When the Creativity Well is Dry

“Understanding is a fountain of life to one who has it, but the discipline of fools is folly.” -Proverbs 16:22

After struggling with a rough spot in my WIP for a ridiculous period of time, I concluded that my creativity well had run dry. It needed something I simply didn’t have. Thus, I did what anyone with a dry well would do and went to the water cooler, so to speak. I asked Twitter what to do.

“Go to a coffee shop,” recommended one tweeter.

“When you figure it out, let me know,” chimed another.

A rather disappointing response, all told. Obviously, I would have to put more work into refilling my well. I had a feeling that what I needed was to sit with God about it, but I wanted to do something. Besides, if I’m honest, I was afraid that He wouldn’t show up for a made-up problem. The “discipline of fools,” on the other hand, sounded worth exploring.

I embarked on my own personal Ecclesiastes of inspiration. I played music beyond my normal tastes, forgetting that I usually need quiet to work. I picked up one book and then another, too guilty over my lack of productivity to settle deeply into them. I dug out the Crayola watercolors and painted a scene from my novel; when that didn’t work, my best friend and I tried our hands at a Bob Ross oil painting. (Much hilarity ensued, if little actual inspiration.) Later, as I rinsed our brushes, a pseudo-insight loomed. “It’s not in the painting,” I thought. “It’s in the cleaning up afterwards.” For a moment I thought I had something, but profound as it felt at the time, it was shallow and false. My hope of a spark in the mundane proved futile. As Solomon observed, it was all like striving after wind, not to mention pretty distracting.

More distractions, of course, were the opposite of what I needed. I couldn’t work my way through this problem. The only way to win this battle was to stop fighting, or rather, to cease striving.

“Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” -Psalm 46:10

I sought the Lord in prayer and then got quiet, away from to-dos and entertainments, projects and distractions. I agreed to take on a little boredom if necessary, for the sake of hearing myself think, and more importantly, hearing God speak if He so chose. I kept a pencil and notepad close at hand without any firm plans to use them. I waited. With what I can only describe as embarrassing speed, considering my circuitous route to get there, the solution to my plot problem erupted like a geyser and flowed.

Writing is hard work, not least because some of its most difficult moments require so much less than we think they do. It’s not unlike the impression that we need to work our way to Jesus, even though He has already done the work and declared that it is finished!  Likewise, while I pursued my exhausting method of refilling the creativity well one bucket at a time, the Lord waited for me to bring Him my need, brimming with His promise in John 7:38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”