A change from the usual

I am not only a fiction writer, I am also a copy writer.  This means that I write pretty mundane stuff sometimes.  Ghost writing is a part of my work.  All of you would understand what it is like for me to write someone else's or even my own work just in a different way, with different words.  It is not exactly conductive to a creative experience.  I tend to get a little frustrated when I am asked to ghost write something.  I feel the same kind of frustration when I have been writing the same (creative) thing for a while.  Luckily there is a cure that works for both my job and my creative writing.

If I've been focusing on poetry for a while, I often start to feel like my poetic creativity takes a nose dive.  Big time.  I can't rhyme, and my non-rhyming poems just plain suck.  So what I do is to write something completely different.  I would write a long, plainly worded letter.  Or I would write a piece of prose that is focused on a completely different topic.  If I was writing poetry about the seasons, I will write prose about darkness and light or even an interesting newsworthy article.  I have written many philosophical essays that are probably very badly thought through and that make no sense.  But it was to write something different. That was the whole point.

This need to write something different is what drove me to start a blog.  Writing through my writing problems often lead to a solution, if only because I am not writing my WiP.  Writing something else has the power to clear your mind, give you new perspective.  I don't mean start a new novel if you are bored with your old one.  That probably won't help at all.  Write something completely different.

What about you?  Do you write the same thing all the time?  How do you clear your head and get perspective?