Feeding your Creative Monster

What are you feeding your creative monster?

I call it a monster because my creativity can be fuzzy and cute like my illustration or it can grow into my worse enemy. If I take good care of this creature, it does great things. It produces new ideas and I get to avoid the dreaded writer’s block. If I don’t take care of it, I apply my creativity to imagining every negative outcome in my life.

Maybe it’s just me, but my mind automatically creates stories. For instance, I see my preschool son throw a banana peel on the floor, and my mind automatically imagines this scene where my daughter slips on the peel. She throws her dolly in the air, hitting her baby brother in the face, and knocks her head against the counter, opening a gash on her eyebrow. Blood shoots from her face, and I take all the children to the ER, but forget to bring their shoes. So, we’re bare foot in the ER waiting to get stitches. Yes! I imagine all of this in a split second and tell my son, “Please pick up your banana peel and throw it in the garbage.”

As you can see, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as a mom. But I apply it to every situation. You might not believe this, but this sort of instant story making makes me into an anxious mess. And I could have sworn the Bible says not to be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6, ESV)

So, let’s talk about what to feed our creative monsters instead of letting them do whatever they please.

1. Feed your monster time with God. Translation: Pray. I consider myself a creative person. I have a long list of files in my drive ranging from stories about a snotty princess who wants a touch of magic to children in a pandemic who get a magical package. But God is infinitely more creative and invites us to talk to him about…anything. So why was I tempted to put this last in my blog post? God, can tame our creative monsters and feed us exactly what we need. When we’re right with God, we have peace and our little creative monsters are well fed.
2. Feed your monster stories. If you write stories, you need to read and hear stories. Notice, I didn’t just say to read books (that should go without saying). Read news articles (use discernment about how much). Read off beat new articles, like about how a certain object in space could be extraterrestrial technology. Also, take time to talk to people and listen. Ask them about their lives and listen. When you hear stories, your mind has more fodder to create.
3. Make sure your monster gets rest. Sleeping is a key component to creativity. This is when your creative monster puts together all those stories and ideas stirring in your monster’s belly. I find that I get the best ideas on Sunday when I set aside time to rest from writing.
4. Set aside time for your monster to create. If you’re a creative, your little monster needs to exercise. I’m a busy homeschooling mom with three children, friends, and things to do, but I set aside a little time each night to write. Sometimes, I sketch. You might ask: what about writer’s block? Great question! I don’t get writer’s block. Here’s a hot tip: write down all your crazy ideas. Start working on them while the ideas are flowing and save it for later. When I get stuck in a manuscript, I go to that tangent idea and continue working on it. This isn’t a waste of time, because I’m still writing and my little monster needs time to process my current work in progress.
5. Avoid junk food. And what exactly is this monster’s junk food? It’s those negative and anxious thoughts. These thoughts are hard to avoid, but it says in the Bible to take every thought captive so it’s possible to recognize junk food when it pops into our creative brain and change course. This is where meditating on a Bible verse or listening to worship music can calm our little monster and reset our thinking. Junk food is a waste of our time and energy.
6. Store stories in case of a blight. We all hit times when our little monsters get a little hungry and we got nothing to feed it. This is when we pull out that document with your dream from 3 months earlier. Don’t worry about putting together great prose. Just have fun with the story. OR you can pull out an old manuscript and edit it.
7. Try a new exercise. Your little monster might not be producing more creative material because she needs to strengthen her core. Read a writing book to see what bestselling authors are doing to keep their little monster’s strong. This reminds me of those drills I did before volleyball practice in high school. Each drill had its purpose, and most of the time, the drills were not the fun parts of volleyball. But my form was better because of the drills, my accuracy improved, and I had muscle memory that came in handy during the game. It’s worth taking time to build your craft.

Creativity is God given, and it is fun to use. The more we use our creativity and hone our skills, the better we get at using it. I am encouraged that creativity isn’t just something that comes upon us randomly. We have a lot of input into our creative production.