Creativity grows teeth when necessity enters the room.

Creativity in comfortable conditions is pleasant and often unfocused. Necessity gives it a target and a deadline, and the ideas that come out under that pressure tend to be sharper, because they have to work and there is no option of admiring them instead.

If your creative work feels soft, attach a real requirement to it. A user, a date, a consequence. Not to make it stressful, but to give it something to be true to.