100 Ways to Live a Creative Life, 51-75

51. If work or school seems to be getting in the way of your creativity, use it to fuel your creativity, instead. Write a poem about the assignment. Use images from your studies or your job to create a collage. Use the research you are already doing to write a story. Use clients or classmates or coworkers as characters.

52. Paint your toenails all different colors.

53. Bake something as a present for someone else. Give them a recipe card to go along with it.

54. Start a blog. For goodness sake. It will help you write more often, make you more aware of images and photography, help you develop a creative community.

55. Show people your art. Share your writing. Sing them a song. This takes some bravery, but it fuels your own creativity to see your work in their eyes.

56. Ask to see other people's work. If they talk about being creative, be open to them. Talk with them about their own work.

57. Turn on a great song and dance wildly around the room. Alone or with other people, just dance.

58. Stand on your head.

59. When you take a plane or a train or a bus, bring along your creative work. A journal, knitting, a sketchbook, a camera. Take advantage of that time to be creative. Take photos out the window. Sketch your fellow passengers. Write your thoughts as you flow through space and time.

60. Weed your garden. Throw out old clothes. Get rid of old magazines. Give away books that you will not read again. Purge your life of the things that are useless, cluttering and unloved. Then go back to your creative work with that editing mindset, and clean things up in that arena.

61. Go through your old creative output. Photo albums, journals, portfolios, projects, videos of performances, ignored stories and poems. Take stock of what you have done in the past. Love what is good. Honor your own creativity. Pay attention to how you have grown and what you have learned.

62. Start a window garden.

63. Make some ink blots. Spill a few drops of paint or ink on a page and fold it over. Open it up and marvel at the beauty that can come from a mess.

64. Begin a collection. Hone your eye for beauty and color and shape and order.

65. Display the artwork that you already have so that your home is full of inspiration every where you turn. Get frames and hand the work, or prop canvases against the wall.

66. Before you go to bed at night, write about what you did that was creative that day and what you would like to do the next day.

67. Look at negative space, the space AROUND an object. Try to draw that negative space... the area between the chair slats, not the chair itself. The air around the pear, not the pear.

68. Paint a room. Change the color. Indulge in paint chips from the hardware store and dive into thoughts of the world that is color. Look at your favorite colors in your wardrobe and life. Go through magazines to see color schemes that you like. Pick a color and go with it. If it doesn't work out, you can paint it again.

69. Write an ode to your favorite food.

70. Host a dinner (or a tea or a cocktail party or a pizza party or a dessert tasting) and set the stage. Create a table you might see in a magazine. Decorate with flowers and candles. Have it outside under a flowering tree. Allow other people into your creative life.

71. Create your own creative space. A desk, a chair, supplies. A place you can go to work without interruption, for however long you have. If that doesn't work, create a creative station that you can carry with you-- a basket or bag filled with art supplies-- and carry it wherever you go so you can be creative where you are. Or set up a space in a family area that allows you to take advantage of those few moments while the kids are watching cartoons or the food is on the stove. No one says being creative has to be in one place or look like one thing.

72. Get up half an hour early or stay up half an hour later than everyone else. Use that time to create without interruption.

73. Or hide away in the bathroom to plan your next project.

74. Start a project with your partner or with a friend or with your child. Both try to write a play, compete to see who can write more pages. Try taking photos to go along with their poems. Have them serve as a reader for your novel. Or if they are not creative, ask them to hold you accountable to your project. Knit a hat for them.

75. Trade child care with another friend, creative or otherwise. You take her kid, so she can have her me time, then a few days later she can take yours, and you can spend some times being creative.