Last week I had a creative project to work on. I needed to come up with an idea, but I found myself completely and utterly blank. Usually I can think of something, however bad, to start with, and then edit and analyse and improve… but this day I was empty. I couldn’t even think of one single terrible idea, let alone a good one.
Still, I was trying to be disciplined and so I took Ann Pachett’s advice and applied it to my situation. I went to a coffee shop with a notebook and a pen and I just sat there, staring at a blank page.
No words appeared.
I took the cap off my pen and poised it over the paper, as though this would prod my brain into action.
No dice.
I stared out the window for a good 3 minutes – a technique which in my experience tends to yield surprisingly good results – only to find myself with 15 minutes still on the clock.
Finally out of sheer boredom, I pulled out my notebook that contained the parameters for the project and began to re-copy the outline on a sheet of paper like a schoolgirl.
“One. New product must match previous products.”
This was mind-numbingly obvious, but oddly, writing it out suddenly made me think. How would I characterize previous products? What keywords were associated with branding? Surely those keywords could be linked to new products.
I continued in this vein, re-copying the parameters onto my blank page, which soon began to have random notes, diagrammed ideas, and occasionally complete sentences on it. By the end of my twenty minutes, I was far from finished, but the wheels had begun spinning and some of the output might even have value.
Needless to say, I’m going to try it again on my next blank day.
What do you do when you find yourself coming up blank?
