Hello everyone! Welcome back to BirthMay 2022! Today’s post is part of my “Casually Creative” series for this BirthMay, focusing on the actual creation part of creativity.

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In case you’re new, every May I blog every day and call it BirthMay! Why? Because it’s my birth month and I’m super extra.

I know creation can be hard to accomplish. I am always hearing, and experiencing it myself, that ideas can be plentiful, but actually sitting down and creating the thing can be tough. I figured I’d share a few ideas on how to just get the job done and finally create that thing that has been bouncing around as an idea for awhile.

If you missed the inspiration post that came before this one, feel free to go back to that one! Otherwise, read on for ideas on how to create!

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Casually Creative: Creation

Just having an idea isn’t always the catalyst that leads to following through and bringing that idea to life. I should know! I have many ideas jotted down across various notebooks, bullet journals, and scraps of paper. There’s more ideas in the “notes” app of my phone and even ideas that I’ve emailed to myself, buried in the inbox. And there’s even more ideas that I’ve never written down because “I’ll remember” and who knows when that will be! But just having the idea isn’t enough sometimes and I can’t wait to finally bring some of those ideas back and complete them in the way I envisioned.

My first tip that I try my best to incorporate is that when inspiration strikes, to just sit down and see it through. Sometimes the time when I’m the most excited for an idea is at that very moment. One of the novels I’ve written was actually an idea that came to me in a very J.K. Rowling-esque way, I was sitting on a train! Unlike Rowling, I had a pen and paper with me, so I was able to start writing it out right away and even then, it took me years to get back to that idea and finally write it (which I did write a first draft in January of 2020 and did a rewrite in November of 2021). So trying to do as much as possible right away is definitely something that works for me. Even if I don’t have time to finish an entire first opening paragraph as I did for my book, I will do as much as I can. Maybe research a few articles or locate resources for a new idea or something would also work!

Another idea is to do a monthly challenge! I’m doing monthly challenges to varying degrees of success this year. Even so, for a goal-oriented and highly motivated person this will work wonders. The key to this one is to have very specific benchmarks for each day. For example, with NaNoWriMo the overall goal is to write 50,000 words in the month but the daily goal is 1,667 words. Reaching 50,000 words seems so crazy but 1,667 seems a lot more reasonable. Finding measurable ways to reach the goal is key to this idea. After all, if there’s no way to complete a challenge then that’s not very much fun at all! There’s no motivation if there’s no goal, so if the goal is to write a song maybe the goal for one week can be to complete the lyrics, another can be to figure out the melody, another to record, and so on.

A similar goal to that is to make an appointment with yourself to check-in on the progress. If a monthly challenge isn’t quite your jam, then maybe a 3 month check-in would work. Again, clear benchmarks will help a ton otherwise there’s not really anything to work towards.

Planning out an entire day to create something can also work! I’ve seen TikToks or YouTube videos of people doing a 24 hour reading challenge to read books that have been on their TBR for forever, people who set aside a day to DIY something, and so on! It is such a great idea to work towards a goal that has been put off for awhile for sure.

For those of us who also work well when there’s someone keeping us accountable, finding a creative group or creative friends can also be helpful! Someone to check in on us and give us someone to check in on! I actually don’t have a group myself, as I find that sometimes these types of groups may get a bit competitive or the vibe might be less collaborative than I would like. There’s been many times where I’ve met people who can be gatekeepers or jealous or guarded with their ideas. While that’s fine for them, it’s not what I want in a group of creatives so I haven’t quite found this for myself, but maybe someday!

In general I think that just having a plan is the most important part. Even if it’s as simple as “I’m going to come up with one caption for my bookstagram” or “I’m going to write one entire chapter for this new novel” will get me one step closer towards completion and often I find that it actually gets the ball rolling so once one chapter is done I might move onto another. This reminds me of my middle school science class of when we got to the physics portion of the book and learned that something in motion will stay in motion, and it’s true for creativity and creation as well. Creation is a muscle that needs to be exercised, and once it gets going, it’s impossible to stop!

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Let me know if you have any other tips for creating something and bringing a creative idea to life!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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