For me it’s water: A cascading waterfall;
the ceaseless susurration of the waves of the sea; wind-whipped whitecaps; a
burbling stream; ripple of sunlight reflecting off a lake, a pond, a pool…
Being around water not only soothes and
relaxes me, but also sets my imagination free to float and flow, as if buoyed by an
ever-strengthening current and carried on an in-coming tide.
While I love to get near water as often as
possible, and also delight in swimming in it if it is warm enough, I
experience the same unleashing of creativity by simply standing in the shower! I wish someone
would invent some kind of white-board for the shower with a pen that is both
waterproof and washable! I often linger in the shower, relishing the confluence
of relaxation and released imagination. The only problem is, by the time I get
out and towel off, I can’t write all the resulting ideas down fast enough,
before at least one or two have flapped their wings and taken flight through the nearest hole in my brain!
However, it does help to know this about
myself – that being around water stimulates my creative thinking. Whenever I
feel stale or stagnant, I know it is time to escape to the most accessible body of
water and allow myself to just “be”.
All of which bring me to the question I
began with: What stimulates your creative
thinking? Identifying this may be one of several steps towards getting
“unstuck” in your own writing. If you don’t yet know the answer to this
question, it may take some self-observation and self-awareness, along with asking
those nearest and dearest to you whether they have noticed the specific
circumstances that seem to trigger your most creative ideas.
Learning to maximize the kind of
environment, activity, or circumstances that energize your own creative
thinking, and to capture and harness the resultant thoughts and ideas, may help
you on the way to breakthrough in your writing.
