Flowing with Creative inspiration

Creative Inspiration For The Everyday Writer
By Roslyn Randle

Have you ever been a person who has had trouble starting a writing project or keeping with the lines of thought that first inspired you to write? You are not alone. Writing can be a difficult task to undertake for the writer who has trouble becoming inspired or staying inspired. There is much to think about when writing; such as capturing and keeping the attention of the audience by developing a good story. Effectively translating striking images with words into the minds of readers can take its toll on writers who indulge in too many distractions. It's easy for writers to fall into the traps of distractions. Those distractions usually produce with it babbling, lack of cohesiveness, and fleeting narratives.

Writers, as with all artists hinge the success of their livelihood on being able to flow creatively from inspiration. Because inspiration is the key to success for the writer, here are a few helpful tips that can begin to spark the imagination to the wondrous world of the mind.

Tip 1: Be observant to the senses by Journaling

By keeping a journal or diary, the writer can begin to record those sudden bursts of inspiration that come during a day. Perhaps a scent or fragrance may spark and imagination or the writer may physically and literally walk into a situation by taking walks or jogs. And speaking of walks and jogs.....

Tip 2: Keep a small recorder, if possible while taking....

Tip 3: Nature Walks

Walking meditation is a powerful way for inspiration to flow. And while you're walking, you can talk and record those moments of inspiration. There are various types of meditation; and your time spent thinking or looking within does not have to be closed up in a room with candles or in a relaxed lotus position, although it does help to incorporate a routine of.....

Tip 4: Yoga

Or some type of exercise that caters to uniting Mind, Body, and Spirit. Mental and physical practices of this type can clear the clutter of the mind. Yoga, Qi-Gong, Tai Chi, are wonderful examples of practices that will relax and inspire.

Tip 5: Create Your Space

Take inventory of your current space. Our environment usually tells us what is going on with our lives. If our space is cluttered, our life is usually screaming disorder. By creating a harmonic environment, one can begin a journey of self-discovery. Look at your environment. Listen to your space. It will speak to you. You can begin to create your space by....

Tip 6: Setting the Mood with Scents and Objects

Quite simply, you have to feel good to produce goodness. Scents, fragrances, perfumes, incenses and beautifully looking objects will begin to inspire and bring out your best creatively. And since you're going to be incorporating scents and looking at beautiful things, don't forget about....

Tip 7: The Inspiration Of Clothing

Pilar Audain Reed, a beautifully gifted designer and owner of the chic Chicago boutique Kreative Souls by Pilar, was a vision built on complete faith and courage. This artist uses her designs of jewelry and clothing to allow the Source of Creation to inspire wonder- filled designs and accessories. She was quoted as saying:

"...Since I can remember, I have always looked for that one "spot" that had the cool stuff I could wear that allowed "me" to be "me," know what I mean? It wasn't at the mall. It wasn't at the local clothing stores. For the most part, it was either in my mother's "old stuff" or my nana's jewelry box. The outer body houses the inner soul, so for me the things that I adorn my body with must be expressive and free, because I am expressive and free-spirited. The body has to "breathe" because the soul has to breathe. As long as my creative juices are flowing, so will the cool stuff I am able to create."

As so it is for the writer. Be inspired by the clothing you wear. Be inspired by the objects you surround yourself with. And finally be inspired by life. Allow life to flow. Allow inspiration to flow freely from you with the adornment of jewels and precious stones. Let the beauty of your environment uplift you to heights that you've never experience; and then write. And most importantly, relax into your gift and create.

To learn more about creative inspiration and tips geared to the writer visit Headline Articles at http://www.headlinearticles.com/blog . Also, discover your creative soul by learning how to access the Universal Laws Of Abundance. Visit Abundance Training 101: The Universal Law Of Abundance at http://universalclass.com/i/crn/14056.htm

Roslyn Randle is an accomplished writer, Author, and Internet Marketer. She is editor-in-chief of Headline Articles, co-publisher of Pro-Internet Biz and co-instructor for several online courses, including the popular wellness course; Lose Weight While Becoming A Wellness Coach at http://universalclass.com/i/crn/9478.htm

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Another Point of View on Writer's Block

Writer's Block? Brainstorm Yourself!
By Elaine Berry

Have you ever been on a “Training Day”?

