In this week's quick tips, we're talking about creativity and how we can nurture our subconscious mind.
Tips include:
Intentional content consumption: no matter the medium, what we watch, read, or experience influences our writing
Building community: conferences, writing groups, online summits are all fodder for your creative brain
Travel: long-distance or close to home, changing venue can often spark creative joy
Listen in for an episode that promises to refresh your perspective and keep your creative heart beating with excitement.
BONUS!
If January was a bit of a bust and your New Year's Writing Resolutions didn't stick, let Megan help you get back on track by creating goals and habits that will keep your story rolling. Subscribe to the Clarify | Simplify | Implement newsletter for writers here.
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Welcome back to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy author of the Senyari Chronicles and the Rise of Lilith series.
Speaker 2:
And I'm Greta Boris, USA Today bestselling author of the Mortician Murders and the soon to be released almost true crime series. In today's Quick Tips episode, we are talking about what to do when our creative weld run dry, as happens sometimes. It does, it does happen, and it can happen for lots and lots of different reasons. But today we're gonna kind of talk about feeding our subconscious, because sometimes we just need something to chew on. We need to get our brains going, yep. So how do you?
Speaker 1:
do that.
Speaker 2:
Greta.
Speaker 1:
Well, okay, so first of all, jump in.
Speaker 2:
I'm jumping in First of all. I like, if we're gonna use, like, the planting analogy you know, when you plant seeds in the soil or you plant it young baby plant in your garden or whatever, if you put it into crappy soil it's just not gonna grow, it's not gonna get roots and it's not gonna grow. So soil, getting your high quality soil, is really important.
Speaker 2:
And this can come one with physical health, which we're gonna talk about later on in the month, because, truthfully, if you're not sleeping, you're not exercising, you're not eating correctly, you know it's really hard to accomplish anything in life and, honestly, writing creatively can be exhausting. I'm, like, physically drained a lot of the time when I'm done with the big writing sessions.
Speaker 2:
So if you need to take care of your body and then, but then, back to feeding our subconscious. It needs ideas. So your subconscious eats ideas the way your body eats veggies right and those ideas, they can come from research or they can come from consuming other people's stories. All those things are great fodder for ideas.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, they really are. But one thing that I like to be aware of, I guess, is making sure that I'm intentional in the content I'm consuming, because you can sit through and scroll through Facebook for an hour and it is not gonna have the same effect on your creative brain as reading a really good novel that you enjoy or even watching a movie a new movie. That's in your genre or not in your genre. It can be a lot of different things, but choosing the types of content that you want to consume, that you want to be inspired by, that it's like eating your veggies instead of eating a candy bar One is gonna make you feel a lot better than the other and really help your body thrive rather than just being empty calories and sugar.
Speaker 2:
Right and I would say luckily for us that most of the time the things that we need to consume are right in our wheelhouse and that we enjoy them. It's not like you have to watch a whole lot of documentaries and super dry topics to write a mortician murder. I mean, maybe I could watch a few more tewary things, but that's more for information than inspiration.
Speaker 1:
But you were initially inspired to write the Mortician Murders by a podcast you were listening to, and so that was intentional consumption, I would argue, because, yes, you were interested in it, it was something that fueled your creativity, but it was at somebody else's podcast on being a mortician, I think right.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's actually a YouTube channel called the Ask a Mortician show and she is, believe it or not, she makes being a mortician pretty darn funny and very interesting. Yeah, it's like a fascinating show, yeah, which is something I never thought I would be interested in, but she inspired me.
Speaker 1:
Right, exactly Exactly so you never know where that inspiration is going to come from. But you're right in that you just follow. In a lot of cases anyway, you just follow where your interest leads you. I mean, hopefully you're writing something that you enjoy reading. I mean, that's kind of, I think, where most of us get started. You know, for me it's like I've read fantasy my entire life, so it was a no brainer that I was going to write fantasy, and so I enjoy reading fantasy, I continue to read fantasy, I continue to read in the genre, and all of that fuels my own writing creativity as well. So I think that's really key.
Speaker 1:
But ultimately it does come down to choosing what kind of content you're going to. You're going to consume for that as well, and it's movies, it's TV shows, it's YouTube you know shorts or channels or things. It can be books, it can be, you know. It can be books that inspire you because they're so well written. You want to, you want to aspire to that, or they could be books that are not particularly well written and you go. I think I can do that better.
