Creative dryness: what to do when you don’t have content ideas

This winter, my creativity seems to be gone with the leaves that once adorned the trees. It was especially evident this past week, when I had a flu. For a week or two, my creative muse was stiff as a stone and I didn't even have motivation to create anything at all.

This phenomenon of creative dryness (i.e. not having ideas on what to create content on) commonly happens among feminine entrepreneurs, yet it is not often talked about among business coaching spaces.

Instead, we are told to “push through the blocks” and “do whatever it takes” to pump out content consistently. To soft feminine souls, this rigid, forceful advice, although “practical”, can feel like a cold brash wind that further freezes up creativity inside. 

I remember being told that if I did not show up, someone else would get the attention of my potential clients.

Although I do not believe that competition can’t exist if we express our uniqueness, this fear mentality that breeds among most business advice made me feel ashamed and guilty whenever my creative momentum dries up and I happened to not post on social media for a while. It felt like if I didn’t post content for multiple days in a row, my audience would forget about me. Or if they do remember, that I needed to explain why I disappeared. 

And so, content creation becomes a chore/ a daily checklist, rather than genuinely inspired actions. This leaves a lot of feminine entrepreneurs feeling like factory robots chained up to “produce” for an algorithm machine rather than as artists, writers, and creators sparkling with ideas. 

As a result, a lot of women end up biting the bullet and following the advice of forcing to create content even if they don’t feel like it.

Although this advice can be generally valuable for instigating creativity in certain scenarios, forcing creativity to happen when there is a deeper disconnect inside only leads women to burnout and dilution of their expression. This usually leads to women feeling like they are showing up, yet feeling ineffective in terms of creating resonance with their audience as they’d like. 

To some women, this force-based advice leads to a repression in their expression altogether. This can look like disappearing from social media for lengths of period at time whenever you hit a creative wall. It can also look like taking on unhelpful beliefs, such that you cannot be an online business owner because you can’t show up consistently. Or it can even lead to relinquishing your creative dreams altogether. 

In either scenario, a business will not run smoothly when there is creative dryness. And when there is dryness, a common advice from the business perspective is to “get over it”. Some women counteract this by forcing it through while others freeze up in response. Yet neither response is gentle in a way that leads to creativity flowing again. 

The reality is, creative dryness requires an unforced guidance, an intricate connection to the self, an ample space without rush to nurture creativity again.

It’s a quiet time that demands contemplation, a winter’s rest for the artistic soul. It is during these times that we need gentleness and understanding, not the harsh business advice to bulldoze through the creative barricades. 

And in the next sections of this post, I’m sharing with you compassionate ways of how you can navigate this creative dryness through what I’ve learned from my own experiences.Through that, you will find the deeper essence of creative expression– of what makes her wither and what leads her to gracefully return like the promise of spring, after a winter again.

Discarding the “shoulds” of content creation

Creative dryness is rife in this day and age among entrepreneurs because we are bombarded with messages that tell us how we “should”create. Speak this way to attract ideal clients. Create your content that looks like (insert a successful person you look at online) for people to buy your products. Make this number of posts each week in order to boost the algorithm etc. 

Although knowing the structures that are available and possible on how our creative outputs can be a good kickstart in business, what I’ve learned is that too much structure can suffocate your desire to even create. This is why a lot of business strategies, tactics, and templates stiffens up a creative’s heart. We become paralyzed by “how” we should create (to get to certain outcomes) rather than what it is that we actually want to create. 

When creativity becomes stifled, one of the things that you’ll notice is a lack of unfulfillment with your business.

This happens because we become driven only by the desire to get clients and just want to skip to “getting clients,” rather than relishing the joy of making art/ being creative in the content creation process. And so, we lose our enjoyment in running a business and showing up in marketing no longer becomes fun and sustainable.

 Which is the reason why it is important to relax the “shoulds” when it comes to content creation, from time to time. The same goes for structures, especially predetermined structures that we think we need to follow. I notice this within myself– whenever I begin to overthink how/what I “should” create, I can feel creativity sinking like a ship. 

This is because creativity has a rebellious nature. The very essence of creativity itself means to think outside the box, and create new things that are unconventional, uncharted, and unexplored. And so when we are imposing rules around how we “should” create (to acquire certain metrics in business or engage in perfectionism), we are shutting off our creative spirit by putting her in a “box”, and thereby obliterating her true, captivating expression altogether. 

Attuning to your inner rhythm

Another cause for creative dryness is not giving your creative ideas room to breathe.

This happens especially because on social media, there is a constant pressure to consistently pump out content, one after another. As entrepreneurs, we become forced to follow a creative rhythm that is man-made and is expected of us, rather than attuning to our own internal rhythms that are intrinsic to us. 

