Inspiration

Hello You Lovely Lot!!!

Recently Carrie Hope Fletcher from the YouTube channel ItsWayPastMyBedTime posted a video about inspiration and the difficulties that people face when trying to be inspired. Below is the video she posted for you to check out now before reading the rest of my post :)

This is something I can definitely relate to being a creative person. She mentions that she is rubbish at the academic things like maths and science, but her strengths in life are her creativity in acting, singing, writing etc.

Being creative comes natural to some people but even for them they hit a brick wall sometimes and it takes some time to get more inspiration to create more work, whether that be a story, a song, a dance etc.

As you know my main area of creativity is dance. I love choreographing and choreography was the module at University that I always received the higher grades for. I would love to go into choreography professionally one day as it is something that I very much enjoy.

Something you don't know about me though is recently I've been collecting ideas for a book I would like to write. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a great writer, but I do find inspiration and when that happens I want to share it in any way that I can. Now this is usually through dance but I thought I would change things up a bit and try to write a novel. I would love to be a published author one day so staying inspired and getting the motivation to write is essential.

Now as Carrie said in her video, everyone gets creative block sometimes and this can make you develop a series lack of motivation. So I thought I'd share my ways of getting over creative block in both a dance perspective and a writing perspective. Obviously I have a lot more experience in the dance side of things.

How to get over Creative Block in Choreography

1. Improvise - If you are struggling to come up with some set movement, put some music on, and improvise. You'll be surprised at how much movement you can get from this. Music can also help with inspiration.

2. Use Specific Words - Depending on what you are creating, words can come in handy for when you have hit a brick wall. For example, if you're creating a piece based around the woods, you might want to think of words such as scared, small, curve, or bright, sunny, happy. These will help you develop movement based around these words but will also be relevant to the piece you are creating.

3. Characterisation - This doesn't help in all areas of choreography; if you were creating an abstract piece, you/your dancer(s) might not have specific characters and the piece might be specifically based around the movement, but for narrative pieces, movement can be developed efficiently by thinking about the character you are trying to portray.

How to get over Creative Block in Writing

1. Analyse Your Surroundings - When you're out and about, make sure you have a little notebook with you as you never know what you might see that could inspire you for your next character, location etc. Note these little inspirations down and you'll be writing in no time!!!

2. Get Someone To Proof Read - Bring in a fresh pair of eyes to read what you have so far, whether that be a few sentences or a few chapters. This person might see a direction for the novel to go in which could then create another few chapters for you to share your ideas.

3. Keep Reading!!! - This is super important for someone who wants to write. You can get so much inspiration from other authors that are more experienced than you are and that have also been in your shoes. Just remember, even the most experienced writers hit a creative block sometimes; you're not the only one just because you are new to this.

I hope this helps some of you, whether that be in a dance sense or a writing sense, and Carrie's video is fantastic and she explains so much better than I do the difficulties creative block brings. She also provides some websites that could help you get over creative block so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.

That's it for now and I will speak to you again next Sunday!!!