When I used to work for a local government department, we often used to get sent on Training Days.

They weren’t quite the same as “courses”. The idea was usually for management to get staff discussing their proposed policies (yawn…). Almost invariably, they consisted of an introductory session, followed by everyone being split up into groups, each with an assigned topic for discussion.

The group sat round an easel with a flip-chart attached to it. An eager leader stood by the easel with a marker, waiting for contributions.

Silence.

Everone was paralysed. Most people’s minds went a complete blank. Even if people did have an idea, they were afraid to express it, for fear it would sound silly.

But just now and again, instead of just standing there, the group leader would say, “Now we are going to brainstorm.”

In a brainstorming session, everyone said THE FIRST THING THAT CAME INTO THEIR HEAD. Everything went on the flip-chart whatever it was. Never mind if it sounded silly, or obvious, or naïve, or ridiculous. It all went down.

What a difference! Instead of a stony silence, everyone was loosened up, and their mental juices started flowing. And the remarkable thing was, that amidst all the debris of useless ideas, more and more nuggets of excellence started appearing. Most of these ideas would never have emerged by the normal method.

You’re a copywriter – or you want to be. If you tell me that you have never sat in front of a blank sheet of paper, or a blank computer screen, and felt completely paralysed, I won’t believe you. It happens to everyone.

It happens because you are scared that what you write down will be silly or that it won’t be appropriate or good enough. You are waiting for inspiration, for the great idea, which you will then express in perfect well-honed prose. Well, in most cases you will wait for ever.

When this happens to me, I find one solution works every time. I brainstorm MYSELF!

Don’t sit and chew your pen. JUST START WRITING.

If it seems silly, or obvious, or a load of cliches, NEVER MIND. Just write and keep on writing. Think of the topic you are supposed to be writing about and write whatever comes into your head, whether it seems immediately relevant or not. Believe me, you will soon find ideas start to flow.
And it doesn’t have to be in perfect sentences. The sentences can come afterwards. Note form will do for now. You will soon find the ideas are coming so fast that you have to scribble to get them down.

Of course, you will end up with a lot of rubbish or even gibberish. But in the midst of it there will be good stuff – I promise you! Naturally you will have to rewrite, but now you actually HAVE something to rewrite, instead of a blank sheet of paper. And you will find rewriting itself brings up even more ideas!

It’s called “brainstorming” because the ideas are there, all the time, in your brain! You just need to loosen up to get them out.

Get into the brainstorming habit and just see how your productivity rockets!

Elaine Berry is the owner of Bizwrite, the only one-stop-shop for writing services. Bizwrite provides copywriting, ghostwriting, article writing and proofreading services, and also provides help and tuition in all aspects of writing. Visit http://www.bizwrite.co.uk for a FREE e-course on copywriting.

Writer's Block? Another Perspective

After reading this article, I don't think I'll ever use the term, "writer's block," again!

Writer's Block
By Frances Lynn

Does Writer’s Block really exist? Or, is it a fabled myth in the writer’s tortured psyche?

Is there such a disability as a barren imagination? If a writer convinces himself that he (or she) is blocked, maybe it’s just a form of mental constipation? It's not easy to evict inspiration from one's cranium, in order to translate it in a unique style, onto the screen or paper.

How can a writer be totally blocked, if he still has fragments of conscious ideas fermenting in his head? If a writer has come to a halt with a specific, work-in-progress project, surely it would be beneficial for him to tinker with his other creative ‘avenues’.

Perhaps I’m being cynical when I say that a writer is only truly blocked when he or she is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, like the late Irish Murdoch. To my knowledge I’ve never had an authentic dose of severe writer’s block, even though I’ve been re-writing the same book for years. But, I'm the first to admit, I’m stuck with it, not blocked. My stale project seems to have turned into such a dead-end, that I’m tempted to burn the entire manuscript, Hindu style. However, since someone once advised me never to throw any of my work away, I intend to keep my laborious effort on my computer's hard drive for posterity.

