how to never run out of ideas

pt. 1 - on creativity

Creativity often feels fickle and sporadic.

Creativity is like tuning a specific set of antennae to pick up on signals as you wander through your day-to-day.

You can find inspiration in all the smallest things…which then triggers a thought, which blossoms into something greater.

To tune your antennae, you must care for your creativity like a child - with kindness and patience as much as wonder and curiosity.

A book that changed how I think about this is Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way. Her exercises are simple + effective:

• morning pages (stream of consciousness journaling in the morning before you do anything else)

• artist dates (solo dates / excursions to try new experiences and purposefully tend to your creative curiosities)

• creative affirmations (“My creativity heals myself and others,” “I am allowed to nurture my artist,” “I am willing to create”)

By curating my life with care and paying closer attention to what I’m watching, reading, & talking about, I can find little sparks of inspiration throughout my daily ritual.

Thus, creativity becomes a habit and a skill that one slowly builds.

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pt. 2 - how to get unstuck

If you’re feeling the creative block, these questions have helped me think from a new perspective countless times:

• what stories (and/or lessons) have you not yet told? perhaps you can introduce yourself if you haven’t yet, or talk about the time you tried something new, or the time you learned a lesson. speak to the fellow humans on the other side of the screen with vulnerability and honesty

• what videos are you inspired by? (do NOT open any social media platform and start doomscrolling) - rather, which video comes to mind first, and how can you recreate or spin-off that video? if it resonated with you so deeply that you remember it well, identify what it is that you love about it and carry it with you into your own work

• what footage have you not yet shown? with creativity, ironically, adding CONSTRAINTS can push you to see something you had not before. so, perhaps if you have extra footage that you haven’t posted yet, set that as your backdrop and figure out your voiceover / story from there…

• what other limitations can you set? - ^length of video, number of shots, number of sentences (in the script), color palette, etc.

• what have you been craving? create to fill your own gap between what you’ve consumed and what you desire to see

• what would be easiest to make right now? sometimes, you just need an mvp (minimum viable post :D) - short, sweet, and simple!

Now go make something!

until next week~
Sulan :)
@sulansart

P.S. When I have a mountain of footage and zero direction, I’ll talk to Vyra, and let it show me what stories are already hiding in the clips. Sometimes the idea finds you :D