Finding Inspiration—Take Two

By Daniel Yocom

Finding inspiration for my writing has been a goal for myself over the past few months. There is the saying that when the student is ready the teacher will present themselves. This happened to me with the presentation at our chapter.

Inna Lyon gave a presentation on the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Julia Cameron was a prolific writer in different areas. Inna has given presentations on other authors and is an example of what a person can do to when applying themselves to the craft of being a writer. What Inna shared about The Artist’s Way is how being artistic, or creative, works across different forms of being a creative and how being creative in one area can help in others.

What Does This Mean For Writers?

We all agree that writing is an artistic endeavor. By the way we use words we create art. We are doing the same level of creation of other artists, but with a different medium. We can use our personal choices of other artistic expressions to help our writing. In the presentation on The Artist’s Way, we learned about using those outlets of expression to exercise our mental processes to improve our imagination.

The exercises help not only with coming up with new ideas to write about, but to create habits we desire to create our works. For me, it was a great reminder of allowing my other outlets of creativity to shine on a more regular basis to help in supporting my writing goals.

I have a couple of other creative outlets I enjoy doing that I stopped doing for a while. During the time I wasn’t doing creative cooking, or working on my crafts, I can see how I was also struggling with my writing. When I started working on finding inspiration for myself to increase my writing output, I found I was looking at some of my older hobbies too without even thinking about them. After Inna’s presentation, I took another look at where I was spending my time being creative.

What Has This Meant For Me?

To the joy of others in my household and friends has been expressed with me looking at recipes and making new dishes. I have also found a rug I was braiding and have been working on it. These activities have increased my creativity in what I was working on, and with how much I have been able to create.

I am not going to talk about my personal output, because we are all in different places in our life. I am basing my work on what I was doing before, then when I was struggling last year, and what I am accomplishing now.

What Can You Do Moving Forward?

From the presentation Inna gave, other reading I have done, and my personal experiences, I recommend that a great way of helping yourself with your writing is to explore other areas of creativity.

If you already have other outlets of creativity that you haven’t embraced in a while, do them. If there is something you have wanted to try, take a class, attend a lesson, go to a workshop. You will find that these additional outlets allow your thoughts to become more creative and more focused.

Writers are artists. Your other areas of creative outlet are also part of being an artist. Each of the outlets you have is food for thought—food for your creative writing.

About the Author

Daniel Yocom writes about geeky things because people say to write what you know. Their love of the geeky, nerdy community dates to the 1960s through games, books, movies, and stranger things better shared in small groups. They’re an award-winning writer and editor of short stories, books, and hundreds of articles published by blogs, magazines, and gaming companies.

They enjoy attending conferences, conventions, festivals, sharing on panels, and presentations. They are serving on the boards of the LTUE Writing Symposium and the League of Utah Writes as the president of the Infinite Monkeys Genre Writers chapter. They also serve on the Selection and Awards juries for the FilmQuest Film Festival and as the Panel Coordinator for the SaltCON Tabletop Gaming Convention.

Dan wants to help others reach their goals as creative people.

Join them at www.guildmastergaming.com.