Step 1: Take a walk. The mind and body are connected, and simply moving your legs can get those creative juices flowing again.
Step 2: Journal. Let your mind wander, and write down whatever comes into your head. It’s a great way of clearing your thoughts and starting fresh.
Step 3: Sell your apartment in the big city and move to Dayton, Ohio. This is the piece of advice I wish someone had told me when I was a kid, but fortunately, it’s never too late to start.
I know what you’re saying: Don’t I have to leave Dayton to live my best creative life? Believe me, I was sold the same bill of goods right after college, and I fell for it. I headed east where I spent way too many years of my life working in uncreative office jobs during the day so I could afford to collapse in my tiny, Brooklyn apartment at night. I tried LA too, under the mistaken impression that writing screenplays in a Los Angeles Starbucks is magically more productive than writing them in a New York Starbucks.
In fact, the true secret to creativity is writing screenplays in a Dayton Starbucks*. Why? For one thing, because you’re not sitting next to twelve other people who are also desperately trying to write that career-launching screenplay, reading the same books about how to write a screenplay, and hoping to get the same ten minutes with a studio executive to pitch that screenplay.
I had always assumed that being in a place where everyone else was trying to achieve the same goal was somehow helpful to me achieving mine. I imagined that ideas would spark and I’d absorb creativity through osmosis. Instead, I found all I was absorbing was a monolithic way of thinking about how creative goals could be achieved. And too much caffeine.
I did eventually stumble into what my high school self had thought was my dream job - writing monologue for the Tonight Show. But I soon realized that cranking out 100 jokes, five days a week, (75 of them about Donald Trump) was actually not as creatively fulfilling as I had imagined. Oh well - lesson learned!
No, to fulfill my creative goals, I had to take a bold step into the unknown. I had to listen to my wife and move back to Dayton. I got a job downtown that I enjoy, and that actually leaves me time to spend with my family, and a home I could actually afford. And when I decided to try being creative again, for the first time in a long time it wasn’t by pursuing the path everyone around me was following. I got to be playful about it, and the result was I’m now writing and producing a podcast, “The Novelizers with Andy Richter,” with contributions from some of the most creative people I’ve worked with, including some incredibly talented Daytonians. It’s the most creatively fulfilling project of my life.
And all I had to do was move back to Dayton.
Step 4: Wear a funny hat. You’ll feel creative when you look creative!
*Actually, Ghostlight.
Stephen Levinson is a writer and creative director who has written for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Jim Henson studio. His podcast “The Novelizers with Andy Richter” is available on all podcast platforms.
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