This lack of attunement, or even awareness of our internal creative rhythms, is the reason why it is common to find a lot of content online looking very similar, or even looking like copy-pastes of each other. That is because when we don’t take time to pause, reflect, and deepen our own creative insights, we end up regurgitating ideas from other people we deem as ‘successful’ and become replicas of whom we look up to.

In the outer layers of branding, this makes us disappear from our distinct qualities in a sea of other content online, and in the inner layers of our hearts, this plucks away the soul-sourced originality of what you are really meant to share with others. 

This is the reason why, if you are to express your purest creative potential, knowing your own unique internal creative rhythm is essential.

To some, their creative rhythms may look like writing an hour a day, uninterrupted. To others, their creative rhythms may look like devoting a full whole day to writing/creating, and then parsing out the snippets of the already-written out content material over the rest of the week. Creatively thriving in business means knowing when it is that you are most creative and honoring when you most desire to take breaks, without needing to fit your rhythm to someone else’s. 

Freeing up judgements- and keeping a creative diary

If creativity rests in a pool inside our souls, nothing depletes and dries it up like judgements— whether they are judgements from yourself or judgments from others. 

In fact, once you begin embarking on your creative journey, you will face judgements of some kind from day one.

Everytime before you create, you will have thoughts of what people would think if they see your posts/ creations. And even if you receive positive feedback from people, you will feel the pressure of the “positive pedestal” – i.e. the need to keep on maintaining the streak and not “ruin” the positive image. Experiencing judgements of any sort is inevitable as someone who creates art. 

And the thing is, we can’t experience freedom in this life, until we are free from judgements. This includes experiencing creative freedom. We can’t be free to create what captivates us the most, what inspires us the most, until we are freed from the bondage of judgements– that of our own as well as others. Only then, we can find what it means to truly be alive, and be free… 

This is the reason why it is vital to create for yourself first before anyone else.

The art/content you create has to be for yourself– your own healing, your own enjoyment, your own insight and revelations first, and only then will fulfill your heart and overflow to others. Otherwise, when you are creating with the need to seek validation and number of likes from your audience, it will only make you feel disappointed to further continue creating content. 

For that reason, I like to imagine posting on social media or blogging, as though I am writing a personal diary– a diary as if I am writing an imaginary letter to a client I desire to serve.

This practice works well especially for softer, quieter souls like myself because by pretending as though you are writing a diary, you are taking off the pressure of “speaking to a giant crowd” which is the energy that social media can feel like oftentimes. Not only that, this practice creates intimacy and greater connection with you and your audience because you feel safe and genuine to share your wisdom with vulnerability, authenticity, and a sense of camaraderie– which are all necessary components of writing touching, heart-led letters (i.e. content). 

Feeling + Romanticizing Winter

Lastly, I believe the reason why a lot of women feel overwhelmed, unfulfilled, and creatively ‘dried up’ in their business is because we are pushed to perform outwardly in a state of ‘perpetual summer.’

We live in a world that preaches constant productivity and growth. In business, that can look like constantly launching new programs every season, constantly needing to show your face on the gram, constantly trying to “quantum leap” etc.

It’s like nature being in a perpetual summer: without the cyclical seasons and the nourishment of the winter, it leads to imbalance of the natural cycles and therefore a distress, or even destruction of the overall ecosystem. 

Despite this constant push to produce, creativity, just like the seasons, needs a period of rest, respite, and restoration. The feminine vessel, as well as creativity needs the nourishment of the winter season, just like how nature does.

For it is during this quiet season that we go inward; it is in this season that the feminine soul can then attune into her feelings (rather than the thinking mind). And only because of this reconnection to her inward land-- she can access her inner intuition, and thus be creative again. 

For me personally, I find the “winter phase” of creativity to be most supportive for getting clear and centered on our creative directions more than before. This is especially important as entrepreneurs because while we are devoted to our service, our interests and desires change and evolve.

And creativity can only follow where your heart is. Pushing yourself to pursue growth in an area of business your heart isn’t, and therefore creativity isn’t only leads to pressure and burnout overtime. It is for this reason that it is essential for your soul to rest when the creative winter comes, without feeling guilty and ashamed of taking the much needed time.

Conclusion

If your online business is a book, creativity is like a writer that fills its pages with words and stories. Without creativity running smoothly, you will find it hard to stay consistent with content creation and marketing. When this happens, a question you can ask is:

Are you allowing air for creativity to breathe? 

That is because creativity can often get stifled up/ suffocated when there are restrictions– as in restrictions of how you “should” create, how often you should create, how your content should look etc.

And when creativity is boxed into mental models, it no longer flows. For this reason, a thriving business has to be rooted in healthy creativity which is not restrained and restricted, but rather is allowed to flow in her own rhythm and seasons– letting creativity lead structures rather than the other way round.