All writers run out of ideas.
This may be for a minute, week, month, even a lifetime. The length, I believe, is self-determined. A good friend told me recently that I ought to stop falling back on old solutions to the problems I have now, and I feel like that statement (however poorly paraphrased) applies to the creative spirit. Used to be that if I was blocked creatively I’d step back, breathe, and go read a bunch of stuff in the genre I was trying to write in. I called it a jumpstart. Today I was thinking of another solution to that situation: Write something new everyday.
Generally speaking, writers come to the table of life with one really good idea. They write around that idea, carving away at the core of their creativity the way a sculptor peels back the clay until the sculpture is finally revealed. I believe Stephen King’s one great story was the Dark Tower series, and nearly everything else he’s written orbits that work. I don’t believe it has to be that way. I believe that King, and others like him, escaped the trap of sculpting towards your one big thing by trying to write something new and challenging themselves as writers every day.
As a writer it is easy to get stuck in a mode or a rut or a specific style. Challenging myself will allow me to explore different styles, genres, and voices. This is the clearest path to stretch and grow my creativity.
Now all I gotta do is lock down the time for all this writing…