When Your Writing Creativity Runs Dry, Try This Recipe

From Edie: Julie Lavender shares a creative recipe for renewing writing inspiration, finding fresh ideas, and replenishing your creativity when your writer's brain runs dry.

When Your Writing Creativity Runs Dry, Try This Recipe

by Julie Lavender @JLavenderWrites

We’d just returned from an extended trip to two of our adult children’s homes. I opened the refrigerator in the garage to grab a bottle of water and noticed every shelf was bare. No leftovers whatsoever. 

That’s a rarity. I enjoy cooking and typically double recipes to give my husband and me extras for another meal. I can’t remember a time when not even one single shelf didn’t hold some sort of storage container with a red or blue snap-on lid and something yummy inside to reheat on an especially-busy day.

Empty. Every shelf, every compartment.

Much like my creative brain at the moment. Time with adult kids and grandkids in one GPS direction and errands and needs for my elderly mom in another GPS direction left my creative muse dry and depleted.

Like my barren fridge, my creativity needed replenishing. Status quo wasn’t an option. 

I thought about the similarities of both processes—the steps and the results—to refill the fridge shelves and come up with a new writing project.

The Recipe to Restart Your Writing

First up, perusing worn and tattered cookbooks tucked away in the pantry and scrolling new recipes online. Studying previous projects to see if a part two or follow up is warranted and looking at new ideas I’ve jotted down on sticky notes.

After finding a recipe, it’s time to gather ingredients, spices, and utensils. After deciding on a writing idea, it’s time to research, brainstorm, and outline. 

Next, peel, chop, grate, dice the veggies. Marinate the meat. Write sentences and paragraphs, chop and delete useless adverbs, dice up the writing with active sentences. Set the first draft aside to marinate and rest.

Cook, bake, season to taste. Read my work again with editing eyes. Season with strong verbs and sensory details. 

Get ready to serve! Decide where I’m sending my finished piece.

Share my finished product with my hubby and dine by candlelight…. or in front of the television to catch the next episode of whatever series we’re watching. Share my heart … the words spilled onto the page …. with a hungry editor or publisher. 

Relish my accomplishments. Pour leftovers into storage containers with red and blue snap-on lids and replenish the fridge. Pray over my newest project currently wandering through cyberspace and hopefully landing on an editor’s heart with the same vision as mine. Saving the leftovers—deleted sentences and ideas—for another day at the computer and another meal.

How about you? What are you baking up these days? Do you have something simmering on the back burner or is your project fresh out of the oven? Share your writing thoughts with me.

TWEETABLE 

When Your Writing Creativity Runs Dry, Try This Recipe from @JLavenderWrites on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Julie Lavender loves to cook and bake, especially for family members. And she loves to dish up writing projects that will hopefully satisfy readers as well. She’s the author of Children’s Advent Stories for Bedtime, A Gingerbread House, and Children’s Bible Stories for Bedtime.