When You've Lost Your Creative Spark (And Why It Hasn't Actually Gone Out)

There was a moment this week when I stood in front of a blank page and felt absolutely nothing. No idea. No pull. No spark at all. And I am the woman who does this for a living... who talks about creativity and faith and sketching your way back to God.

So if you have been standing in front of your own blank page lately, wondering where the version of you that used to make things has gone, I want you to hear this from someone who was in exactly that spot 3 days ago.

Your creative spark hasn't gone out. It has gone quiet. And those are two completely different things.

The house nobody has walked into for a while

I want you to picture a house. Not a grand one. The kind you drew when you were 5. A square, a triangle on top, a door and two windows.

Every window is dark. Nobody has been inside for a very long time.

But look at it properly. The roof is still on. The walls are standing. The furniture is still in there under the dust sheets. This house is not a ruin. It is shut up. And shut up is a very, very different thing from gone.

That house is your creativity. And I think there are 3 reasons the lights went off, and not one of them is that you aren't creative.

Reason 1: you didn't lose it, you spent it

The hospital ward. The classroom. The school run. The church rota. The kitchen at 6pm when everyone needs feeding and nobody has asked how you are.

You have spent 30 or 40 years pouring yourself into other people, and you did it beautifully. So when you tell me there is nothing left in the tank, I believe you completely.

But an empty jug isn't a broken jug. It is a jug that has been used. What you are holding isn't emptiness... it is a receipt.

Reason 2: you're waiting to feel like it

This one I got wrong for years.

We think the spark arrives first, and then we make something. It is entirely the other way round. Sparks come from striking. Nobody in the history of the world sat looking at a piece of flint waiting to feel inspired.

You strike it. The spark is the result, not the reason.

Which means the feeling you have been waiting for is sitting on the other side of the first mark. And the only way to get to it is to make a mark you don't feel like making.

Reason 3: you only count the big things

Here is the quiet one. If it isn't finished, framed and good enough to give somebody, you have decided it doesn't count.

The doodle on the pad while you were on hold to the bank... doesn't count. The way you lay the table at Christmas... doesn't count. The little border you drew round your shopping list without noticing... doesn't count.

So you have been sparking away for 20 years and marking every bit of it as nothing. No wonder the house feels empty. You have been standing in the middle of it with the lights off, insisting nobody lives here.

What happened when I sat down this week

I want to tell you what today actually is, because it explains the page I made.

Today was my last day at the Stroke Association. After 34 years as a speech and language therapist, and then this last stretch of steady, sensible salaried work, I have let go of the regular income to go all in on what God put on my heart.

I didn't do it because I am brave. I did it because I ran out of reasons not to.

A few weeks ago I opened a small room called the Sketch and Collage Collective, mostly to see what would happen. Within 3 weeks there were over 100 women in it, growing by more than 10 every week. And I sat looking at that thinking, alright Lord, I hear you. Because my plan had been to keep the salary and build quietly on the side with a safety net underneath me. A sensible plan. Also a plan built entirely around not having to trust Him with anything.

So I sat down to do my quiet time. I pulled a prompt from my Journaling Jar and it told me to draw a leaf.

What came out of my pen was a house.

I nearly corrected myself, because I am the sort of woman who likes to do the exercise properly. But I let it be a house. And by the end of that page I understood exactly why it had to be one, because the question underneath everything was this: is that door open, or have I quietly kept it shut and got on with it by myself?

Then, without planning it, I drew a snail in the corner. And I laughed, because 34 years is exactly the pace of a snail. But a snail isn't failing at being fast. It is moving at the speed it moves at, and every single day it is still getting somewhere. Nothing about your 30 years was a detour. It was the road.

Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted. Psalm 127:1, New Living Translation.

I have always heard that as a warning. Don't build without God. But turn it round and it is the kindest sentence in the world. The building isn't resting on you. You are not the source of the spark. He is. Which means your job today isn't to produce anything impressive... it is to turn up with a pen and let Him build.

One small thing to do today

Not a masterpiece. Not a project. This:

Get any pen and any paper. A biro and the back of an envelope will do perfectly.

Draw a house. A square, a triangle, a door, one window. The way you drew it when you were 5.

Then put a light in that one window. Not the whole house blazing. One window, because that is genuinely all anybody is asking of you.

And while you are drawing it, answer one question underneath: is my door open, or is it shut?

That is the Spirit-Led Sketch Method in its smallest possible form. Prepare, ask, doodle, reflect. 3 minutes. And you will be amazed what turns up in those 3 minutes that had no way of reaching you while you were busy being capable.

Because our present troubles are small and won't last very long, as 2 Corinthians 4:17 puts it in the New Living Translation. Light and momentary doesn't mean small when you are inside it. It means it isn't the end of the story.

Watch the whole thing

I walked through that entire page on the live, and you can watch it back here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOKgKJ5FZSo

And if you would rather stop watching me do it and start doing it yourself, the Journaling Jar I pulled that prompt from lives inside the Sketch and Collage Collective, along with a brand new folio every month. It is $8 a month, and there are over 100 women in there already.

Come and be a founding member: https://creativesoulspace.com/sketchcollage-collective-only

Bev x

P.S.

On Monday 21 September at 1pm UK, a room full of women are going to spend 40 minutes making a mess on purpose.

It's called Finding Your Artistic Voice. We're building one layered mixed-media page together, and one of the steps is to draw something with a broken crayon and then deliberately smudge it.

I know. For some of you that sentence just made you feel slightly ill. It's in there on purpose, because most of us aren't blocked creatively. We're blocked by the fear of ruining it.

I failed my art exam at 16, and then put art down for 34 years. So when a woman tells me "I can't draw", I don't argue. I hand her a broken crayon and some worship music and get out of the way.

🎵 Carol Brotherston playing live worship the whole way through
📖 A workbook to go with it
📷 Cameras on or off, entirely your choice
✨ Anchored in Genesis 1:1... the very first thing we are ever told about God is that He made something

This is a members workshop inside Creative Sanctuary and the doors are normally closed, but I've left a back door open for this one.

Come and be in the room on Monday: https://christianartjournaling.com/membership-checkout

A Space to Bring Your Whole Self

And if you're not quite ready for a retreat but want to begin doodling with God today, start here: creativesoulspace.com/quiet — it's just $7 and it's the gentlest possible first step.

Come and find me at https://christianartjournaling.com/creative2026  ~ there's a whole community of women here who are finding their way back to God, one mark at a time.