by Suzanne Lieurance
You spend a lot of time thinking about output.
How many words did you write? How many chapters did you finish? How many posts did you publish? How much progress did you make?
But your writing doesn’t come from nowhere.
If you’re continually asking yourself to produce while putting very little new material into your creative life, eventually you’re going to feel as though you’re drawing from the same small pool again and again.
Sometimes the answer isn’t to write harder. It’s to take more in.
Your Creative Well Needs New Material
Everything you experience gives your mind something to work with.
A conversation overheard in a coffee shop. A place you’ve never visited before. A nonfiction book about a subject you know nothing about. A museum exhibit. A documentary. A piece of music. A walk through a neighborhood you don’t usually see.
None of these experiences needs to turn directly into a story.
They simply enlarge the collection of images, ideas, emotions, facts, voices, and questions available to you when you sit down to write.
Read Outside Your Usual Lane
You’re often encouraged to read widely in the genre you write, and that’s good advice.
But you can also expand creatively by reading outside that lane.
If you write mysteries, read a memoir. If you write business nonfiction, try a novel. Read history, science, essays, poetry, travel writing, biographies, or something chosen simply because the subject interests you.
You aren’t looking for material to copy.
You’re giving your mind new patterns and perspectives to encounter.
Change the Scenery
You don’t need an expensive trip to give yourself new input.
Work in a different room. Walk somewhere you don’t usually walk. Visit a local library branch you’ve never entered. Sit in a park and watch what happens around you. Attend a community event. Take yourself to lunch somewhere new.
When you’re in a familiar environment, you may stop noticing much of what surrounds you.
A new environment wakes up your attention.
Have Conversations That Aren’t About Writing
Other people carry entire worlds you know nothing about.
Ask someone about their work, hobby, childhood, hometown, unusual experience, or area of expertise.
Listen because you’re interested, not because you’re hunting for a story.
When you remain curious about other people, you continually encounter ways of seeing life that are different from your own.
Notice More Than You Need
Not every observation needs to go into a notebook.
But practice noticing.
What does the room smell like? How does someone hold their hands while they’re talking? What phrase did that person use that you’ve never heard before? What changes when a storm is approaching? What makes one building feel welcoming and another feel cold?
Your writing becomes more specific when you learn to notice specific things.
Input Is Part of the Work
It can be difficult to count reading, wandering, observing, or learning as part of your writing life because no new pages appear at the end.
But your creative work needs both intake and output.
The pillar page Writing Productivity for Authors looks at how to use your time intentionally. Intentional creative input belongs in that conversation, too. Restocking your imagination isn’t wasted time if it gives your writing more depth and range.
Your Next Step
Before the weekend is over, give yourself one fresh input.
Go somewhere new, read something unexpected, talk with someone interesting, listen to unfamiliar music, visit an exhibit, watch a documentary, or simply take a notebook somewhere and pay attention.
Don’t demand an idea from the experience.
Let it become part of what you know, what you’ve noticed, and what you can draw from later.
If you want your writing world to expand, give yourself a larger world to write from.
Further Reading
• Our August Writing Challenge: Bold Creative Expansion
• What Are You Curious About as a Writer?
• Give Yourself Permission to Experiment With Your Writing
• Writing Productivity for Authors (Pillar Page)
Suzanne Lieurance is the author of over 40 published books and a transformational Law of Attraction coach for writers who are ready to stop waiting to feel like the real thing. At Write by the Sea, she guides writers through the identity shift that changes everything — not just the writing, but the whole life built around it. She is the publisher of Manifesting Monthly magazine and the host of Monday Morning Manifestors.
Subscribe to The Morning Nudge to get a FREE, short email every weekday morning with writing tips and other resources for writers. You’ll also get a free e-book, You Are Already a Writer – Now It’s Time to Start Living Like One.
