This month’s creative activity is featured in my forthcoming e-book, 31 Days to a More Creative You: Keep Your Day Job, Banish Perfectionism & Play More. It is Day 1.

Each day this week, spend 5 minutes writing in your journal. If you don’t own a journal, any simple notebook will do.

Fill two pages of your journal with stream of consciousness writing. Give yourself absolute freedom to write about anything and everything, even if you think it has nothing to do with a particular topic. Just keep writing.

Try starting with an image (a storm cloud, a bushy-tailed cat), a quote or line from a poem (see below for links to poems) and let the words flow without stopping them.

Practical writing is fine, of course. Even your (late) Christmas shopping list counts as writing, but only if it arises naturally. You may also find yourself writing useful material for work or school projects. Wonderful! Just keep writing.

When your fifteen minutes of free-writing are up, and only then, feel free to go back and collect chunks of useful text. Plop them into your work report, term paper or new novel. But remember, the point of your journals is “play,” not “work.” If what you write seems like gibberish, don’t be dismayed. Just keep writing.

When I lead writing workshops, I try to emulate one of my most important teachers, Pat Schneider. Pat founded Amherst Writer’s and Artists (AWA) and developed a method for writing that she fully describes in her book, Writing Alone and With Others. Pat says, “Every person is a writer, and every writer deserves a safe environment in which to experiment, learn, and develop craft.”

I was a member of Pat’s writing workshop for several years. She often encouraged us to respond to prompts through free-writing as a way to break through creative blocks.

Author Julia Cameron also uses free-writing in her book, The Artist’s Way.  She encourages readers to write daily “morning pages” to reconnect to their creative selves.