It doesn’t have to take a disaster to write a good poem. If you cultivate mindful openness, humility, and surrender, you can sustain your creativity under any circumstance.

Try to catch yourself before you go into your usual reactions—and if you’re having trouble with that, try writing about it. Cry over the page. It can take whatever you have to give.

Being creative means living richly and bravely, of feeling and experiencing and allowing instead of suppressing. Sure, maybe propelled by the energy of fear alone, you can force yourself to finish that report or project, but then, you are creating from the energy of constriction and resistance and suffering, whereas true creative energy is characterized by ease and joy.

“Annoyed” can be an interesting emotion to explore in writing. It is not a reflection of shallowness or immaturity, but perhaps an indication of significant needs and motivations. Notice what bothers your characters. Do they do something about it, or do they simply stay annoyed and put up with the bothersome situation? How does each option influence the story’s plot and the character’s responses to conflict?

“No big whoop” and “yes” are attitudes of allowing, ones that free you to make mistakes, to be eccentric, to be imperfect and thus intriguing. This is what the use of specific detail in creative writing is about: capturing those unique traits that make something come alive on the page by distinguishing it from anything else of its kind, picking out one or two or more key features that tell something essential about a character or an interaction or an object.