How to beat creative block in fifteen minutes

The fastest way to beat creative block is to stop waiting for a good idea and start making many small, quick ones, on a deadline, from something you already have. Block is rarely an empty well. It is a full well with a heavy lid, and the lid is the fear that the next thing must be brilliant.

So take the pressure off the single idea, put it on quantity and speed, and give yourself a clock. Here is how, with one exercise you can do in the next fifteen minutes.

Why you get stuck

Creative block tends to show up in a few familiar shapes:

• The blank page: too many choices, so you make none.
• The perfect first line: you will not start until the start is good.
• The empty tank: you are tired, bored or have been staring at the same thing too long.
• The fog: you do not actually know what you are trying to make.

Each one has the same cure in a different dose. Shrink the task, set a clock, and make something rough.

Work small and fast

Big projects freeze people. Small ones get done.

• Cut the work down to the next tiny piece: one verse, one sketch, one paragraph, eight bars.
• Set a short timer, 10 or 15 minutes, and promise yourself you will stop when it rings.
• Make it bad on purpose for the first round. Bad drafts can be fixed. Blank pages cannot.
• Do not edit while you make. Write now, judge later.

A deadline is not the enemy of creativity. It is the frame that holds it up.

Reuse your best ideas

Musicians have long built big pieces from small themes, stating a tune and then bringing it back changed: faster, slower, in a new key, in a new instrument's voice. A theme that returns feels familiar and fresh at the same time.

You can do the same. Your notebooks, old drafts and abandoned sketches are not failures. They are a store cupboard.

• Pull out one old idea you still like.
• Ask what would happen if you changed one thing about it.
• Keep a running list of lines, shapes, tunes or phrases that you might use again.

Borrow energy from the season

When the tank is empty, look out of the window. The light, the weather, the noise of the street at this time of year are all material.

• Go for a short walk and come back with three things you noticed.
• Describe today's weather as if it were a character, a colour or a sound.
• Let the season set the mood of the piece: bright and quick in spring, slow and heavy in a winter storm.

The exercise: five variations in fifteen minutes

This is the one to do now.

• Pick one small thing: a sentence, a melody of a few notes, a shape, a photo, a single idea for a product.
• Set a timer for 15 minutes.
• Make five versions of it, one every three minutes. Each must change one thing: speed, size, mood, point of view, or the ending.
• When the timer rings, stop. Read or play all five.
• Circle the one with the most life in it. That is your starting point. Not your finished piece, just the first step out of the fog.

Five versions in fifteen minutes is three minutes each, which is too little time to be precious and just enough to be surprised. The point is not that every variation is good. The point is that one of them moves, and once something moves, you can follow it.

If you are still stuck

• Change the tool: pencil instead of screen, voice memo instead of notebook.
• Change the place: a different room or a different chair is sometimes enough.
• Change the size: if a song will not come, write one line; if a chapter will not come, write one scene.
• Rest: sometimes block is just tiredness. Sleep counts as work.

A quick checklist

• Shrink the task to the next tiny piece
• Set a clock, 10 or 15 minutes
• Make it rough, judge it later
• Reuse an old idea and change one thing
• Steal energy from the weather and the season
• Do five variations, keep the liveliest one

Close this page, pick your small thing, and start the timer. The best cure for not making anything is making something, quickly, today.