One Apple A Day #141
In my mission to write —almost— every day I’m always craving for inspirations. So far, I can split my morning in two: the ones when I know what I want to write before starting my routine and all the others.
The first type of mornings is the best obviously. Having an idea in mind makes everything easier. In those mornings my focus is all on the writing itself. The words flow on their own. I have to pay attention to the way I used them, but I don’t have to dig around to find them.
Unfortunately, there are also the other mornings. The ones when I sit down, I stare at the screen, and my mind goes blank.
No ideas, no subjects, no words.
In the beginning, those days were tough. I could burn a large part of my 25 minutes session only to find a hint to start writing. But, after a while and with some practice, I learned how to find inspiration.
One great thing about “inspiration” is that you can find it everywhere. It’s out there, but you need to open up your mind and your senses to let it flows in. I regularly use a few tactics to unlock the ideas.
One is to read a post from The Write Practice, a great source of ideas, advice and tips about writing. Another one is to watch one or two inspirational videos until something triggers the writing. Reading works too. If I have time, I read for half an hour before my writing exercise, and most of the time it is enough to sparkle some ideas in my mind.
One curious thing that I learned is that inspiration has weird ways to manifest itself. Often I find something interesting, and I decide to write about it but, as soon as I start tapping the first words, the inspiration takes me in unexpected directions. Sometimes you don’t need the right idea to start. I just need to start to find the right idea.
My friend Karen once told me “if you don’t know what to do, do something.”. It’s the same with writing. When I don’t know what to write about, I look around, pick something, and I start writing. The inspiration comes on its own.
Today is one of those days.
While looking around for anything to start with I watched a video with a challenging question.
“If you died today, what are three things you wish you would have done, gone, become, tried, and risked? Just three thoughts.”
It seemed a perfect cue to start my writing exercise. So, I started from there, and I wrote what you’ve just read. I still don’t know what those three things are, but I have my daily apple.