Five Steps To Crushing Your Creative Rut

Have you ever been in the middle of a fantastic creative journey that comes to an unexplainable halt?

It’s like you’re floating blissfully along a creative river in your cool mixed media kayak. You’re sporting a colorful DIY life jacket you made from ducktape-covered chair strapping. A driftwood oar is in your hand and perched atop your head, a most excellent sun hat crafted from a repurposed woven placemat. You are craft-happy, carefree, inspired, energized, alive – that’s how you feel when your creative waters are full and flowing.

But then . . .

Suddenly, the water gets thick and murky. Making progress is difficult if not impossible and a dull cloud covers up all that inspires you. Your crafty kayak is stuck in a muddy rut. Your creative waters have evaporated.

What the Flippity Floo?!

Okay, so maybe I’ve made this a tad dramatic. Perhaps life in a creative rut is not as apocalyptic as I’ve made it sound. But . . if creating, making, designing – is essential to who you are, a creative rut sucks!

So how do you get your crafty kayak free? Well, one of the answers is actually right under you nose- literally. Your five senses; taste, smell, touch, sight and sound play a crucial role in the creative process. During a rut, jump-starting these senses may be the easiest (and most fun) solution to getting your creative waters flowing again.

All you need is five days, a sense of adventure and a journal or notebook for your thoughts. Are you ready?

Day One: Taste

For many reasons, butter and salt being two of them, taste is my favorite sense. Each of us are guilty of getting into a rut when it comes to food and drink. We frequent our favorite restaurants where we often order the same dish. We also cycle through a dozen or so dinners at home and undoubtedly have a preferred beverage. Consequently, this creates a bit of anticipatory boredom for our taste buds so we need to wake them up a little bit.

First, change up your morning taste routine:

• If you normally drink coffee, try tea.
• If you usually drink black tea, try green, herbal or fruit-based teas.
• Add fresh herbs like chives, dill or tarragon to morning eggs.
• Try a flavor-packed smoothie like one of THESE.

Use lunch, dinner and date night as opportunities to experience new flavors:

• Pho (Vietnamese soup) offers a 3-ring flavor circus and is quickly served, making it a great choice for work-day lunches.
• Eat family style so everyone can try a bit of each dish.
• Try Persian food, like Kashke Bademjan or Ash Reshte for uniquely delicious flavor combinations.
• Participate in a wine pairing class which you taste mini dishes with wine paired purposefully to bring out flavors.
• Go to an olive oil or vinegar specialty shop to do a little taste testing. If you live in Arizona, try Queen Creek Olive Mill

There’s a reason I mentioned taste first . . . so you have five days worth of opportunity to wake up those taste buds. Try not to rush through these tasting experiences. Enjoy them slowly and mindfully. Furthermore, discuss flavors; your likes and dislikes. If any creative ideas come to you through the tasting – write them down in your journal or notebook.

Day Two: Smell

Of course you will exercise those nostrils during all of your tasting adventures but there are a few additional ways to re-charge your sense of smell.

• Head to a local spice shop like Penzeys or Savory Spice Shop and explore smells both exotic and familiar.
• Go for a nature walk with your journal. Make a 10 minute scribble of each plant and jot down a description of it’s smell.
• Light a different candle or use a different infused oil in your home each of the five days.

Day Three: Touch

Touch is believed to be the first of the five human senses to develop. It involves a plethora of sensations including pressure, temperature and vibration. Often, and this is actually true of all your senses, if you omit one or two of your other senses, the ones remaining become heightened. For example, if you wear a blindfold and earbuds, your sense of touch will be more significant.

Jump starting your sense of touch is something you can do everyday by just being more aware of your surroundings. Feel. . . a breeze, heat, the cool smoothness of a marble counter, the scratchiness of wool, the lightness of a feather. To further this sense, try a few of these touch-focused activities.

• Head to your local fabric shop and touch EVERYTHING. Think about it’s texture, weight, and temperature.
• A nature walk is a perfect time to explore touch – just make sure you know what poison ivy looks like!
• Head to a petting zoo or aquarium with a hands-on tide pool display.
• Challenge your touch. Put on a blindfold while someone puts five things into a bag. Using touch only, guess what each item is.

Don’t forget to use your journal through these exercises. You don’t have to write specifically about each experiment – just write whatever creative thoughts, ideas and inspiration come to mind.

Day Four: Sight

For a visual artist/crafter, sight is undoubtedly the most important sense. Consequently, you can get stuck in a visual rut; seeing the same shape, the same color, the same answer to the creative question. The challenge here is to jolt your sense of sight awake by seeing different things – differently.

• Visit art museum exhibits that are different from what you normally do. If you’re an acrylic painter, look at ceramics or fashion. If you work in mixed media, visit the classics. Are you typically a traditional quilter? Check out modern art.
• Spend an hour or two in the “art” section of a library or book store.
• Treat yourself to a magazine for creatives such as Origin or a publication from Stampington.
• Head to an area of town known for graffiti or street art. Not “tagging”, Art. Of course, keep your safety in mind.
• Take a trip down the hardware aisle of your local home improvement store. Explore the different ways things work and fit together

Day 5: Sound

Sound and it’s relation to creativity is an interesting topic because it is truly individualized. My kids always studied with music on and they insisted it helped them think better. When I study or create – I almost always prefer silence and writing in a buzzing coffee shop is just not an option for me. Nonetheless, the right sound at the right time ignites my creative fire. Here are a few exercises to spark your creativity through sound.

• Explore a new style of music. For example, I recently found the Chill Electronic station on Amazon’s Prime Music. Alexa, play Chill Electronic.
• Enjoy a coffee date with fellow crafters. Listening to others’ techniques and ideas often helps dislodge stagnant thinking.
• Similarly, listen to a podcast about others’ creative process. One of my favorites is CraftSanity with Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood.
• Play some music with a good beat and dance like no one is watching.

Now Get Those Creative Waters Flowing

Now that your five days of sensory jump-starts are done, get ready to re-launch that crafty kayak. Try some of these tips to get your creative waters flowing again.

• Look through your journal for inspiration
• Rather than going back to the project you got stuck on, start something fresh and new.
• Switch your medium – paper, wood, fabric, fiber, clay
• Above all, just play. Don’t focus too much on an end product.

Finally, get in your boat and row with abandon. Don’t forget your driftwood oar and placemat sunhat. . . I think it could use a tissue paper flower and some glitter by the way.

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A creative rut can challenge even the most experienced creatives. Even though they are majorly frustrating, don’t panic. Give your five senses a jump-start and before long you will be back on your creative journey.

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