Inspiration: Give Yourself Boundaries

Every Wednesday is going to be Inspiration Day. I'm going to write about things that inspire me to work on new projects, or things that may inspire you.

My boyfriend saw Jack White of the White Stripes on Charlie Rose say he never wanted to expand the band from him and his drummer, Meg, because it challenged him artistically. White said, "I think there's more creativity when there's less opportunity." He said similar things in an interview with Rolling Stone.When my boyfriend told me, all I thought was what a great idea.

Have you ever thought of giving yourself boundaries in order to create something new?

Box girl by sxld

A lot of people are using time as a boundary - 365 days of pictures, a year of doing this or that every day. Theme months, theme weeks. (coincidentally, this picture comes from a 365 pix project - "365 photos taken over the course of forever")

What if you only took pictures of things that were green?
What if you only took pictures from three inches off the ground?
What if you only drew things that made you think of home?
What if you never rehearsed a dance piece in the same room twice?
What if you wrote a short play where each sentence a character spoke had to be one syllable longer than the sentence before?

Some of these could be terribly difficult, but they would force you to do something you've never done before.

Create the box, so that you can think outside of it.

What kind of boxes are you going to create?