Sunday, October 23, 2011

Expand Your Creative Horizons


We writers have a tendency to stay closed in and write our little hearts our. But way way to get your muse humming is to get out and BE A KID AGAIN. Yep, play, experience and explore. And guess what? You don't have to be a writer to do it.

CHEAP WAYS TO EXPLORE

Museums, hikes, long drives, research wondrously weird places where you live and visit them. Step outside of your comfort zone and go to something wacky with your friends or kids.

These are some things I've done to get wacky this year:
- Visited Renaissance Festival, Comic Con, Faerie Con
- Museum hopping
- Parks and play
- Drive through local areas considered haunted and spooky
- Joined Meetup groups to learn salsa, different places to travel, and about cooking.

WHY STEP OUT OF YOUR ZONE

Experiencing life by doing something new and meeting new people. I've met some great people that although we may have talked for a moment impacted my stories to come in a big way.

I tried several things that I was too scared to do before. Just to see if I could write about it. Snowboarding was one of them. Oh my goodness was it sooooooo hard at first.

SO WHAT DID YOU DO TO EXPERIENCE YOUR WORLD? EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS? AND LEARN SOMETHING MORE ABOUT YOURSELF THIS YEAR?

2 comments:

Kelly Hashway said...

Great point. I'm going to have to think about what I can do.

S.A. Larsenッ said...

I love posts like this. Being a writer of fiction obviously lends us to creating fictitious worlds, places, characters, etc... But if one looks close enough, snippets of the writer's true life experiences threads their work. Getting out there and living, experiencing life is so important.