Live at the Heart of Daydreams

Posted by aleeCO on July 15, 2012 in Inspiration, References |

On my trip back home to Colorado, my dad gave me a book he was reading to improve his creative writing, The Art and Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb. There are several great excerpts and takeaways that translate into creativity in any field, not just literature.

In one of my favorite sections, she suggested to nourish the Creative Spirit:

1. Read. Reading is the food that sustains the discipline whether you read adult or children’s books, poetry, magazines or newspapers.

2. Explore the arts. Movies, plays, art exhibits, concerts.

3. Heed the three Ds: Desire, discipline and determination.

4. Set goals, whether time or pages written.

5. Embrace the process.

6. Honor the mystery and magic. There is an element of surprise, of ideas appearing out of nowhere and connections leaping out of dreams, that cannot be accounted for in the daily living of our lives.

7. Seek the universal, which is grounded in the particular experience of a particular person at a particular moment in time.

8. Daydream. As children, most of us were admonished to pay attention to the task at hand and stop daydreaming! Yet vision and fantasy, creativity and imagination, live at the heart of daydreams. Welcome daydreams.

9. Dare to experiment, combine unexpected elements, play with words, break the rules. Seek out the laughter in desperation and the humor in pain.

I feel like I could write a short story and expand on each of these points. I bet you can too ~ those whom are used to creative thinking can each think of times how each of these have enabled creativity. Or times in which we’ve craved one of these things… ;)

I actually read number eight wrong at first. I skimmed it and read “live at the heart of daydreams.” Though she was referring to creative and imagination. I think that quote alone stands pretty strong of how a person can maintain the correct mindset needed to create :)

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