Can you force creativity?

Dear you-don’t-think-you-are-creative person looking for the quick answer: yes.

It’s Wednesday morning. Not even that early. 7 AM. But I’m the only one awake in the house. It seems like the world.

I just returned from London where I attended a book marketing conference. I’m motivated to get back to my morning routine. But I feel like I’m missing “the creative spark.”

As you may recall, I wrote a book called “Every Single Day” which basically says that we can learn or improve or even master something by doing it every single day for, say, a month.

I haven’t been “feeling creative” in the past few weeks. Maybe it’s months.  Usually, I would take that as an excuse. Well, it is. I don’t care if you “feel” creative. You need to create. So go write something. I don’t care if it’s terrible. In fact, if it’s really bad, it might even make you laugh and that will loosen you up to write more then you might write something half good and then you’ll be on a roll.

Then you’ll write more.

Then you’re back to being creative.

It’s really that simple. Seriously.

This morning, I got up a half hour earlier than I have been and got my chai, sat my butt down and forced open StoryShop.io and went to the next beat in my story, read it, even copied and pasted it into my writing workspace, and wrote to it. I wrote to the beat. It was this:

Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his guide and magical helper appears or becomes known. More often than not, this supernatural mentor will present the hero with one or more talismans or artifacts that will aid him later in his quest.

Need a writing prompt? Great, find a writing prompt. But you just need to write. That’s it. It’s so simple.

It’s so hard.

So, ready?