Speaker 2:
I've had that experience as well, even newspaper articles or current events kind of, especially if you write science fiction or crime or like global espionage or something like that, you know, keeping up current events or weird crime stories that have happened or the latest and greatest in scientific research, all those things can spark all kinds of ideas and yeah, yeah, and a lot of it is also just being around the industry, being around people building that community.
Speaker 1:
You know, meeting other authors For me, going to conferences and conventions, either online or in person the content itself can be inspiring. The networking, the being around other people can be inspiring. The community of being around other writers or people who are, you know, all trying to pursue the same dream can be inspiring. So making sure that we get out into the community is also really important and really helpful, I think.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, like when they. I remember people used to tell me when I was running go run with people who are faster than you and you'll get faster. Yeah, and it was really true.
Speaker 1:
There's a phrase or you know a theory or whatever that it's, that you are Urban myth. Yeah, urban myth. I don't know what you want to call it, but you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with the most. So if you surround yourself with people who are not pursuing the same goals or dreams as you are, it's going to be harder to achieve those dreams and goals. But if you're surrounding yourself with people who are doing more and better than you are, or who are supporting you in those efforts, then you can be better in your or better achieve your goals and dreams. So, making sure you know you meet and surround yourself with people who are doing the thing and that are being or becoming the thing that you want to be or become.
Speaker 2:
Yes, good advice. And then I would say one last way that I feel like people get inspired is travel, and I know we kind of think of travel as a luxury, but and it is very exciting to get to go see new places and places you've never been and all of that kind of thing and it can really explode story ideas. But even staycations and taking time to visit places that are near your own home can be, can be great. So For the long distance travel, like I know Joanne Le Pen talks about this on her show she likes to book trips to places that she plans to use for story settings. Yeah, because, especially with her first series, it's a very, you know, international, global espionage, intrigue kind of thing. It's a Dan Brown-esque, that kind of thing. So she will pick these historic, incredible, historic places and go visit them and she gets lots of ideas while she's there. And yeah, that's amazing, she also lives in Europe, so to travel around Europe is not as expensive for her, as it would be for most Americans.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, but you know, but I write local stories. All mine are set in sunny SoCal and but I'll even go on location to write sometimes. You know I've got several of my first series we're. We're took place in San Juan, capistrano, which is one of the oldest cities in California. It might even be the oldest tenuously residential city in California.
Speaker 1:
Really, I didn't know that. Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 2:
I'll have to look that up.
Speaker 1:
It is. It is one of the oldest missions that's still standing, I think, right.
Speaker 2:
Yes, and it's called the jewel of the mission, because it's really, it's, it's pretty.
Speaker 2:
It's pretty and kept up. So sometimes I would like there's a little adorable little coffee shop that's set in an old home that's right on the railroad tracks and I would just go there to write in it. Would it impacted all the sensory stuff? Because there's horses nearby, there's sagebrush, you know, hearing the train go by? I actually ended up with a bunch of train scenes in that book because I was sitting in the coffee shop and I might not have thought of that that. Oh yeah, the train that goes through this town pretty regularly, yeah, so, yeah, even, or go to the mission. I've gone to the mission as well and brought, you know if not, a laptop, pencil and paper. John had downed notes, walked around the mission, so those kind of things could be, can be just great inspiration just hanging around someplace local.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And sometimes all you really need is just to change that, that venue. Not even even if it's not for location scouting or getting specific ideas about the location of your book, but just getting out there and being the fly on the wall lurking in a coffee shop, who you know, listening to the people around you or you know feeling the bustle of you know a community at the coffee shop, or or just to get out of the house so that it's different than being at your desk where maybe you're feeling a little stifled, all of that can really just change the change, the wavelength of your brains, that you can be more creative and be more productive for a little while.
Speaker 2:
I've even gone to my son's boat. He has a sailboat in Dana Point Harbor and if he's not down there, he's like yeah, go on down, mom, you use it for your office for a day and I'll go down there for three or four hours, sit on the boat, make myself a cup of coffee. You know, I feel like I've been on vacation when I leave that boat. It's just like my story may not have anything to do with water or boats or anything, but just it's just a change of scene.
Speaker 2:
Yep, change of scene, Yep. So next week. I feel like we've kind of tackled inspiration this week, and next week is sort of another way of looking at inspiration, because it's Valentine's.
Speaker 1:
Day.
Speaker 2:
So we're going to be talking about how to fall back in love with your writing. So until next time, keep your stories rolling.