Be Ready When Creativity Strikes

by Edie Melson, @EdieMelson

As writers, we know that inspiration is a fickle thing. And while we all need to keep writing whether we’re inspired or not, that rush of creativity is nice. What's not nice is not being ready.

There's nothing as disheartening as those times happens when inspiration strikes and we’re not ready to capitalize on it. So today I’m going to help you be ready.

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5 Tips for Sparking Creativity

By Beth K. Vogt @bethvogt

My husband brought me roses the other day. A lovely bouquet of blush flowers, which he put in a vase on the kitchen island. But then he put one single rose in a vase and set it on the table beside my chair while I worked on rewrites. I looked up and said, “Because you remembered that women are more creative when there are flowers around, right?”

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5 Ways to Nurture Your Creativity During Christmas

by Susan May Warren

First, I’ll just admit that I’m a bit of a writing addict.  I LOVE to write, even the rough draft stages and when I get an entire day to write it’s like, well, Christmas.  But I also love my family and just hanging out with them, doing puzzles, making cookies, chatting, laughing…so I love that there are mandatory breaks in my life to pry me away from my stories.  When I am in the middle of writing a book, up against a deadline, I’m so full of excitement it’s difficult to look up.  To eat.  To speak clearly.


But, because of Christmas, my brain gets a chance to breathe.

Letting your brain breathe is essential for creativity.  Even when I’m in the middle of a book, taking a day or two off to look up, get out in some fresh air, have a fun, no-stress conversation with friends can stir up a new perspective in my story, a fresh thematic thread, a undiscovered scene.  Letting my brain breathe also breathes new life into my novel.

So, while I won’t be writing, per say, over Christmas, I’ll still be working….and here’s how.

5 effective ways to breathe new life into your creativity while you let your brain cool off.

1. Get outside. Take a walk, run, go play on a playground…just breathe in the fresh air, the sunshine, listen to the wind, smell the snow/leaves/grass.  Somehow being away from the television, the football game (but TiVo it, because, well…it’s football!), the chatter, even the smells of the kitchen will allow you hear your thoughts.  And it’s these thoughts that will allow your creativity to stir to life.

2. Listen.  Here’s the truth:  I get in trouble when I open my mouth.  So, I force myself to listen.  And not just to the happenings in the family, but the stories of the past, and particularly the details of life in the days of our elders. Listen to the rich tales of the past and let it seed ideas for your novels (especially if you are a historical writer).  Take a few notes, ask a few questions and you’ll be surprised and delighted with the things you learn and the seeds of creativity planted.

3. Read a book. Preferably a novel. I suggest reading outside your genre because it will force you to relax and simply let a great novel nurture your creative side.  Turn off your internal editor and simply enjoy the characters, setting, plot points, even theme.  Even though you are not spending time analyzing it, the elements will sit into your brain like fertilizer, and allow those new ideas to grow.  Hey, it’s Christmas – give yourself the gift of reading!

4. Read your Bible, or some other spiritually nourishing book.  I read Oswald Chambers as well as my Bible every day and the daily nourishment of spiritual truth helps me sort out the focus of my daily tasks and even my novels. But when I have a stretch of time like Christmas break, I take extra time to read something that digs deeper – a longer Bible passage, maybe study the Greek of a verse, or perhaps I’ll read a commentary on a passage. (On my lineup for this year:  Jesus is better than you imagined.  I’m already three chapters in and love it.)  It’s like getting a deep tissue massage of my soul, working out the poisons of life and letting the truth flow.  In our busy worlds, if we don’t take time to feed our spirit, we will end up thirsty, and looking to quench it in quick, even unhealthy ways. Feed your soul now, while you have a moment.

