creativity exercises

In my few spare moments, I’ve been reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. While I’m only a little way in, it’s been great so far.

In her book, Cameron has a couple daily exercises she recommends, one of them being morning pages. Morning pages is, quite simply, filling three pages of paper with anything at all, first thing in the morning. According to her, it helps you get all the extra clutter out of your mind in order to free up room for creativity throughout the day.

I haven’t actually tried it myself yet, but I plan to soon. Honest I do.

Anyhow, it got me thinking about just how useful creativity exercises can be. They can get your mind out of a rut and help you look at things from another angle. Besides that, they’re good for everyone—from folks who’re just dipping their toes in the creative waters to the pros who can do backflips into said waters with their eyes closed.

One popular exercise is the 30 Circles Test, in which you quickly fill in a page of thirty circles with any sort of design you can think of.

Here are a few extras I’ve come up with or adapted from similar practices I’ve seen:

Repurposed Item

Pick an item within view, or at least nearby, and come up with another, unconventional, use for it. That bookmark could be a miniature diving board or those CDs could be super funky earrings. Wait, who uses CDs anymore?

Scribble Drawing

Pressing lightly, make a bunch of scribbles on a page without pulling up your pen or pencil. Then pick up your writing utensil and try to make something out of the shapes you see in the scribbles by drawing on top of them. I watched an artist friend do this and he came up with some amazing creatures.

Name and Story

Look for a person, picture of a person, animal or even cartoon character who you aren’t familiar with. Come up with a name and a little background for them. Where were they born? What do they like? What do they dream about doing? How might you spend time with them if you had a day together?

So, if you’re ever feeling stuck on something, regardless of how creative you think you need to be at the time, why not dive into one of these exercises?

You never know where it might lead. Maybe you’ll come up with a cool idea you can use later, or maybe you’ll just give yourself a nice little break and come back with a clearer mind.

Whatever you do, make sure you have some fun! I mean, Sheryl Crow can’t be the only one…