. While these are not likely to be usable as scholarly references, they may awaken new ideas and at the least, give you a giggle. Isn’t it almost always the case that no matter how grave and serious the subject , an online comment page will nearly inevitably degenerate into an exchange that makes ‘nanny, boo boo’ sound mature and intellectually elevated?

Stop keeping your ideas to yourself. Talk (discreetly) to others with expertise in the same area. If you can explain your thesis in conversation to another person, you can use that to help express your ideas in your project. Alternatively, try explaining your ideas to a child or someone who has no involvement with your subject are or discipline. The exercise of doing so is immensely enlightening, and could ignite your mind to new clarity.

Reconnect with the world

Take a moment to read or listen to the news. Check up on the latest from your hometown, or alternatively, from somewhere on the other side of the globe. Stop shutting out the flow of events for at least the length of a news broadcast. To help jostle you out of your stalled mental status, try listening to a news outlet that is not your usual (tune in to Fox News if you normally listen to Pacifica Radio, and vice versa, just to offer one extreme example).

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Call or return a call from a friend. Don’t just complain about the hideous Augean stable clean-up that your current assignment represents. Instead, stop focusing on your personal troubles for a bit, and project yourself into your schoolmate’s, neighbor’s, or sibling’s detailed recounting of troubles and triumphs.

Better still, spend some time face to face with another human being, talking, not texting! Human contact will help you to feel connected to the rest of the world yourself.

Walk around your dorm, block, or neighborhood for a pre-set time. In addition to getting needed exercise and filling your lungs with air, this kind of break will re-open your eyes, and may help you get going again on your writing. Observe your surroundings, and notice any changes in buildings, nature, or people since you last raised your head from your work.

Look at something beautiful. If the classic candidates, such as flowers and waterfalls, are not conveniently available, do a search on images of lovely places and things. The reminder that the world is filled with loveliness is a time-proven way to raise one’s spirits.

Look at something majestic. Catch a sunset, sunrise, moonrise, lightning storm, or simply the immensity of the night sky filled with stars. Such mystery, so much larger than your individual project, may put one’s own issues and challenges in perspective. If these views are infeasible to appreciate in person, the pictures from the Hubble space telescope are astonishingly powerful.

Gaze at the best works of humankind. Most of the great pieces of art and architecture from the last several thousand years are visible online one way or another. It is the mark of a true end enduring artistic masterpiece that it gives a jolt to the mind.

Imbibe or consume something truly delicious, solely for its taste and savor, never mind the nutritional content. Appreciate a properly-made cup of tea, or a crisp and juicy piece of fruit, for example, and take the time to truly enjoy it. Fully engaging your senses can open up your memory, as it did for Marcel Proust when, as an adult, he once again tasted an almond-flavored cookie dipped linden-flower tisane, a favorite treat from his childhood, and associated with happy experiences.

Stop and smell the flowers, literally. The increasing use of aromatherapy suggests that scents affect thinking and mood. At the very least, smelling something other than the volatilizing plastics from your computer offers a change of pace.

Leave off touching the keyboard and touch something nice. It could be a natural fiber fabric, a child’s cheek, the hand of a friend, the soft fur of your own or a neighbor’s cat or dog, or the delicacy of a bloom.

Return to your writing:

Having taken a break for constructive action, you can resume your writing equipped with new sensations, new perspectives, new energy, and new inspiration!

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IvyPanda. (2019, November 20). Ways to Free Your Creativity in Writing. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stop-writing/

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IvyPanda. (2019) 'Ways to Free Your Creativity in Writing'. 20 November.

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IvyPanda. 2019. "Ways to Free Your Creativity in Writing." November 20, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stop-writing/.

1. IvyPanda. "Ways to Free Your Creativity in Writing." November 20, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stop-writing/.


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IvyPanda. "Ways to Free Your Creativity in Writing." November 20, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/stop-writing/.

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