I wanted to share some good news this week – this has been my biggest week in terms of creative output in… I don’t know how long.
I feel like I’ve had so many ideas (including some good ones), and come up with a lot of stuff that I genuinely want to share with you through these emails, YouTube videos etc.
This is a nice feeling, because for the past few months I’ve been in a bit of a creative rut, waiting around for inspiration to strike before I’d allow myself to start writing / creating.
But then I came across this online course called “Write like a Mofo” by a chap called Ross O’Lochlainn – I found him through a workshop he hosted with Taki Moore (another mentor of mine), and his stuff immediately resonated with me.
This is the method in a nutshell:
- Open up a blank document (I like to use Ulysses, but you can use whatever you want).
- Set a timer for 10 minutes.
- Start typing: “Okay I’m just going to stream of consciousness whatever’s coming to my mind right now, this isn’t going anywhere, but while I’m here I’ve been thinking about…”
- Keep typing until the timer runs out. You’re not allowed to press delete or backspace, you just have to keep writing.
- Stop when the timer runs out.
The first time I tried it, I spent the first hundred words typing out random garbage:
Okay so I’m just splurging whatever I’m thinking straight into the page without thinking about it at all and i have zero expectation that this is going to go anywhere, man my nails are quite long this is annoying…
But then… something interesting happened a few minutes in: I started to write stuff where I was surprising myself with what was coming through my fingers. And some of it was quite good. I came up with some ideas about how we could improve our Lifestyle Business Academy. And some video ideas. And some ideas for cool things I could do while in Hong Kong. And a bunch more stuff.
I listened to an Ed Sheeran interview a few years ago, where he was talking about songwriting, and how it’s kinda like a tap connected to a water tank. If you haven’t used the tap in a while, when you first turn it on, the water that comes out is going to be rusty and brown and gross. That doesn’t mean the water in the tank is all bad, it just means the pipes need clearing out.
He said the same thing happens with creativity in the world of songwriting. If you sit down to write after not writing for a few days, the first few paragraphs / lyrics that come out are going to suck. That’s the rust in the pipes. So you’ve got to ignore how terrible the first part of the process is, and just keep going. Pretty soon, you start uncovering the good stuff. But you couldn’t have gotten to it without clearing out the pipes first.
I’ve known this for years, but coming across Ross’ course reminded me of its power. I realised that the creative “rut” I’ve felt like I’ve been in recently could’ve easily been solved by actually sitting down and just starting to write. Rather than what I was doing, which was sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike, instead of just sitting down and doing the work. I’d wait around thinking: “I have nothing useful to say this week” and not write anything at all.
So here’s what I’ve been doing since taking the course and doing the exercises in it: now when it comes to sitting down to create something, I don’t think about it before starting. I just set a timer for 10 minutes, open up Ulysses on my iPad / Mac, and just start typing away, sometimes even with my eyes closed. Writing the bad stuff, typing through the rusty water. And usually within a few minutes of writing crap, the ideas start to flow, and I start to think that what I’m producing is actually alright.
I’ve found that this works nicely with voice dictation on an app like Voicepal too – if I’m walking to the local coffee shop, I’ll stick my AirPods in, hit record on Voicepal, and start talking: “I don’t really know what I’m trying to say here, but if I were to just say whatever comes to mind, something I’ve been thinking about this week is…” and take it from there.
Have a great week!
Ali xx
