You know that feeling you get when you have something due the next day or within the next few days and you just don't know what to do? You're just completely at a loss and you've hit a brick wall. We've all had those moments. Sitting there, staring at our laptops or piece of paper, at a loss for words or ideas. So, how do you get those ideas to come to you? How do you dig those ideas out from deep inside? It sure doesn't seem easy at times. Half of the time I don't even know what to do when I'm working on projects and such.

Just recently, I had three projects to do in a class. We had four weeks total to do them all. The first one was easy, it was to make art out of string. A simple string and nail piece worked well and actually turned out to look very nice. The other two, on the other hand, were not exactly the same story. We had to make an inflatable or plastic wrap art piece based on a children's story and a stop motion video. Neither of those really sound that easy, do they? So, of course, I worked on the one project and put off the other two.

I'm not saying this is the way to do it, but I just let the other two sit on my mind for about 3 weeks and only came up with meaningless ideas that didn't go anywhere. I just couldn't seem to come up with a solid idea at all. I decided I would just wait there and let the ideas come to me. I mean, you can't force creativity, right? Do you think da Vinci forced the Mona Lisa? Did John Green force any of his books? No, they let the creativity come to them. That was my outlook on the projects. Did I maybe wait a little too long on them? Yes, I probably did, but I eventually figured them out.

I let the ideas all swirl around in my head, thinking of children's books and what I could create with different ones. I finally settled on the ugly duckling idea I had thought of. I had the brilliant idea to make a plastic wrap of a duck and a swan to show how the ugly duckling changed. Pretty good, right? I let the idea come to me and figured it out! The stop motion soon followed and again, I let the ideas come to me instead of forcing them out.

My point is, you can't just force creativity. Yes, at times it is necessary to force it out. You can't always wait until the last minute because then you will have so much to do that you couldn't possibly finish it all. But, with things that involve creativity like art and such, you can let the ideas come and truly great ideas come out of it. Creativity can't be forced out, it has to spontaneously come out. Whether art, writing, music, anything like that. That's how I get my creative thoughts. That's how I create creativity.