Overcoming Creative Blocks — Let it flow! Let it flow! 

Thanks so much for featuring me as the Featured Author of the month. I’ve been a member of 12 x 12 for almost 5 years. The incredible community and webinars have been an invaluable part of my journey!

As a busy mom, I struggle to keep a consistent writing routine and stay in a steady creative zone. Each time the kids go on break—which is way too often—I struggle to shake off creative cobwebs and reactivate my foggy mom brain! It’s getting tougher as I get older too, with health challenges that seem to stand in the way of creative joy. I’m looking at you, perimenopause . . .

Living on an island with no seasons (90 degrees and 90% humidity year-round) we often travel during school breaks in search of cooler weather as well as to see family in India. By the time the kids are back at school, I’m clutching my coffee for dear life, nursing holiday blues, and struggling to get back in a routine. Not to mention endless admin, emails, and meekly making my way to the gym . . .

As I see those post-vacay emails come in: Storystorm in January, Fall Writing Frenzy post-summer, and 12 x 12 emails, I fret, I freeze, I panic. I am SO BEHIND!

It’s taken me a while to realize that I need to be in a calm headspace to create, ideate, and do any half-decent writing. I have learned to give myself permission to pause and take care of the things that need my attention first, including my wellness.  

I tell myself not to panic. If I miss a few weeks of Storystorm for example (we don’t even get back to school till mid-Jan!), it’s OKAY. The ideas will come at the right time. They are sitting there waiting to be discovered.  I tell myself: RELAX, you know how to do this.

After all, I worked as a creative strategist for 15 years at companies like Ogilvy and Facebook in New York and Singapore. It was literally my job to generate ideas for brands. I conducted workshops and hosted brainstorming meetings. I worked with the best creative minds in advertising.

Today, I want to share a few things I’ve learned along the way—

Clean canvas

When we think of where and how creative magic happens, it may conjure up lush inspiring environments like Zen Japanese gardens, beach villas, tech kids cooly cruising on balancing boards filmed by drones. The truth is: most creative workshops in the corporate world are held at awful office buildings in ugly windowless rooms with fluorescent lights, flip charts, whiteboards, bad coffee, and too many carbs! And yet, some of the best ideas come from rooms like this. Why? Because rooms like this are a blank canvas with little distraction. They shut out noise, create focus, and have purpose.

And like the windowless white rooms, when my mind is quiet and clean, and my to-do list isn’t exploding, I feel more creative too. I write better when I’m in a steady routine, my mind is relaxed and ready to focus, my workspace is clutter-free, and my mind is too. Do you know when you are most creative? What environment leaves you creatively energized?

Purposeful ideation

In over-airconditioned ideation rooms, creative teams work with a single purpose and intent—produce good ideas, no matter what. We have a client brief to guide us, we have a deadline, and we have our jobs at stake. If our ideas suck, we will lose the client and our jobs! Whether we are in the mood or not, clutter-free mind or not, we need to present our creative to a discerning and picky client.

Knowing the end goal and having a deadline always helps . . . which is why programs like 12 x 12 work so well. You have a clearly defined output goal to generate at least 12 drafts in 12 months. That is the brief. The client is YOU. You can create this goal and deadline for yourself anytime.

Secret sauce

After attending dozens of workshops, I’m sad to report there isn’t a secret sauce to creativity. Ideas simply need to pour out. For brainstorms to flow, you need a brief and inspiration. The brief tells us about the target audience and the core message we are trying to communicate. The brief gives us insights to better understand why our audience will care and share—what’s the emotional connection? Is there heart?

For ideation, we need inspiration. Programs like Storystorm offer daily blog posts by a range of incredible creators, but inspiration lives around us 365 days a year in the smallest of things . . . we just need to be consciously open and accepting of new ideas. Be a sponge. Absorb and notice everything. Soak it up and write it down! Always work under the premise that there are no bad ideas. We often shoot down our own ideas before they’ve even had a chance to breathe.

Copy sells.

In advertising, great emphasis is placed on tag lines that speak to the heart of the brand and are memorable with high recall. Think of your favorite brands or Superbowl ads—everyone knows the tagline, right? Many of my picture book ideas start with a title aka tagline. This copy might not make it as the final title but at inception, it encapsulates a big idea (or like we say in advertising BHAG- big hairy idea) I’m not sure why ideas need to be hairy, but I do know that my clients always went for catchy concept names or telling tag lines, so maybe editors and agents will fall for them too?

Exercise those muscles.

Creativity isn’t something we can magically invoke. Ideas aren’t always going to be ready to flow. We live in the real world where there are plenty of dry days and creative blocks.

But you can and you should get your butt out of that chair too! Go somewhere new, try something new, eat something new! Discovery of new and different always wakes up the brain. I often get new ideas on travels or even when I’m walking around Little India just 20 minutes from my house!

Like yoga, creativity is a practice.  Mind and body. In sync. Intentional. Purposeful.

My upcoming book by HarperCollins (March 2025) THE GREATEST RIVER illustrated by Khoa Le was written line by line after a series of yoga classes during the pandemic at a time when I was using the Ganges River as a calming visual in my yoga practice. Yoga is a clean canvas zone for me.

The more we know about our creative muscles, the more we can warm them up, exercise them, and flex them when we want!

You can do it!