In my early 20s, I had an editor who, when writing on deadline, used to perform the exact same ritual: He’d stay home from the office, cook a pot of pasta (which doubled as his bowl), and refuse to leave his house until he finished the story.
I used to imagine him at home, writing the way I do: hyperfocused, mumbling, sometimes pacing, annoyed at any and all distractions. And I guess I always knew that image was correct because I know what it’s like to experience creative flow. It’s immersive, and everything that isn’t the task at hand is inconvenient—including ridiculous things like bathroom breaks and hunger. Hence his 24-hour supply of carbs.
But worse than, you know, catering to your own humanity is the feeling of stuckness, when your brain simply can’t or won’t make the next creative connection. There’s nothing more uninspiring than dead air, even if it’s incredibly common.
Creative flow, when depicted in movies or, sure, daydreams, looks sexy—like you’re Russell Crowe writing on the window in A Beautiful Mind. But in reality, maintaining flow takes practice. And, perhaps most importantly, self-knowledge. An awareness of what you need to get the cogs turning again when they inevitably halt.
My personal creativity practice is elemental:
Fire: When I can’t create, I make something else.
Creativity sometimes requires kindling—or maybe even another match entirely. So when my writing won’t budge, I often pivot to another creative venture: sewing, a house project, a game, heckling my group chat. I’ll even give myself a completely arbitrary 20-minute project—make something, fix something, rearrange something—and see what happens.
I find that, like any fire, creativity needs fuel. The more I try to force it, the more I smother the flame. Even taking time to write a quick LinkedIn post on a completely different topic provides enough of a spark to remind my brain that it knows exactly what it’s doing.
Air: When my thoughts won’t connect, I give myself space.
I’ve often marveled at how much writing I get done on runs. Seriously, when I’m running—blissfully thinking about nothing—I’ll suddenly experience a wave of connections so urgent that I have to type them into my Notes app at a trot. And there’s science behind this, too: When your mind isn’t pressured to put two and two together, it has room to make connections in the background.
Run. Walk. Get outside. Let your mind circulate. Give an idea air to move instead of squeezing it harder and harder.
Earth: When I have too many ideas, I seek ways to ground myself.
Too many ideas? My steak is too juicy, and my lobster is too buttery.
But truly, being flooded with a multitude of possible directions is both a gift and a curse, the curse being that when you have too many creative paths, it can be hard to know which one to prioritize. When I feel this way (signs: hyper, scattered, feeling like I should paint the risers of my staircase lemon yellow), I seek out people and things that create guardrails: the friend or creative partner who isn’t afraid to say no; a ruthless edit that requires me to do one small thing first, before even looking at my other ideas.
Earth is weight, structure, limits. Creativity needs gravity.
Water: I stay open to my creative current.
This one might sound kind of woo-woo, and honestly, I’m glad of that. It took me a long time to appreciate the amount of waiting that comes with creative flow.
I pretty much always treat creativity like I’m sitting on the banks of a river, watching as the water runs by. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes carrying something interesting or worth writing about. And when the latter happens, I wait some more, knowing that there’s likely something else coming.
The important thing for this element is trust: trusting that you’ll always have more ideas, trusting that you’ll know when one is ready, trusting yourself to wait because something isn’t quite there yet. Your most compelling ideas are accumulating in the drift. And if you’re paying attention—calmly, before any pressure kicks in—you can collect the little things that might help your future creative self.
