Every time I try to write a column, which is a personal or opinion piece of writing, I struggle to come up with new ideas and thoughts. It’s always a painful fight to find new ideas to write about that haven’t been written about yet, and that I think are creative enough for the newspaper. 

I know this is a common struggle among both the writers at The Tenderfoot Times and other creative people on a broader scale. I’ve seen my peers struggle to put ideas together into a column for the paper. Writing for the paper can be especially tricky sometimes, as we write two columns a semester, and it can be a struggle to write something that feels worthy of publication.

In my art classes as well, it’s always challenging to come up with new ideas for my sketchbooks. Every week in art, we are tasked with a new prompt for sketchbooks. I can easily come up with ideas when I’m prompted with a keyword, but when the sketchbook prompt is “Open,” I always seem to hit a brick wall that I need to knock over by Sunday night.  

I have been writing columns for almost two school years, and I want to try to find more foolproof ways of writing creative and interesting columns by publish day. So far, I’ve found the best way to force my column ideas is to give myself a deadline before the official class deadline, and to reward myself once I have written enough. The fastest I have ever written a column is when one of my friends in Tenderfoot, Violet, made a bet with Cole and I to write our columns as fast as we could, in one class setting. If we succeeded, she would bring us an entire pan of tiramisu. That was the push we had needed to come up with an idea and write, and we got them both done in half an hour. 

When the time rolls around to write a new column, it always feels like there’s a creative roadblock in my way. I’m only in my sophomore year of high school and already it feels like I’ve run out of good ideas to write about. When I’m regularly making art and writing using the same media or format, I find it difficult to think of new ideas that spark creativity. So, to all the professional artists and writers out there, how do you get your ideas? How can you force ideas to come to you when you aren’t feeling confident in your creativity at all?