On Creativity

Creativity is your birthright as a human being.

It’s the human impulse to make pattern and shape out of the massive amount of information in the world. You’re creative when you look at something and choose foreground and background. You’re creative when you organize your dishes in the cupboards. You’re creative when you decide what to wear, even if it’s all black. You’re creative when you design your bathroom, even if it’s all white.

But sometimes you hit a creative block. You don’t feel creative. You feel dull and burned out. Why does that happen? And what can you do to spark your creativity again?

Why Do Creative Blocks Happen?

Creative blocks happen when you start to focus on the result rather than the process. Your rational mind takes control, and it’s thinking thoughts that have nothing to do with creativity. It’s thinking: Am I good enough? Is this going to work? Is anyone going to like this? Are people going to make fun of me? Am I wasting my time? Should I be doing something else? What about the laundry and the dirty dishes?

Anxieties and judgments block creativity.

When your thoughts are ruled by hopes and fears, you’re not in the present; you’re in the past and the future. You can’t get into the flow of the present moment.

Your rational mind likes to judge. It wants things to be correct, to be in order. It doesn’t like change, because it doesn’t like what it doesn’t know. But creativity is all about change, new orderings, new connections. That’s why we titled our book and self-paced online course—10 sessions that cover all aspects of writing, and teach you how to write with creative energy and flow—Write What You Don’t Know.

How to Overcome Creative Blocks

The Imaginative Storm method was designed to overcome creative blocks. We call it a dance between the rational mind and the imagination—with the imagination the partner that leads the dance.

You may have heard that common piece of writing advice, “Get out of your rational mind.” Is that really possible, for a rational creature? So we say, let your rational mind follow rather than lead. Don’t tell it that it’s useless or unwanted; give it a task. And that task is, for the next 10 minutes, to let your imagination be as free as possible.

A 10-minute timer is one of the most useful tools for overcoming creative blocks.

Why? Because your rational mind isn’t expecting to write anything good in 10 minutes—and even if, over time as you work in the Imaginative Storm method, it has learned that you can write terrific material in 10 minutes, it has also learned not to expect that every time. So, if in this upcoming 10 minutes you don’t get something terrific, big deal.

You’re focusing on the present: this material, these 10 minutes. You’re not thinking about the larger project or your life purpose and talent, and getting all anxious and judgmental. You’ll surprise yourself, even amaze yourself, with the creative originality of what you put on the page.

Come Write with Us!

Everything we do in the Imaginative Storm is suitable for writers across the spectrum: from those who consider themselves beginners to published writers with many titles to their name.

  • Join our Prompt of the Week Zoom to write to a random prompt for 10 minutes! We usually have some newcomers, and we will welcome you. It’s on Thursday at 3 pm PT / 6 pm ET, for an hour.

  • Explore our Circle site, where we publish the raw material we write in 10 minutes. You’ll get an idea of what’s possible, and how we support one another with appreciation rather than competition or criticism.

  • Get our Daily Prompt delivered straight to your inbox every morning.

  • Check out our vast archive of image prompts on YouTube. We guide you step by step in working with the prompt, share what we did in our Saturday session, and time you for 10 minutes while you write.

  • Let us guide you step by step through the 10 sessions of the Imaginative Storm method, in our self-paced online course Write What You Don’t Know: Imaginative Storm Writer Training. The course includes a monthly live Zoom with Imaginative Storm co-founders Allegra Huston and James Navé. Ask us anything!

  • Sign up for one of our live workshops, on Zoom or in person, and explore the memoir, or fictional story, you might write.

  • Order our book Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow.

  • Subscribe to Imaginative Storm on Substack for our newsletter with thoughts on writing.

We hope to see you.

What People Are Saying About Imaginative Storm

Testimonials from 12 members of the Imaginative Storm writing community

  • “You helped me overcome my critic. I went from being a fearful writer to a joyful one.”

    — Corinne Crone, intimacy coach

  • "After Imaginative Storm, writer's block is a myth."

    Abdullah H. Erakat, journalist and screenwriter

  • “This wave of words came in 10 minutes in a beautifully playful space. I find the Imaginative Storm method intriguing, freeing, well-seasoned and lovingly crafted. I am delighted, surprised and nourished every time I jump into it!”

    — Esme Olivia, singer/songwriter

  • "The Imaginative Storm helped me go places I would not normally consider going and kept me from overthinking when I got there. The number of poems from the Imaginative Storm that have been published speaks to the success of the method and its benefit to me as a poet.

    — Louis Faber, poet

  • Wendy Shaw

    "It's like discovering a part of yourself you didn't know existed. What a gift!"

    Wendy Shaw, visual artist

  • “It’s life-changing. Even if I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing.”

    Deborah Williams, writer and educator

  • “I am brought ever closer to something Carl Jung said many years ago: ‘Until we make the unconscious conscious, we will live our life and we will call it fate.’ I feel the Imaginative Storm process is ever getting me closer and closer to a more conscious understanding of my life.”

    Dan Stenabaugh, writer

  • “The Imaginative Storm process has given me the freedom to tap so many aspects of myself. It’s so easy to get stuck trying to write about events until you shake up the brain cells and spill them out in a fresher way."

    Darlene VanderHoop, writer and yoga instructor

  • Alice W. Meadows

    “Writing what I don't know has given me more confidence and freedom and flow to write what I do know. It's like having a base camp to set out on writing adventures."

    Alice W. Meadows, writer

  • "What this process teaches us to do is to be with the percolating of all the chaos inside us. It's raw, but the pen keeps going and amazing things arise."

    Arlene Shapiro, performer and writer

  • "Imaginative Storm opens up this creative cave, gives me a shovel and shows me where to dig. It says, ‘Look at this gem! Look at that gem!’ Before I know it, I’m mining words that tumble out on to the page."

    Sandi Dittmer, writer