What do you do when creativity stops?

“And then one day, the songs stopped coming, and while you’ve suffered from periods of writer’s block before, albeit briefly, this is something chronic. Day after day, you face a blank page, and nothing’s coming.”
~ Sting, Sing-Songwriter

What do you do when creativity stops?

Even a famous prolific singer-songwriter can run out of ideas. How do you get back into the creative flow?

“Well they say, write what you know. If you can’t write about yourself anymore, then who do you write about?”
~ Sting, Sing-Songwriter

After running away from the life that he would have inherited in his hometown in the ship-making industry, Sting finds inspiration in the very thing that he had been running from. He proves that creativity often hides where we least expect to find it. From his past, he opens up a wealth of memories. The gift of time creates the emotional distance to give a new perspective on the past. As I have found with my own creative flow, wisdom comes from new perspective. Creativity comes from wisdom. Sting now sees the beauty in the lives of the people in his hometown and expresses that in song. In my own life, the very things from my past that I had learned to fear and avoid somehow are transformed into something beautiful. I begin to wonder … is it the past or is it me that has been transformed?

“So having decided to write about other people instead of myself, a further irony is that sometimes you reveal more about yourself than you’d ever intended.”
~ Sting, Sing-Songwriter

Watch the TED Talk by Sting: How I started writing songs again

Music by Sting