Inspiration is hard. Writer’s block is far easier to come by. There are plenty of days when my brain doesn’t want to do its job and instead leaves me to sip coffee and stare blankly at my keyboard.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to let my mind go free and only write as passion and strike. I have deadlines and need to keep writing—now.
When that becomes a problem, I turn to the usual creativity-boosting methods, and one in particular: the brain dump.
Classic brain dumping—writing whatever’s on your mind as fast as you can for several minutes—is the simplest way to burst through a slump and get back to writing. But if that doesn’t inspire your picky muse, there are many brain dumping techniques to try.
List Your Thoughts
Take a notebook and start listing (You don’t have to use a pretty and funny one like this, but you could).
List every word that intrigues at the moment for the next five minutes. Adjectives, nouns, characters, settings, themes—whatever strikes your fancy. Once the five minutes are up or you have a good list, it’s time to write.
Set aside another twenty or more minutes. Write a short, a chapter, a synopsis, or anything else that incorporates the fascinating words you just selected. This should get your creative senses tingling.
Get Some Visuals
If you have Pinterest, make a new board. If not, ready a folder on your computer or in another account.
Then, go to Google Images and prepare for some rapid-fire searches. Search for any topic that comes into your head. Ninja assassins? Medieval cutlery? Romantic islands? Cool illustrations? Mysterious portraits? Save or pin any picture you like. You could use the search on Pinterest, too.
Once you collected a good set of images, use them. Start writing a drabble or something longer inspired by the images you chose. Allow the visuals to refresh your writing.
Pick a Prompt
Find a writing prompt online that agrees with you and go off on it. Writer’s Digest has a lot of good prompts, or you can hunt elsewhere.
Brain dump everything you have to say about the prompt you picked. Let yourself go.
Once you finish, you may love what you’ve written. Great! Or you might find it a mess. No problem, there’s still some value in there.
Take your writing and pick out the prose and ideas you do like. Pull out the quotes that sing, the characters with potential, and the plots that can be polished. Save them to inspire your writing in another session.
Even if there’s nothing to save, guess what? You’ve still put yourself in the mood for writing and got your creative gears turning.
Photo by Daria Tumanova from Unsplash
Doodle
The classic boredom-buster for the ages can also pump up your inspiration. Doodling, crazy as it sounds, has been found to boost memory, increase productivity, and best of all, amp up creativity and help you form new ideas.
Doodle about whatever it is you’d like to write. Doodle scenes from your upcoming novel, fictional family trees, graphs, potential quotes, or simply random objects, people, and doodads reminiscent of your writing.
After a bit of doodling, challenge yourself to write something inspired by the doodles. No doubt your brain’s curiosity will already be piqued, and you can put your pen where your mind is.
Brain dumping techniques are a great way to get your creative juices flowing. And you don’t have to limit yourself to writing down whatever’s on the top of your head, not if that’s something you don’t want to do. Visual thinkers do better by collecting images or doodling, and even wordy thinkers might prefer a list or collecting prompts.
Whatever way you want to brain dump and get writing, just do it! There’s no wrong way.
Mint is a writer and digital marketing pro who lives in coastal Virginia with her family and one lovable pitbull. Her passions include helping people and businesses display their best side through the power of communication, buying her dog costumes he doesn’t want to wear, and talking all day about Batman.
