3 Ways I Refill the Creative Well

Happy 2024! What better way to start the new year than by talking about inspiration. And not simply where do we find inspiration, but three sources of inspiration. 

I have forever, and will forever, love hearing about a story’s origins. When I fall in love with a book I want to know what inspired the place, the characters, the events. Isn’t it fun to hear an author say the idea struck them as they sat in a specific place and watched [fill in the blank with basically anything that’s ever happened and it’s likely to have inspired someone]. That’s where my mind goes when I hear: book inspiration. But what about a source of inspiration? 

A source insinuates a well, a continuous refilling. A place, or a mood, that is guaranteed to inspire the story muse. Now that’s a horse of a different color. And here we all thought simply being inspired was the trick! 

Well, what do I do when I’m drained—besides take a nap? I give in to my husky pup and go outside. Like Jeffe said, nature refills my well. Fresh air combined with rain, sleet, snow, or sun revitalize me. I suppose gardening and getting my hands in the dirt fall into this category as well. But being outside, which pretty much always means I’m at least walking if not doing more, can unlock my brain like nothing else can.

As a runner up I’d say yoga is another source of inspiration. Not necessarily the physical act of yoga, though that feels fantastic and the more limber the body the more limber the mind, but the mental aspect is what I would pinpoint as the source. You can yoga with friends, you can yoga with goats, you can even yoga in a high temp dance-like studio. Or you can yoga and focus on your breath and slide into the quiet headspace where I’m emotionally and mentally refilled. You can call it meditation, though I’m still learning and meditate better when I’m doing certain poses since it helps me focus on my breathing or certain muscles and then suddenly I’m not thinking of anything else! Yoga is a source because when I’m done I’ve got clear headspace and am ready to create!

And in third place, which sounds sad, but really isn’t, would be reading. It doesn’t matter how wonderful or flawed the writing is, reading is a source of inspiration for me because it jumpstarts my imagination. Love them or hate them, characters interact with your imagination. Homey or alien, worlds make you feel like you want to hang around or run away screaming.  And head-scratching or applauding, plot lines are like parallel universes, one choice spins the story in a whole different direction.

There you have it, my three sources of inspiration that I return to again and again. What well do you draw from?

Three Places I Find Inspiration

 Happy New Year!

On this New Year's Eve day, I'm busy crunching year-end financials in preparation to go to quarterly tax-reporting. Author finances, however, are not the topic of the week at the SFF Seven. Instead we're discussing a much happier topic: sources of inspiration.

The two are somewhat tied together for me as I've spent the last two weeks refilling my creative well. I finished my revision of ONEIRA (final title to come) on December 15 and sent it off to my editor. Since then, I've taken a break from writing work - very unusual for me. The time has been consumed largely by Christmas prep, travel, visiting family, and doing business like the above crunching of year-end financials. Looking at this, I've realized that I've been relying on passive well-refilling: hoping that if I simply leave the creative well alone, that the vast water table of the universe will seep in and top that puppy off for me. 

And, to some extent, that's true.

However, I'm realizing I haven't been following my new tenet of aggressively refilling the well. That would mean finding ways to actively pour juice into that well. And that's where inspiration comes in. What are my top three?

Media

I'm putting a lot under this heading, much like my sibling-under-the-skin, Murderbot. One thing I have been doing is a full re-read of this excellent series by Martha Wells. Reading books - particularly brilliantly written ones by authors I admire - is a great source of inspiration for me. I also include listening to music under this heading. While road-tripping, I put my music library on All Songs Shuffle, which unearths interesting stuff I haven't listened to in ages. A Cat Stevens song - The Wind - turned up, so now I'm diving into a full Cat Stevens song shuffle. What an amazing songwriter, to communicate so much in so few words. Finally, I love watching movies for inspiration. I got a great idea just the other night from a movie and now I'm sizzling to write this series. Though it will have to wait, the sparkle of that excitement adds to my overall feeling of creative flow.

Nature

I'm fortunate to live in a beautiful place. My desk overlooks a spectacular view and my morning walk with the dog is replete with huge skies, distant mountains, and beauty of all kinds. I say I'm lucky to have this - and I am! - but I also sought out this place, because being outside in a beautiful place is super important to me. Just living here refills my well.

Silence

Longtime readers probably know that I'm an advocate of silence for creative flow. By this I don't necessarily mean the absence of ambient sound, though it sometimes means that for me. I'm talking primarily about the silence of the mind, the emptiness that allows creativity to flow in, that enables us to hear the voices scintillating through the veil, telling us their stories. Taking time off from the "noisier" parts of my life has been invaluable for that. 

Huh... Turns out I've been doing better at aggressively refilling the well than I thought!

Best wishes for an inspiring 2024 for us all!