5. Go to church. I’ve had the unique opportunity the past few weeks to attend churches different from my home church.  I love the freshness of a new worship situation – even a different denomination.  Over Thanksgiving, I attended a Lutheran church with my parents and soaked in the reverence the liturgy brings to my worship.  A few weeks before, I attended a fresh young church in the inner city with my daughter, and joined the exuberant praise of the college-age students. Their buoyant joy filled my heart with a new enthusiasm for praise.  Both pastors then offered sermons that gave me story ideas and answers for scenes I was struggling with.  I was able to go home, take notes on what I’d heard, and apply them to my story.  All that “breathing time” finally bore fruit.

I don’t know what your Christmas season includes, but give your brain time to breathe, and you’ll find that you’ll return in the new year ready to tackle those NaNoWriMo edits!

Merry Christmas!

Susie May

TWEETABLES

5 ways to nurture your creativity during Christmas by Susan May Warren (Click to Tweet)

Letting your brain breathe is essential for creativity~ Susan May Warren (Click to Tweet)

 It’s Christmas – give yourself the gift of reading~ Susan May Warren (Click to Tweet)

Susan May Warren is owner of Novel Rocket and the founder of Novel.Academy. A Christy and RITA award-winning author of over fifty novels with Tyndale,Barbour, Steeple Hill, Summerside Press and Revell publishers, she's an eight-time Christy award finalist, a three-time RITA Finalist, and a multi-winner of the Inspirational Readers Choice award and the ACFW Carol. A popular writing teacher at conferences around the nation, she's also the author of the popular writing method, The Story Equation. A full listing of her titles, reviews and awards can be found at: www.susanmaywarren.com. Contact her at: susan@mybooktherapy.com.

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Create. Create. Just Create.

By Michael Ehret

I haven’t learned a lot, comparatively, in my walk with God. Sometimes it seems like I’ve learned more, sometimes less. But there are a few things I’ve learned (and these aren’t all of them) over the years:

How do you create?

1. God loves me the way I am and wants me to allow Him to show me how I can become more like Him. (Sort of like how I loved my infant son when he was born but, man, am I glad I’m not still changing that almost 32-year-old’s diaper.)

2. The more I learn the less I seem to know about God and how He works. (This is OK, because it fuels my hunger for Him. By the time I die, I have high hopes of being a complete idiot about God.)

Then there’s this:

3. God won’t show you a truth in your life until you’re ready to see it. (Because, if you won’t see it, why show you?)

Recently a blog post by Esther de Charon de Saint Germain made its way around Facebook. The post, “Why Art Is Important for Highly Sensitive Persons,” opened a previously shut door into my personality for me.

In it, Esther wrote:

We (highly sensitive people) are the ones who remain seated in the movie theatre. Long after the move has ended. Because we need to compose ourselves before re-entering the world.

We are the ones unable to speak after that gloriously beautiful concert. It’s not because we don’t like you. Give us some time. We’re processing. There are no words yet. … We still are the music. We’re still living in the world of feelings, emotions.

Wait, hang on. I'm still in the moment.

She goes on to talk in detail about how being highly sensitive might look in real life—how it looks for her—how it might look if you are also one. Through it all, I’m nodding, nodding, nodding. Agreeing, experiencing the post.

Then, while reading, I see:

BUT

And that’s when I get that feeling in my gut I’ve come to identify as a nudge from the Holy Spirit: “Hey, if you pay attention here, you might learn something.”

Esther writes:

But ... creating our own art is scary. We sensitive peeps have set some pretty high standards for (ourselves). We fear we are not good enough at it.

How can we get the multitude of ideas in our head on a sheet of paper? All we can see is how flawed it will be…

If you are a highly sensitive person—and not all writers are, by far—can I suggest that you try harder to silence the self-talk Esther writes about that is convincing you, even more than any negative outside voices you might encounter, that you’re just not good enough? Don’t work so hard to convince yourself you’re not good enough, creative enough, talented enough.

Create to live. Live to create.

She writes:

Because if that’s the kind of chatter that goes on in your head, it means you Most Definitely need to make art. Find a course, get those pencils out of the drawer. Use your trait.

