“I’ve been creatively blocked for the last 6 months now, maybe even longer”

“Don’t worry”, I told him, “We’ll fix that”

And we did. In less than an hour. Now I’m going to teach you exactly how we did it

Staying creative in crazy times

We are living in turbulent times, so it’s not surprising that many of us aren’t feeling as creative as usual.

Even if you have found yourself with more time to write, you’re probably familiar with the daunting sight of a blank page and the struggle to fill it.

Whenever I ask my clients where they get their ideas from, the answer is usually books, news/articles, and the outside world. But right now the news is miserable and the outside world still fairly restricted. Regardless of this, the industry still lives on ideas and so does your career.

So how do you beat this creative block?

I’ve often found myself spending months trying to find or develop an idea and when I recently found an old notebook of mine, I could now see how this creative block affected the quality of my ideas. Everything in this industry and our careers comes from our ideas, so we need a reliable process for generating ideas. One that always works.

Read more: Build Your Development Roadmap

My favourite strategy

Here is my favourite strategy, that I know works for me and loads of my clients: The Logline Exercise.

As a creative, generating ideas should be a reliable habit, one that doesn’t depend on inspiration striking you (or not).

All you need to do to make this a habit is 10 minutes of your day (or even week) and a notebook.

Sit down and simply write loglines. Anything that comes to your mind. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. I promised you it would be easy!

The logline template

To make it even easier, here is my template:

A [format] [genre] about a [adjective] [character] who [dream] but must overcome [obstacle]

I love this particular template because although it is short, it still includes a lot of information about the story.

As an example, using this template, you could describe Legally Blonde as a rom-com about a ditsy blonde who must get into Harvard law in order to win back her boyfriend.

You’ll be surprised at the ideas that you can generate by just writing down whatever jumps into your head!

The best part? Not only does this help you cure creative blocks, it also gives you the key information you need to pitch your project. And even if a lot of these ideas remain just a logline, you are still training your brain to be creative and strategically channel your inspiration.

If you are feeling stuck, or you have hit a creative block, this little hack will help you to get back into the swing of things and generate new and exciting ideas! Give it a try!