Here are three inspirational activities to elevate a writer’s creativity
“People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in a particular, the focused, well-observed, or the specifically imagined.” The Artist Way
Every writer needs to find ways to be more creative. Inspiration is waiting from everyday things and sources. Where can you find that extraordinary creative genius?
Creative Inspiration is waiting
Books are a good place to start. Books are where authors find new ideas to take them on a journey of discovery. Writers can analyze other authors’ writing and get Inspiration to expand and increase their writing skills. Reading outside a familiar genre opens doors to new ways of seeing story ideas from other worlds.
Nature ranks as an ultimate source of Inspiration. Great authors and artists credit natural surroundings for giving them the ability to create. A perfect example is Charles Dickens, who wrote from his large wood desk with a view if his garden. From his nature’s inspection, his works became classics.
Here are two ideas to get you motived.
To get an idea of how nature can inspire your creativity, try these Nature-Inspired Creative Writing Prompts from these 12 tips.
Here are two examples of the prompts.:
- Some people are hiking in the woods when hundreds of butterflies surround them.
- Write a piece using the following image: an owl soaring through the night sky.
Music helps many of us to get motivated for a workout to raise our spirits, so it’s no wonder that music is a source of inspiration for creativity. And writers are one of the top advocates for delving into music to find their creative muse. If you’re a writer who agrees that music is your muse, here are suggestions for music to inspire you to become a bestselling author from 9 Bestselling authors.
How great writers get their Inspiration?
You may find some ideas for your inspiration activities from these three great authors.
Haruki Murakami
Inspirational Activity: Get into a strict exercise routine
When he’s writing a novel, Haruki Murakami gets up every morning at 4 am, works for five or six hours, runs 10 kilometers or swims 1500 meters (or both), reads for the rest of the day, and then goes to bed promptly at 9 pm. He holds this routine for six months to a year, using this repetition as mesmerism to stay inspired. (“I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”)
Ursula K. Le Guin
Inspirational Activity: Pick any story from the air and run with it
Like Willie Nelson, who once answered “Where do you get your ideas from?” with “The air is full of tunes, I just reach up and pick one,” Ursula K. Le Guin believes that Inspiration is everywhere. Everyone makes up their own stories about the world (“People who can’t make the world into a story, go mad”), so writers, while they are writing, just have to wait for one of these stories to find them—or seek it out themselves.
Chuck Palahniuk
Inspirational Activity: Write yourself out of real-life issues
Chuck Palahniuk writes about more shocking stuff than many people will ever experience; this comes from a need to turn awful personal events into less awful, less personal things. Basically, Palahniuk says he channels “dreadful, horrible things in [his] life that [he] cannot resolve” into writing.
Find more author’s routines in John Fox’s Fifty Famous author’s writing inspiration.