My next ambition is to scrap the entire book and write a virgin draft with a different angle: a more original plot, new characters and a totally different ending. But, how can I bear the agony and no ecstasy of starting afresh, repeating myself with the same theme but with a completely different premise to my original concept? The idea of ruthlessly re-working my old novel makes me freeze before I start. I wish I could blame my fear and loathing on being blocked, but it’s just laziness that prevents me from having to hypnotise myself all over again in order to sit down and re-create my new novel.

Having never been afflicted with an inability to write for prolonged periods, I'm not professionally qualified to debate. But, I should imagine that if a doomed writer has a pathological terror of confronting his sub-conscious demons in order to write, he is likely to obliterate his senses with a concentrated diet of alcohol. That's what I would call a terminal form of writer's block.

Copyright: Frances Lynn 2006

Frances Lynn is a professional writer and journalist. Her novels, "Frantic" and "Crushed" are published by Eiworth Publishing.

http://www.franceslynn.org

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Finding Creative Ways to Clear Writer’s Block—Part 2

Last time I talked about free writing and associated methods to break writer’s block. This time I’ll tell you how to use writing prompts to spark your creativity.

One of the tools I love to use is the starter sentence. The Writers’ Journal is a great resource for starter sentences. In their contest section, they have a contest called “Write to Win.” One of the requirements is that you use one of their starter sentences, such as “The lemonade was…” or “It was a small box, but…” These sentences, or sentence beginnings, don’t give you a topic, but forcing yourself to write around them can give you the push you need to get out of your writing quagmire. The exercise of completing each sentence starter in several ways will force your brain to start coming up with new ways of looking at a scene. For instance, let’s take the lemonade sentence:

• The lemonade was acrid, and bitter to the taste.
• The lemonade was cool and refreshing on the lazy Georgia afternoon.
• The lemonade was an acidic reminder of his lost childhood.

Even if you don’t enter the contest, this exercise can be invaluable for putting a fire under your writing. Once you see the possibilities for many plots from one sentence, your brain will be cooking up those plots in no time. If you don’t enter the contest, you don’t need to keep that starter sentence when you’re done—it may no longer fit your story. Still, you owe it a debt for the part it played in getting the process started.

By the way, I’m using a fiction example here, but there’s no reason you can’t use it for nonfiction. An even tougher challenge is to take the same starter sentence and use it to begin both a fiction and nonfiction piece. Try it with the lemonade sentence, and you’ll see what I mean.

One other way to use a starter sentence is to have a friend or loved one come up with the sentence for you. The rest of the process is the same.

In another post, I’ll show you a little of what I did with the lemonade sentence. If you like, post your first paragraph and let us all see how you used the idea. I’d love to read the various, creative plots you come up with!

To read more detailed articles, visit my website at www.andreadisalvo.com.

Finding Creative Ways to Clear Writer’s Block—Part 1

I think I can say that every writer at some time experiences writer’s block. It’s that time when our writers’ brains seem to shut down and refuse to work. You may experience it frequently, or almost never. Still, it’s a problem every writer faces at some point. Because it causes so many problems so often, it takes some creativity to conquer it…or at least work around it.

One of the most difficult steps to take during writer’s block is also the best—sit down and write.

To get through writer’s block, some authors advocate free writing. Free writing is the process of putting pen (or pencil) to paper and writing anything that comes into your head. The idea is that, after some time, what you write will begin to turn into something useful. I can’t vouch for this method because I’ve never used it myself. However, it works for many writers, and it may work for you.

A related method used to clear writer’s block is to take whatever project you’re working on and start writing, writer’s block or not. After a few pages, the process should begin to flow. Your writer’s block will be broken. Of course, you’ll probably end up trashing those first few pages, but at least you’re back to writing.

We’ll talk about more methods to break writer’s block in a future post.

To read more detailed articles on creativity in writing, visit my website at www.andreadisalvo.com.