If you’re an HSP, like me, sometimes you just need to create. You need to write without your internal editor. You need to garden giving no thought to practicality. You need to color outside the lines of your adult coloring book because that’s your creativity—your art.

Write your prayers. Sing them. Dance them. Read your daily devotional out loud in your best Donald Duck voice—do what your muse (or your whim) tells you to do. Open your mind to the possibilities. Just create.

Just create.

Question: Other than write in your latest WIP, what do you do to be creative? How do you feed your creativity?

____________________________________

Michael Ehret has accepted God's invitation and is a freelance editor at WritingOnTheFineLine.com. In addition, he's worked as editor-in-chief of the ACFW Journal at American Christian Fiction Writers. He pays the bills as a marketing communications writer and sharpened his writing and editing skills as a reporter for The Indianapolis News and The Indianapolis Star.

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Where Do Stories Come From?

Dan Walsh is the award-winning and bestselling author of 14 novels, including The Unfinished Gift, The Discovery and When Night Comes. He has won 3 Carol Awards and 2 Selah Awards. Three of his books were finalists for Inspirational Book of the Year. Dan is a member of ACFW and Word Weavers. He lives with his wife, Cindi, in the Daytona Beach area where they love to take walks and spend time with their grandkids. Click here to connect with Dan or check out his books.

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"Where do you get your stories?"  

I've been asked this question more times than I can count since my first novel came out in 2009. I suspect when people ask me this they aren't really expecting me to have a definitive answer. "Oh, they come from ______ . " Usually they have just read one or more of my novels, really enjoyed how the stories affected them, and they're saying this as more of a compliment.

But it is an interesting question, isn't it? Where do our stories come from?

When I've been asked this question during interviews or at book club events, I usually mention something about the creativity of God or the gift of creativity God gives to people. I suppose the same question could be asked of songwriters. "Where do you get your songs?" I suppose it's from the same place that stories come from (wherever that is).

I remember hearing an interview by Billy Joel on where he got the inspiration for his hit song, River of Dreams (In the middle of the night...I go walking in my sleep...). I dare anyone to hear this song and not start tapping your feet or be singing along by the end (Click Here to see it on YouTube; almost 10 million views). He said he got it in a dream and woke up with the song almost fully formed in his head. He took a shower, expecting it to vanish, but instead he began singing it. It wound up becoming the cover song for one of his albums and reached #3 in the Billboard's Top 100 song chart in 1993.

I've written 14 novels so far, finishing up my 15th, and have about another 5-6 stories roughed out in my to-be-written-someday file. A couple of them did come to me, almost fully formed, in a dream (at least the basic storyline, not 300 pages worth). But that's not certainly the norm. In fact, when I started thinking about what inspired each one, it's like they all have their own story.

For example, one of my bestselling and most-reviewed novels is Remembering Christmas. The idea for the book just popped into my head one day during a casual conversation with my wife at Cracker Barrel. We were discussing the various jobs she had when we were first married, before our kids came into the picture. She reminded me of one job I had completely forgotten about. It was this little Christian bookstore called the Book Nook in the basement of an old church in downtown Daytona Beach.

We left the Cracker Barrel and drove across the street to Barnes & Noble, to browse and get a cup of coffee. As I'm walking through the aisles of Barnes & Noble this great idea for a book comes to me, almost fully formed, including a surprise ending.

The inspiration for my most recent suspense novel, When Night Comes, came to me in a completely different way. Back in the 70s, I used to work for GE in a department that made high-tech training simulators for the Army and Air Force. These things were very sophisticated and cost millions of dollars each to build and millions more to maintain. Around that time, I saw a documentary about a sleep disorder doctor who was trying to develop a drug to help people with chronic nightmares.

Somehow these two things collided together in my mind to form this sinister plot. I realized it had the potential to be a great thriller-type story, and I wondered what it would be like to create a credible Christian as the main character, sort of the victim of this sinister plot, and see how he would handle the events that occurred as the story unfolds. And of course, how much better if I mixed a little romance into the equation?

