How I Found My Way Out of a Creative Rut
After months spent relishing the slowness of motherhood, I felt ready to nurture my creative side again. The only problem? I had dug myself a creative rut.
Michelle Rose Sulcov for Mother Untitled
For the first six months of my daughter Lyla’s life, I was fully home to welcome her into our world and transition to life with two kids. Then, when I felt ready, I hired a part-time nanny to support our home and give me three to four afternoons each week to work on building Mother Untitled.
This didn’t miraculously result in the creative flow I had hoped for. At first, I told myself it was about getting into a routine with a new caregiver and parting with the kids. Then, I decided the following week would be dedicated to feeling connected again, and I packed my calendar with coffee dates. By the time I was six weeks into this new routine, I found myself itching for the momentum of the previous year. But I couldn’t figure out how exactly to move forward.
I’m all about granting leniency on ourselves and measuring productivity in a multitude of ways. But when the time came to really throw myself back into growing and nurturing this space—I felt it. And I decided I needed to wedge one foot in front of the other and carry myself out of my creative rut. Here’s how I did it.
4 Strategies I Swear By
Block schedule
To ensure I’m not losing steam by feeling scattered, I dedicate blocks on my calendar to handling important tasks one at a time. For example, I might commit three hours on a Monday afternoon exclusively to working on writing and social media, Tuesday might be for networking and outreach, and Thursday for miscellaneous to-dos on the site.
Avoid Instagram breaks
I could eat up all afternoons with this item, so I carve out time in the morning nap, “commute” and evening before bed to “look for inspo,” which is how I can easily justify time spent on social media. The disruption happens when I hit a block writing, so I pick up my phone and the next thing I know I’ve spent a half hour and I’ve reached the end of the Internet.
Embrace Drafts
Whatever your medium of creativity, drafts exist for a reason. I have at least ten drafts at any given time of ideas I want to explore, even if I can’t nail the composition. I don’t delete, but I’ll exit and revisit later if it’s just not clicking at the time. I also have a tab in our editorial calendar to dump ideas.
Deep Learning/Listening
A while back I shared an article on deep listening—the idea of taking no conversation for granted and actively trying to learn. I’m trying to apply that to everything right now—conversations everywhere, Instagram, play with the kids, etc. Basically, I enter and leave all interactions with the mindset of “what can I learn?” It means that sometimes I leave a community gathering at my son’s school with a pulse on what other parents care about right now, or I observe my kids to really see their vantage point in a way that I want to explore in writing, etc.
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