Over the last few days, I’ve been staring at blank pages and empty knitting needles. The desire to write and knit have both been strong. Yet inspiration eluded me.
When writing is tough, I often look to reading as a catalyst for new ideas. So, I grabbed a book from my shelf, 101 Essays that will Change the way You Think by Brianna Wiest, in hopes that a spark of inspiration might be contained within the pages. This book is arranged in short essays, so I simply looked through the titles in the table of contents to select a short topic to read about.
One of the essays, titled “The Inherent Zen of Creativity,” quickly caught my attention. Lo and behold, the essay was filled with nuggets to help me resolve my angsty lack of creative juices. Almost immediately, I realized that I was trying to force myself into a creative space rather than tapping into the natural human instinct to create.
“Unsurprisingly then, it seems that the most effective creative process is one that follows the art of Zen – meditation, mindfulness, intuition, non-resistance, non-judgment, etc.”
-Brianna Weist
101 Essays that will Change the way You Think, “The Inherent Zen of Creativity”
My last writing attempts were in between other endeavors, where I was trying to fill the available time with words that didn’t exist in my mind yet. I would type a sentence (or three), agonize over the lack of direction, and edit/delete over and over again. I was not in a Zen or judgment-free zone.
At the same time, I was struggling to identify my next knitting project, a potential root cause for my lack of Zen. With the quote above on repeat in my head, I decided I had to get my hands moving. Instead of carefully selecting a slow project to nurture for a while, I cast on for a quick scrunchie with one objective – find my Zen to unlock the creativity within.
Has it worked? Well, I wrote this entire post in less time than a few versions of those pesky failed sentences from prior attempts. But that doesn’t mean that I’m out of the woods quite yet. I’ve already finished the quick scrunchie, and I plan on just casting on another one (easy gift!) until I have time to plan something more exciting. I’ll also be prioritizing other Zen-inducing activities, like taking long walks, to keep the creativity flowing.
How do you spark your creativity? What puts you in the Zen zone?
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