Well that's enough about me and my stories. How about you? Tell us, where do you get your stories?

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Steven James ~ The Three Princes of Serendip

by Yvonne Lehman

Steven James is the bestselling author of nine novels that have received wide critical acclaim from Publishers Weekly, New York Journal of Books, RT Book Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal and many others. He has won three Christy Awards for best suspense and was a finalist for an International Thriller Award for best original paperback. His psychological thriller The Bishop was named Suspense Magazine's book of the year. Publishers Weekly calls James "[A] master storyteller at the peak of his game." He is an active member of International Thriller Writers, the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, and International Association of Crime Writers. He is also a contributing editor for Writer's Digest. He has a master's degree in storytelling and has taught writing and creative communication around the world. When he's not writing or speaking, you'll find him trail running, rock climbing, or drinking a dark roast coffee near his home in eastern Tennessee.

The Three Princes of Serendip

Over the last seventeen years as a professional writer I’ve thought a lot about creativity. Here are two things I try to keep in mind that help me generate new ideas. 

1. Change Your Perspective

A few years ago while visiting a hotel in Denver, I noticed “EXIT” signs not only above the exit doors, but also at their base. “How odd!” I thought. “Only someone crawling on the floor would need a sign down there!”

Aha.

Whoever placed those signs down low had looked at the doors through the eyes of someone crawling for safety during a fire. 

Creativity isn’t “seeing what no one else sees;” it’s “seeing what anyone else would see—if only they were looking.” New ideas are born when we view life from a fresh perspective or peer at the world through another set of eyes.

Keep ideas alive by working backwards and sideways, by peering over your shoulder rather than always staring straight ahead. Remember, you don’t dance in a straight line.

Step into the shoes of your main character and write a journal entry, a complaint letter, or a love note. Switch your point of view. Write a few paragraphs in first person or third person. Think of how you would respond if you were in the story. Walk through the action, stand on your desk, crawl on the floor. And keep your eyes open for the doors no one else has noticed.

2. Let Serendipity Happen

In Horace Walpole’s 18^th century Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, the heroes discover new things again and again while looking for something else. From this we get the word “serendipity” which Walpole defined as “the facility of making happy chance discoveries.”

Fiction pivots upon the hinge of serendipitous discoveries—the detective recalls the victim’s clogged drain while combing her hair, the lawyer realizes the significance of the cell phone when he knocks his off his desk, the spy remembers the secret gadget hidden in his wristwatch. At the time, they weren’t searching for a solution, but they found one. After they’ve tried everything they can think of, the answer comes riding in on the wings of serendipity.

If you’re stalled out, sapped of fresh ideas, you just might be trying too hard. You can’t make happy chance discoveries until you step away, take a break, experience life, and stop worrying about your writing. Relax. Worrying about problems is like looking at bacteria through a microscope—it doesn’t help them go away, it only makes them look bigger. And the longer you stare, the more imposing they appear. 

So work smarter, not harder. Break your routine. Go to a movie. Sip a cup of sweet tea on the porch. Abstain from octopus. Try working in a different place or at a different time. Change the furniture around in your office. Lift weights. Vary your schedule. Get up in the middle of the night. Place yourself in situations where you’re not at ease—risking and responding to new challenges forces you to think creatively and opens the door for serendipity.

Do something completely different and let those parts of your brain you’re not even aware of chew on the problem for awhile. 

Let serendipity work for you.

Singularity

When his friend is murdered, illusionist Jevin Banks is determined to find out what really happened. Drawn into a web of conspiracy and top-secret research on human consciousness, Jevin won't stop digging until the truth is revealed. Soon he uncovers a dark secret--one that could change the very fabric of human life on the planet.

Bristling with mystery, suspense, and intrigue, Singularity is the second riveting book in The Jevin Banks Experience. Readers will devour this scientific thriller, flipping pages late into the night until the final shocking page.

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